Yodel: Revenue, team and how it was built
Yodel (ChatGPT-powered product description writer for Shopify stores, Israel): About US$3K a month, April 2023. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 2 makers, Yoav and Eran, named on the home page from 2021 to 2023; the 2023 revenue post says "we". Launched 18 August 2021; closed later.Added 31 October 2026
- Outcome
- About US$3K a month, April 2023
- Evidence
- D reported, not verified
- Launch
- 18 August 2021
- Status
- Closed
- Team
- 2 makers, Yoav and Eran, named on the home page from 2021 to 2023; the 2023 revenue post says "we"
- Outside funding
- None reported
- Main channel
- Inside another platform
What is not verified
The only revenue figure, about US$3,000 a month, rests on one source: a Hacker News comment that the user hackathonguy posted on 14 April 2023. The account writes "we" and gives no name, and no source ties it by name to Yoav Anaki or Eran. No payment processor, no second interview and no later figure confirms it. A reader could look for a TrustMRR or Stripe-verified profile, a Shopify Partner payout statement, or an interview with the makers. The "10,000+ Shopify Merchants" on the home page is the company's own claim, and it probably counts free installs. The headline number is grade D: one claim or one estimate, with no second source. Aiolum shows it because the story is useful, and marks it so that it is not mistaken for a verified figure.
Yodel was a Shopify app, a program that a store owner installs from the Shopify App Store and that then works inside the store's admin pages with permission to read and change the store's data. It wrote the product description, the text on a product page that tells a buyer what the product is, and the meta title and meta description, the short texts that search engines such as Google show in their result lists. The text came from OpenAI's ChatGPT. A merchant could generate one description or thousands at once by tag or collection, and each generation used tokens, the app's own monthly credits (not the same as the tokens that a language model counts).
The Shopify App Store listed the app as launched on 18 August 2021. The home page in November 2021 offered "Magical Facebook Ads" to a waitlist and said "Crafted with care by Yoav and Eran". By December 2022 it had become "Product Description Magic", and the listing of July 2023 called it "ChatGPT Product Description AI". On 14 April 2023 the Hacker News user hackathonguy wrote that "we currently make about $3K per month" with the app; that is the only revenue figure we found. The privacy policy names Yoav Anaki as the contact, and replies to App Store reviews are signed "Yoav and the Yodel team".
The revenue figure is grade D: one comment, one date, no second source. The app was sold only through the Shopify App Store, and the listing was still online in an archived copy of 12 July 2026; on 26 and 31 October 2026 the listing said the page "doesn't exist" and Shopify's page for the developer listed 0 apps, so the app could no longer be installed or bought. The home page still said "Join 10,000+ Shopify Merchants" and linked to the missing listing. No source says why the app was removed. The page also shows what happened to earlier companies that built their business inside another company's platform.
How much revenue did Yodel make before it closed?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per month, April 2023 | about US$3,000 | D | Hacker News comment by the user hackathonguy, 14 April 2023, in the thread "Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue?": "We currently make about $3K per month with https://www.hiyodel.com". The only revenue figure in any source. | [1] |
| Run rate from the April 2023 figure | about US$36,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$3,000 times 12. | [1] |
| Paying stores that the figure implies | about 100 on Basic or about 60 on Pro | calc | Calculated: US$3,000 divided by the July 2023 list prices of US$29.99 and US$49.99 a month. The real mix of plans and yearly discounts is not known. | [1, 5] |
| Launch on the Shopify App Store | 18 August 2021 | C | The "Launched" field of the listing, the same in 2023 and 2026. The product then was a Facebook ad writer. | [4, 5] |
| Time from launch to the April 2023 figure | 20 months | calc | Calculated: August 2021 to April 2023. | [1, 4] |
| Makers | Yoav and Eran | C | Home page, November 2021 to March 2023: "Crafted with care by Yoav and Eran". No surname is given for Eran. | [8, 9] |
