I Copied a Successful App and Now It Makes Me $20,000 a Month

TL;DR: Adrian, a solo developer from Austin, didn't invent a new product—he copied one. After seeing a scraping API listed for sale on Micro Acquire doing $30K MRR with less than 100 customers and SEO-only distribution, he realized he could build the same thing himself. With 3 years of web scraping experience, he rebuilt the API in a few weeks using Node.js and launched with bare-bones documentation in Notion. His first customer came organically when he posted a scraping demo on Twitter and the company's CTO commented. Today, the API generates $20K/month from 600 total customers, with just 12 paying for most of the revenue. He acquires customers through Twitter presence and by offering 10K free credits to anyone launching related products. The business runs with 80% margins—$1,500/month on proxies, $500 for a Philippine developer to monitor outages, and $400 on server costs. His advice: stop bouncing between ideas, pick one validated concept, and work on it every single day.