The YouTube Video That Changed Everything

I woke up to €700 in revenue over three days. My battery monitoring app, which usually generates modest income, suddenly had a spike I wasn't expecting. And honestly? I'm still processing it.

Let me back up. I'm Christian, an iOS developer working full-time while building Unplugged on the side - an app that does exactly one thing: shows your iPhone battery level on your Apple Watch. You'd think Apple would have built this themselves by now, but until they Sherlock it, I'm happy to fill the gap. It's been about a year and a half since I started this project, and for most of that time, I wasn't really sure if I was solving a real problem or just building something I personally found neat.

Then HotshotTek featured it in his "5 Essential Apple Watch Apps" video, and suddenly 130 people started trials in three days. The revenue spike was cool (it's since come back down, though my baseline has definitely improved). But what really hit me was something else entirely.

This isn't my first rodeo with traffic. A while back, I ran a promotion where I made the lifetime version free and got about 10,000 downloads. Ten thousand! That sounds impressive until I tell you it generated almost no revenue. Turns out, free downloads from people who just collect apps doesn't really translate to… well, anything.

But this time? Completely different. Smaller numbers, actual money. The difference is obvious in hindsight: the YouTube video reached people who actually care about Apple Watch apps. High-intent traffic, as the marketing people apparently call it. Who knew?

(I say "who knew" but honestly, I should have known.)

The validation from the video wasn't just about the money or downloads. It was about something more fundamental: someone finally understood what I built.

I have this friend who works in app development - more on the product side, but technical enough to get it. I've shown him Unplugged at least four times. Four times! And every single time, he just… didn't get it. "Why would I need this?" "Doesn't the Watch already show this?" "I don't understand."

Then he watched the video. And he got it.

That moment made me realize something uncomfortable: I'm apparently terrible at explaining what I've built. The YouTuber did in 60 seconds what I couldn't do in four separate conversations. They nailed the contrast, showed the actual use case, made it click.

Turns out how you present something matters as much as the thing itself.

Before this video, I had a dream about making Unplugged a full-time thing - actually making a living doing something I love while providing for my family. But if I'm being honest, I wasn't optimistic about it.

But €700 in three days from a single YouTube mention? Even though it's spiked back down, that changes the math. Not into "I'm quitting my job tomorrow" territory, but into "okay, maybe this is actually doable" territory.

Here's what the attention really validated: there's genuine interest. People actually care about this problem. What it didn't validate was that my app is perfect - actually, I got a ton of feedback and realized there's a lot I need to fix. But that's good. Any feedback is good feedback, and it gives me a reason to keep going.

Because up until this point, I wasn't sure this was something people would actually be interested in beyond a small niche. It was a great creative outlet to experiment with things, but I never felt like it could support me. Daily active users jumped from around 100 to 300-400 depending on the day. Now? For the first time in 18 months, it feels possible.

Which brings me to why I'm starting this blog.

Before the video, Unplugged was a small, quiet side project. Support emails were manageable. Now I suddenly have way more attention than I'm used to, and with that comes this feeling that I should explain what's actually going on behind the scenes.

This blog is primarily for you - the people using Unplugged or considering it. If you're curious about where this app came from, where it's going, and why certain things work the way they do, this is for you. If you want to understand the technical limitations I'm dealing with or provide feedback on what direction the app should take, this is for you.

It's also for me - writing helps me think through problems and communicate better. And maybe it helps other indie developers see that breakthroughs like this are possible.

But really, I want to connect with the people actually using the app. I want you to understand the context behind decisions, see what I'm working on, and hopefully get invested in this project as something that keeps improving. Not invested financially (though that helps!), but invested in the sense of "I want to see where this goes."

Here's what you can expect:

Behind-the-scenes development - What I'm working on, the technical challenges I'm facing, and how I'm approaching them.

Common questions answered - Why aren't Live Activities actually "live"? Why can't I show exact percentages? I'll explain the technical constraints and what I'm exploring.

Apple's limitations - The reality of working within Apple's battery reading API and platform restrictions. It's not always that I don't want to provide certain features - sometimes it's technical limitations or API restrictions I have to work around.

Failed experiments - I'll try things. Some will work. Some won't. The failures are usually more interesting anyway.

The reality of building solo - Balancing a full-time job, a one-and-a-half year old daughter, a dog, and trying to ship features people want.

I can't promise a specific posting schedule because honestly, I don't know what that looks like yet while juggling everything else. But I'll write when I have something worth sharing.

This is also an exercise in transparency and communication. Maybe you'll have ideas for solutions I haven't thought of. Maybe it just helps you understand why certain things take time. Either way, I think it's worth trying.

I should probably link to the video because it's kind of the whole reason this exists. HotshotTek, thank you for featuring Unplugged. You explained it better than I ever did.

If you're curious about the app: Check out Unplugged on the App Store

Thanks for reading. Now back to working through all that feedback and figuring out what to tackle next.

Written by Christian Skorobogatow