| Contact person | Yoav Anaki, [email protected] | C | Privacy policy, read 26 October 2026. App Store review replies are signed "Yoav and the Yodel team" and "Yoav." | [3, 4] |
| AI model | OpenAI GPT, sold as ChatGPT | C | Listing, July 2023: "Powered by OpenAI GPT technology". Listing, May 2026: "Yodel uses the power of OpenAI ChatGPT". No source names the model version. | [4, 5] |
| Merchants, as the company states | more than 10,000 | C | Home page, 26 October 2026: "Join 10,000+ Shopify Merchants". Likely installs, including the free plan; not verified. | [2] |
| App Store reviews, July 2023 | 44 reviews, rating 4.9 | C | Archived listing. | [5] |
| App Store reviews, May 2026 | 43 reviews, rating 4.7, 93% five stars | C | Archived listing, with the "Built for Shopify" badge, which Shopify gives to apps that meet its standards for performance, design and integration. | [4] |
| Developer location | Israel | C | The developer address on the May 2026 listing is a street address in Meitar, Israel. | [4] |
| Listing status, 26 and 31 October 2026 | page does not exist; developer page lists 0 apps | C | Read live on Shopify's site on both dates. The latest archived copy that still shows the app is from 12 July 2026 (Chinese-language version); the index has captures with HTTP 200 up to 14 July 2026. The reason for the removal is not stated anywhere. | [6, 7, 13, 14] |
| Outside funding | none reported | C | No source mentions investors or a funding round. | [1, 2] |
How to read this table: grade D is one unverified statement with one date. Grade C is what the company writes on its own site or its App Store listing. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | 100 tokens a month |
| Basic | 11.99 | 14.99 | 1,000 tokens a month |
| Pro | 31.94 | 39.99 | 10,000 tokens a month; 7-day free trial |
| Ultimate | 80.00 | 99.99 | 100,000 tokens a month |
Yearly prices on the listing are US$143.90, US$383.33 and US$959.99 a year, shown here divided by 12. The 7-day free trial applies to the Pro plan. Charges are billed in US dollars through Shopify every 30 days. In July 2023 the listing had only three plans: Free, Basic at US$29.99 a month or US$149.99 a year, and Pro at US$49.99 a month or US$249.99 a year with unlimited tokens.
When did Yodel launch, and how did it grow?
From a Facebook-ads waitlist to a ChatGPT copywriter inside Shopify, and then off the App Store, in five years. Each entry carries its grade.
- October 2016CThe Hacker News account hackathonguy posts "Show HN: We built a bot that knows the best time to share your content" for Yala, a social media scheduling bot. [10]
- 18 August 2021CYodel launches on the Shopify App Store, the date the listing gives. [4, 5]
- November 2021CThe home page offers "Magical Facebook Ads": Yodel writes and designs ads for a Shopify store. A waitlist, and "Crafted with care by Yoav and Eran". [8]
- December 2022CThe home page now reads "Product Description Magic": product descriptions, SEO meta titles and descriptions, Facebook and Google ads, emails. [9]
- 14 April 2023Dhackathonguy writes on Hacker News that "we currently make about $3K per month" with the app, and that "The Shopify ecosystem is a toughie". [1]
- July 2023CThe listing is named "ChatGPT Product Description AI", "Powered by OpenAI GPT technology". Basic US$29.99 and Pro US$49.99 a month. 44 reviews, rating 4.9. [5]
- August 2025CThe Yodel blog announces Pictu, a product image tool that the post's writer says was built with the Nano Banana image model. [11]
- 9 May 2026CLast archived English listing: "Yodel: AI Product Descriptions", Built for Shopify, four plans from free to US$99.99 a month, 43 reviews, rating 4.7. [4, 12]
- 12 July 2026CThe latest archived copy of the listing that still shows the app, in its Chinese-language version: "Yodel: ChatGPT AI商品描述生成器". [13, 14]
- 26 October 2026CThe app has closed: its App Store listing leads to a page that "doesn't exist", and the developer page lists 0 apps. The home page is still live, says "Join 10,000+ Shopify Merchants" and links to the missing listing; the same on 31 October 2026. [2, 6, 7]
Why did Yodel work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Sell where the buyers already shop for tools
Shopify merchants look for add-ons in the Shopify App Store. Yodel had a listing there, a free plan, and later the Built for Shopify badge. Shopify handled the billing, so the makers did not need their own payment pages. The home page's only install button pointed to the App Store.
