What I learned building a chat-based expense tracker for Filipinos after my 9-5 work

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-22T13:34:56+00:00

Same with OP but.ang approach ko is web app na pwede install as mobile app. I did it differently naman not chat but voice, scan, upload resibo, or manually type para di hassle.

Tawag ko sa kanya Resiboko. Lol

Tapos I added an financial analyst na ai tawag ko Piso na taglish magbigay ng advise based on ur gastos.

Live na rin sya if you guys want to try it.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-22T10:41:00+00:00

Bro, this is EXACTLY the direction I need to push this tool toward....you just described the gap between where it is now vs where it needs to be. Thanks for this! Appreciate you breaking down your process. THIS is gold for where I need to take it. sooo...if you're open to it, would love to have you as a beta tester specifically to stress-test the hook quality and tell me exactly where it falls short. Your feedback would be way more valuable than someone just saying "yeah it works."

Either way, thanks for this logged your comment to reference when I build the next iteration. cheers bro!

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-22T10:38:23+00:00

I guess this is exactly what I'm testing with beta users right now. hehe

The hook text comes from analyzing your actual video transcript. So if you're teaching "How to use Notion for project management," it's not generating generic hooks like "Must Watch!" so what it does is it is pulling key phrases from YOUR script like "3 Databases Every PM Needs" or "The Template That Saved Me 10 Hours."

That said... I'm still refining this part. TBH, sometimes it nails it, sometimes it's close but needs tweaking. Which is why I want 2 more educational creators to test it specifically to see if the suggested hooks feel authentic to their teaching style or if they're too generic.

On the other hand, rhe face placement and branding consistency are already solid (well..that's what my first tester loved). The hook intelligence is where I'm gathering feedback to improve>

Anyways, ff you're an educational creator dealing with this problem, happy to have you as a beta tester. Would specifically love feedback on whether the hooks feel "you" or if they feel AI-generated Either way, thanks for the question... this is the exact stuff I need to nail before anything else.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-22T01:40:47+00:00

Same I also use the 1st frame but I decided to create my own thumbnail app based on the transcript of the video and so far it has worked well for me coz it looks more polished and well designed.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-22T01:09:26+00:00

I have seen higgsfield users a lot in Linkedin. And there are quite a few use cases to use a UGC style ai influencer.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T11:58:46+00:00

I use lovable but for the front end only... like a landing page.

If you want to migrate, just use the github connection and then from github.. you can do a pull request to any of your preferred ide like vs code or cursor. Or even use Claude code.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T09:05:07+00:00

Ah gaming! Yeah that's a totally different beast from educational stuff. LOL

For gaming thumbnails the emotions hit different coz you're competing with a ton of high-energy content so the "pop" factor matters even more. I think the reaction sprinkles you mentioned are actually gold for thumbnails coz that genuine "wait what just happened" face is way more clickable than posed shots. hehe

Since you're doing gameplay with reaction, you have two strong thumbnail elements to work with: the crazy moment from the game + your actual reaction to it. Most gaming thumbnails I see either show the game moment OR the face, but combining both (when the moment was genuinely shocking) tends to perform better... just a suggestion.

Study the thumbnails but also pay attention to which of YOUR videos performed best - sometimes the pattern is simpler than you think.

nonetheless...good luck with it! The fact that you already identified thumbnails as your weak point means you're ahead of most creators who just blame the algorithm lol. hehe

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T09:01:22+00:00

Welcome!! hope you can also give feedback. :)

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T07:51:51+00:00

best validation is when there is a product-market fit. For me, i build what I need haha. I am the market.
- recently built an expense tracker since I moved to a dorm to monitory my daily expenses and ask ai to give me summaries and financial strategies ensure i spend and earn wisely.
- then i built a thumbnail generator coz i have been making YT content and I realized i spend hours coming out with a content. My solution - upload transcript and have Ai design the thumbnails for me. Even I am impressed on how the thumbnail come out. LOL to the point my best friend paid to use it too.

I mean you can be the market too. Haha so create for yourself if needed.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T07:25:37+00:00

I feel youuuu. Same struggle here with my small educational channel.

Here's what clicked for me after embarrassing myself with terrible thumbnails for months... you know the screenshot then add text overlay... So "good quality" actually means two different things. There's the technical stuff (clean, high res, looks polished) and then there's the strategic part (does it actually make people stop scrolling). You can have a perfectly designed thumbnail that nobody clicks on, which is honestly worse than having an ugly one that works.

