Hey I'm Mat!

This is the first email of my newsletter: How to build a successful Shopify App. I'm so excited!

I'll probably start by letting you know what you will receive each week.

Since 2017 I've built 5 Shopify apps, 3 failed and I still have 2 apps running.

It also means that I learned many things regarding Shopify Apps or SaaS in general.

And this newsletter will be like my diary! I will share with you my failures, my wins, my experience, and my learnings. At least, that way, I won't forget everything I've been through.

I'm gonna be honest with you, it wasn't always good. I had bad moments, times I wanted to quit or even burn out. And I will share all of that with you.

But remember, after rain always comes the sun! 😁

My backstory

I started with video games

The journey didn't start in 2017. Actually, it was in 2010. I was 13.

Like normal children, I loved spending most of my time playing video games—especially this one: Dofus.

You probably don't know it except if you're French. It was a famous MMORPG in France.

But the company behind the game (Ankama) released an update that pissed off many players. They completely changed the game: the design, the characters, and stuff like that.

I didn't like it. And many people too.

But we found a way to play the game I used to like: private servers.

Private servers were servers that looked like the old version of Dofus, except Ankama did not own them. Fans created these servers. People who emulated the game to play it again.

And of course, they were not professional, they were people like me. But as a group, we were able to build something massive!

And to do that, you had to know how to code. Some people learned C, others Visual Basic and others, like me, started with HTML, CSS, Js, and PHP.

We had to build emulators, websites, etc...

Learning HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP

There was this French website called "Le site du zero" which literally means "The website of newbie"

They had a lot of tutorials to help you learn how to code. And I started with that.

Today, this website still exists and it's quite huge! But the name changed to "Open Class Room". This is more professional.

I first started with HTML and CSS so I could build static websites. They were helpful for our private servers.

Then Javascript so I could create animations and have more complete websites.

And finally, I had to go with PHP to connect a database and create websites linked to the private server so people could register or log in.

Learning how to design

I had one big problem: my websites looked like crap!

They were sooooooo ugly! So I started to learn how to use Photoshop and how to design websites.

That was really useful. I had a mentor. My first mentor.

He was like a hero to me. I was 14, learning how to build a website. He was 16 and people were already paying him $500 to build websites for private servers! And his websites were amazing! Beautiful!

He taught me a lot of stuff. I don't even know what he does today but hey, shout out to you!

And then?

I built several websites for Dofus private servers, kept learning, and even made my first dollars online!

But I didn't jump from private servers to Shopify Apps.

This is a bit more complicated.

But hey, this email is already so long so let's keep that for the next week. I promise, then we'll start with the real value!

So wait for the next email! Until then, have a good week!

Mat