One painful job for large catalogs
Stores that import products from suppliers often have hundreds or thousands of products with thin or copied text. Yodel wrote all of them in one batch, by tag or collection, and saved the text straight into the product pages. Reviews on the listing and the home page come from stores with "over 5,000 items" and a "massive catalog".
A thin layer over a model that someone else improves
The writing came from OpenAI. When ChatGPT appeared, the app put the name in its title and became a "ChatGPT Product Description AI". Each model improvement by OpenAI made the app's output better without work from the makers.
Credits instead of seats
Plans were sold as monthly tokens. The free plan gave 100 tokens, so a merchant can test on a few products, and the plans step up by about ten times in tokens at each level. In 2023 the top plan was unlimited; by 2026 every plan had a cap, which protects the makers from a store that runs huge batches on a flat price.
How it was built
Little is public about how Yodel was built. These details come from the company's own pages and listing, grade C. [2, 3, 4, 5]
- Text generation by OpenAI's GPT models, sold as ChatGPT. No source states the model version.
- A Shopify app that ran inside the Shopify admin and wrote results back into product, collection, blog and meta fields.
- Billing through Shopify in US dollars every 30 days, with monthly and yearly plans.
- The marketing site was built on Webflow (the page loads its styles from Webflow's file server) and has a blog with articles for Shopify store owners.
- Support by live chat and by email to [email protected]; review replies are signed by Yoav.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before Yodel, and why did they fail?
Four companies in our database of failed startups built their business inside another company's platform, or sold a writing tool that a larger company later gave away. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Beetailer
The promiseTurn a retailer's Facebook page into a store, so likes become sales.
Why it diedIt depended on Facebook, and Facebook then built its own commerce features.
PostRocket
The promisePost on a Facebook page at the times when fans are most likely to see it.
Why it diedFacebook changed its API, and the company had no product outside it.
Pixelpipe
The promisePost photos and media to every social network from one place.
Why it diedThe networks closed their APIs and built cross-posting in, so the service was no longer needed.
Draft
The promiseA simple online editor that helps writers produce better text.
Why it diedGoogle Docs gave most of it away for free, and a narrow paid writing tool could not compete.
The failed startups come from our database of 1,749 dead startups, retold here in our own words. Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
Each of the four lived on someone else's platform or sold a writing feature that a larger company could add for free. Yodel had both risks. It existed only as a Shopify app, and Shopify has its own AI writer, Shopify Magic: the 2023 listing called Yodel "a great Shopify Magic alternative", and the 2026 listing called it "Shopify Magic on steroids".
What differed is the cost of building it. The predecessors raised between US$120,000 and US$2 million, according to the failed-startup database, to build their own technology. Yodel's writing comes from OpenAI's API and its billing from Shopify, so a team of two could build and run it, and one of them said on Hacker News that it made about US$3,000 a month in its second year. The same thinness was the weakness: the App Store listing was gone by October 2026, and no source says why.
Can one person copy Yodel now?
The method, yes. This exact product, no.
Store owners still need product text, and a store app with a free plan still reaches them where they look. But AI description writers for Shopify are now many, Shopify ships its own, and the only money figure for Yodel, which one team member stated in 2023, has no second source.
Where it is still open: Bulk jobs on other commerce platforms (WooCommerce, Etsy, Amazon sellers), and jobs that a general writer does poorly, such as text that follows a marketplace's rules or a store's own catalog data.
- 1Pick one platform with an app store and one tedious job that its users repeat for every item, such as product text, alt text or translations.
- 2Use a model provider's API for the work and the platform's billing for payments, so the first version needs no servers of your own beyond the app.
- 3Offer a free plan with a small credit allowance, and price paid plans by credits, not by unlimited use.
- 4Watch the platform's own AI features closely, and keep a way to reach your customers outside the platform.
What could go wrong for Yodel?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
What is not verified
The only revenue figure, about US$3,000 a month, rests on one source: a Hacker News comment that the user hackathonguy posted on 14 April 2023. The account writes "we" and gives no name, and no source ties it by name to Yoav Anaki or Eran. No payment processor, no second interview and no later figure confirms it. A reader could look for a TrustMRR or Stripe-verified profile, a Shopify Partner payout statement, or an interview with the makers. The "10,000+ Shopify Merchants" on the home page is the company's own claim, and it probably counts free installs.
