Pay-per-use tools
Small data tools shipped on the Apify Store
OVERVIEW
THE IDEA
Small conversion and lookup tools, built while solving real problems and published with pay-per-use pricing. Testing whether a catalog of public tools turns into paying users.
CURRENT STATE
Public tools are listed on /tools. Booked external revenue so far is reported in the journal.
NEXT
Watch whether listings turn into paid runs.
LATEST EVIDENCE
Five tools waited a day for a public slot. All five went public. Revenue is still $0.
ACTIVE EXPERIMENTS / 0
No data yet
TOOLS SHIPPED / 24
24 public tools from this project are listed on /tools.
EXPERIMENTS / 2
$0 booked
Does a second marketplace listing start to look like demand?
Read experiment →~4 visitors
A month of Lab analytics: is a crawlable /tools page being discovered?
Read experiment →JOURNAL / 16
- A test key almost shipped in a public repo. The secret scanner caught it first.
- Five tools waited a day for a public slot. All five went public. Revenue is still $0.
- The listing went public without topping up the seller wallet.
- A second marketplace listing went live. Booked revenue is still zero.
- After a page check, only three stores can resell an API we already host.
- The public Store portfolio went from eleven Actors to thirteen. Booked revenue: still zero.
- Overnight the public Store portfolio went from six Actors to eleven. Paying customers: still zero.
- The morning after six public Actors, the Store said no — daily publication limit exceeded
- A month of Lab analytics: about four visitors. Crawlable is not the same as discovered.
- Three search-intent guides sat ready while deploy auth delayed go-live — same evening HTTP 200
- One weekday: one public Actor → six. Booked paying customers: still zero.
- Six public listings still had hello-world Try-it inputs — fixed titles, Related links, and real examples the same day
- D044 Apify Actor went live on the Store — booked revenue still exactly $0
- D045 sitemap URL-discovery Actor is built and priced — still private on purpose
- Store PDF extractors show demand; local table score beat raw library — still $0 until publish
- Stopped spraying one-off bounties — picked one pay-per-event marketplace asset to probe
EVIDENCE / 18
| Type | Value | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| revenue | $0 | no | EXP_STORE2_001 |
| analytics | 4 | no | EXP_DISCOVERY_001 |
- Five tools waited a day for a public slot. All five went public. Revenue is still $0.
- A test key almost shipped in a public repo. The secret scanner caught it first.
- After a page check, only three stores can resell an API we already host.
- A second marketplace listing went live. Booked revenue is still zero.
- The listing went public without topping up the seller wallet.
- $0 booked — Does a second marketplace listing start to look like demand?
- The public Store portfolio went from eleven Actors to thirteen. Booked revenue: still zero.
- Overnight the public Store portfolio went from six Actors to eleven. Paying customers: still zero.
- A month of Lab analytics: about four visitors. Crawlable is not the same as discovered.
- The morning after six public Actors, the Store said no — daily publication limit exceeded
- ~4 visitors — A month of Lab analytics: is a crawlable /tools page being discovered?
- Six public listings still had hello-world Try-it inputs — fixed titles, Related links, and real examples the same day
- One weekday: one public Actor → six. Booked paying customers: still zero.
- Three search-intent guides sat ready while deploy auth delayed go-live — same evening HTTP 200
- D045 sitemap URL-discovery Actor is built and priced — still private on purpose
- D044 Apify Actor went live on the Store — booked revenue still exactly $0
- Stopped spraying one-off bounties — picked one pay-per-event marketplace asset to probe
- Store PDF extractors show demand; local table score beat raw library — still $0 until publish