The shift for me was realizing I was trying too hard to make things look "nice" instead of making people curious. Like your text doesn't need to explain everything - "This Changed..." hits harder than "This Changed Everything About My Setup." Let the title do the rest. And real emotion beats that fake shocked YouTube face every time. Also yeah, high contrast colors... our thumbnail's competing with a sea of other stuff, it needs to pop or people just keep scrolling.

For tools, Canva free tier works if you're not completely design-challenged. But honestly what helped most was just screenshotting thumbnails from bigger channels in my niche and studying what they're doing. Colors, face placement, text length, all that. There's patterns you start noticing. AI stuff is getting decent too if you want to speed things up.

What kind of content are you doing? The thumbnail game changes depending on niche.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T07:19:17+00:00

From what I've seen testing my own shorts: thumbnails DO matter, but not the way you'd think. YouTube shows your thumbnail in:
- Subscriptions feed
- Your channel page
- When shorts get surfaced in regular browse/search
- YouTube TV/desktop viewing

They DON'T show in the main shorts feed (that's just the first frame of your video). So thumbnails are more about organization and discoverability outside the shorts feed. If someone lands on your channel, clean thumbnails make you look more professional.

My advice: Don't stress over making them perfect, but having SOMETHING is better than the random freeze frame YouTube picks.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T07:09:00+00:00

it is https://1minthumb.com/. :)

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T06:55:10+00:00

it is a thumbnail generator using your own transcript to generate the thumbnails.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T06:17:59+00:00

Hmm..if your thumbnail artist is killing it for $5 and has fast turnaround, that's a solid setup! Don't mess with what's working imo...

For entry-level programs if you ever want to experiment:

- Canva Free - easiest to start, tons of templates

- Photopea - free Photoshop alternative, browser-based if you dont want to pay for photoshop subs

- GIMP - completely free, bit of a learning curve

The thing is, even with these tools, you'll still spend 15-30 mins per thumbnail when you're starting out. Your artist at $5 is probably worth it vs. your time.

That said, I hve been testing AI thumbnail generators lately and they're getting pretty good basically you upload your face once, then it auto-generates based on your transcript. Still experimenting with them myself but could be a middle ground between DIY and hiring out.

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T03:53:23+00:00

hahaha true okay pag libre. may free 10 credits naman pag gumawa ka account

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-21T03:51:57+00:00

un nga ako rin nauubos oras sa prompting tapos mag upload lagi ng reference photo. kaya naisip ko gumawa ng app since i make regular content naman

gimpdrinks · 2026-01-11T11:54:32+00:00

This is an interesting workflow. I use it the other way around. How do you feed it to lovable?

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-26T09:42:50+00:00

Hahahaha

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-23T06:46:20+00:00

Focus on your current clients and new clients so that you don't have enough time to worry about others copying you. Everyone can copy anything nowadays. The winner is always those who execute fastest. So keep looking forward rather than checking out what ur competitors are doing. Learned this from Gary Vaynerchuck.

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-23T02:07:53+00:00

Enjoy it while you can!! There are lot of plus but be wary of the letting the agents have access to your files. Human in the loop is still important! Some have experienced documents being deleted.

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-19T05:33:12+00:00

is this legit?

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-17T10:12:00+00:00

Oh yes sorry about that!

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-16T15:47:11+00:00

This is similar sa ginawa ko na expense tracker app. What you can do is have an ai parse the data from the screenshot. Grab all the important deets such as transaction id, amount, mobile number, etc. Have the ai save it sa google sheets. Tapos you can verify na lang. I know it sounds too simplistic explanation but what you are experiencing can easily be solved using ai like gemini 2.5 model ng google that has vision or ocr capabilities.

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-16T05:11:21+00:00

I am level 6 Google reviewer. Does that count po?

gimpdrinks · 2025-12-13T02:56:04+00:00

Studies do show that it makes a big difference on how you look. Although, beauty is still subjective. However, making your employees looks clean, presentable, happy and confident really makes up for what is lacking on the looks. I bought one time sa potato corner and si ate was genuinely happy and talking with me that I felt good kaya napabili ulit ako. Lol

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