Why it closed
No source states a reason or an exact date. The app was sold only through the Shopify App Store. Archived copies of the listing show it online on 9 May 2026 and on 12 July 2026, in the Chinese-language version, under the name "Yodel: ChatGPT AI商品描述生成器" (Yodel: ChatGPT AI product description generator (translation)). On 26 and 31 October 2026 the listing at apps.shopify.com/product-description-magic said "Oh no! That page doesn't exist", and Shopify's page for the developer, Apps by Yodel, listed 0 apps. So the app closed between 12 July and 26 October 2026, at least for new customers. The home page still said "Join 10,000+ Shopify Merchants" on 31 October 2026 and sent visitors to the missing listing, with no notice of a closure. No source says whether the makers withdrew the app or Shopify removed it; the May 2026 listing carried the Built for Shopify badge.
One platform, and the platform has its own AI writer
Yodel was sold only through Shopify, which controlled its listing, its billing and its access to store data. Shopify's own free AI tool, Shopify Magic, does the same kind of writing; Yodel's listing named it as the product to beat. The predecessors on this page died when the platform changed its rules or built the feature.
Dependence on OpenAI
The text came from OpenAI's GPT models. In 2023 a reviewer reported batch jobs stuck in progress and guessed that ChatGPT was "overloaded during peak hours"; the developer later said it was a bug in the app. Another reviewer wrote that tokens were deducted at the start of a job and lost when the job did not finish. Model prices, limits and outages from OpenAI passed straight to the app's users.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- D Hacker News comment 35568523 by hackathonguy, 14 April 2023, in "Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?"Read in full through the Algolia Hacker News API. The only source for the revenue figure.
- C Yodel home page, read 26 and 31 October 2026Read in full on both dates; the text had not changed and has no closure notice. Source for the features, the "10,000+ Shopify Merchants" claim, the App Store link and the Webflow site.
- C Yodel privacy policy, read 26 October 2026Read the contact section, which names Yoav Anaki.
- C Shopify App Store listing "Yodel: AI Product Descriptions", archived 9 May 2026Read in full from the Wayback Machine. Source for the 2026 prices, reviews, launch date, developer address and the OpenAI wording.
- C Shopify App Store listing "ChatGPT Product Description AI", archived 28 July 2023Read in full from the Wayback Machine. Source for the 2023 prices, reviews and "Powered by OpenAI GPT technology".
- C Shopify App Store listing, live, 26 and 31 October 2026Read in full on both dates (HTTP 404 on 31 October). The page says "Oh no! That page doesn't exist."
- C Shopify App Store developer page "Apps by Yodel", 26 and 31 October 2026Read in full on both dates. It lists 0 apps.
- C Yodel home page "Magical Facebook Ads", archived 28 November 2021Read in full from the Wayback Machine. Source for the first product and "Crafted with care by Yoav and Eran".
- C Yodel home page "Product Description Magic", archived 5 December 2022Read in full from the Wayback Machine, with the copies of 19 January and 23 March 2023, which have the same text.
- C Hacker News stories by hackathonguy, through the Algolia search APIRead in full. Source for the 2016 Show HN post about Yala. The account's comments were also searched; none gives a second revenue figure or a name.
- C Yodel blog, 5 August 2025: Bringing the Magic of Nano Banana for Shopify StoresRead in full. Source for Pictu, a second product by the same writer.
- C Wayback Machine index of the Shopify App Store listingRead in full. Shows the archived copies from 2021 to 9 May 2026.
- C Shopify App Store listing "Yodel: ChatGPT AI商品描述生成器" (Chinese-language version), archived 12 July 2026Read the listing text from the Wayback Machine. The latest archived copy found that still shows the app.
- C Wayback Machine index of the listing's 2026 captures, read 31 October 2026Read in full. The latest captures with HTTP 200 are from 12 to 14 July 2026.
- C Database of failed startups, local exportLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.