Newsletter #7: Shopify Finder, a $35K MRR Shopify app developer and my favorite Tiny Desk Concert

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

I’m writing from the beautiful city of Nice, in the south of France, where I’m spending a week remote working with friends. We’re enjoying the beach, the pool and Nice’s famous food specialties: pan bagnat, pissaladière, farcis, socca, salade niçoise, daube… Amazing!

In this edition, we’re discussing Shopify Finder, a $35K MRR Shopify app developer and my favorite Tiny Desk Concert.

Let’s dive in.

Work

Ecommerce is a small world.

When I started Shopify development, I was eager to meet other freelancers to get to know each other and discuss the challenges we were facing in our projects.

I contacted 30+ French freelancers and agency owners on LinkedIn, and many of them are now good friends.

One of them is Alexis Lepresle.

Together we feel that there are not a lot of Shopify freelancers in France. So we wrote down the names of all the ones we knew and we added agencies as well.

We stored them in an Airtable database. When this database was big enough, we built a Polaris frontend for it and deployed it online.

That’s how Shopify Finder was born.

Shopify Finder is a directory of Shopify freelancers and agencies in France. It allows you to have a clear vision of the French ecosystem and contact an expert if you need to.

Visit Shopify Finder here.

Inspire

Today, I would like to highlight the work of a French Shopify app developer you probably never heard of.

His name is Axel Hardy. He has 4 Shopify apps which bring a total of $35K MRR.

Axel is a solo PHP developer, he has no employees.

His journey as a freelance developer started in 2013 when he began selling web development services on Fiverr for only $5. He worked full-time on this platform for 3 years and was very successful: his profile has a 5/5 average rating with 600+ reviews.

In 2020, during the COVID lockdown, he found himself in a position where he had less freelance projects to work on and more time to dedicate to side projects. So he started developing his first Shopify app: Pxl ‑ Photo Background Remover, which helps merchants create professional product pictures by removing their backgrounds.

This first Shopify app was released on the app store in April 2020. As of August 2023, it has an average rating of 5/5 and 38 reviews.

Axel did not stop there.

He then released 3 other public Shopify apps:

• GoSEO ‑ SEO Products Optimizer, which has an average rating of 4.9/5 and 101 reviews.

• Easy Digital Products (his biggest app), which has an impressive average rating of 5/5 and 180 reviews.

• SEO Blog Optimizer, which has an average rating of 5/5 and 11 reviews.

What an inspiring journey! And it’s far from over.

Developing and launching 4 Shopify apps in 2020 means that Axel has seen Shopify evolve tremendously in the past 3 years. It’s a full-time job to maintain those apps and make sure that they stay up-to-date with the latest standards.

He recently turnt his first app into an embedded app, so that it integrates smoothly within the Shopify admin dashboard. His goal is that this app will be granted the “Built for Shopify” badge at the end of 2023.

Then he will do the same for his 3 other apps, using Polaris’s latest version, and getting their badge at the end of 2024.

Axel is so passionate and dedicated that I’m certain he will achieve all the goals he has set for himself.

Learn more about Axel by following him on Twitter and discovering his 4 Shopify apps on his partner page on the app store.

Explore

Watching Tiny Desk Concerts relaxes me and brings me peace.

They are live concerts hosted by NPR Music at the desk of Bob Boilen in Washington, D.C.

This concept originally comes from a joke made by Stephen Thompson, journalist and critic for NPR Music. Stephen and his colleague Bob Boilen were attending Laura Gibson's concert in a noisy bar in Austin. At the end of the performance, Stephen Thompson went to Laura Gibson and joked that she should come and play at Bob Boilen’s desk in NPR’s offices, which was much quieter. A few weeks later, Laura Gibson did it and that is how the first Tiny Desk Concert was recorded and published in 2008.

Today, NPR Music’s YouTube channel counts 8M+ subscribers and many of the Tiny Desk Concerts effortlessly make more than a million views.

They hosted plenty of well known artists such as Billie Eilish, Burna Boy, Jorja Smith, Stromae and Usher.

My favorite Tiny Desk Concert is the one by Lous and the Yakuza, performed at the Book Bar in the Hôtel Grand Amour in Paris. I really like its smooth and warm atmosphere.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie