Yes! I will launch 12 Steem powered apps in the following 12 months and today I'm launching the very first one. This post is all about how I came up with this, a little intro about what I'll be doing, the introduction of my first app and a sneak peek into the second one.

It all started with a random post on the internet.

Some years ago I read a post that just blew my mind, it was from a guy named Pieter Levels who embarked on a project to create 12 startups in 12 months, which in the end he did, all while traveling the world and being a digital nomad (you can read his post here). I've always had the desire to learn how to code but I didn't know anything about the digital nomad lifestyle, immediately I knew that's what I wanted.

I had some ideas revolving in my head for some apps/website but I barely knew some basic HTML and CSS so I went to learn JavaScript as the next mandatory step.

I started fast but gave up faster.

I started some free online courses but did never pass the basic stuff, I've never had the time (or at least that's what I convinced myself of) to properly learn, neither to launch a project. Living in Venezuela as a working-class individual your every day has become all about finding your next meal, but that's a different and unrelated story.

Here comes Steemit. Could it be my savior?

About two years ago I found Steemit, it immediately caught my eye and I became very excited about it, you can read my introductory post from two years ago: https://steemit.com/introducemyself/@ar2ro/introducemyself-the-steemchallenge-my-toughs-and-dreams-about-steem-being-the-future-to-well-pretty-much-everything-and-why-i.

I saw in Steemit an opportunity to generate some extra income which would help me overcome the sh1tty economic situation of my country, but most importantly I saw an amazing potential for it to transform the economy of the internet as I stated in that old introductory post.

I'm not so much of a writer, not even in my native language, so writing a full post in English was a no go for me, that would have taken a lot of time for me, and on top of that my content had to compete with a lot of well-created content, and lets face it, it has never been easy to earn money around here, so I stayed away from Steemit although I've always followed its development as a disruptive economic model for the internet.

And then...

My Steemit predictions came true.

Steemit has proven to work, with all the flaws it can have in its still infancy state, it's slowly transforming the internet economy, other projects have surged but Steemit is the pioneer.

The introduction of third-party apps, communities, and SMTs are great steps towards that mean, so what a better time to retake that old dream of mine, to finally learn to code, make a living doing what I love and contribute to the creation of a new economy providing wellbeing to an increasing number of people.

So here I come! Steeming 24/7 for 12 months and beyond.

Earlier this year I decided to quit my job because not even an executive position can earn you enough to buy the basic monthly groceries in my country, so I had nothing to lose.

From now on I will focus on learning to code and create Steem based projects, I think when you focus on positive things that you love more of those great things come to you, and I just found an incredible piece of motivation from a @cryptoctopus post: https://steemit.com/steemdev/@cryptoctopus/learn-to-code-everything-else-can-come-later which I recommend you all to read, his post has strengthened my intention to go through this path.

Enough of the boring sh1t!! Here it goes, my first Steem app.

The June's app, the very first one of my 12 Steem apps in 12 months project, is betsteem.com, a betting exchange powered by the Steem blockchain.

I've decided to start with this application firstly because it was the easier to implement (between all the other ideas I have in mind for the following ones) but also in anticipation of the launch of SMTs and Oracles, given betting is one of its possible applications as stated in the @steemitblog post https://steemit.com/ned/@steemitblog/ned-scott-and-theoretical-of-steemit-explore-oracles-on-steem:

In the context of blockchains, Oracles are often discussed with respect to prediction markets. If you wanted to enable people to bet on an event, like who is going to win an election, then you would create a smart contract that is worth something if a certain political party got elected (or not).

betsteem.com allows users to place bets using their voting power, but more than that it allows users to be "the house" in any bet, so there is no "house", no "bookie", users bet against each other.

I wrote a full post as an introduction to the app which you can read here: https://steemit.com/steemdev/@ar2ro/introducing-betsteem-com-a-betting-exchange-powered-by-the-steem-blockchain

That's all folks (for now).

That's all for this time, I'll be updating my progress through my learning path and through the 12 Steem apps in 12 months project on this blog so feel free to follow me to stay updated.

I'll be publishing my next app around mid-July, it involves the open source community and its projects, its an idea I've had for quite some time and which I even talked about on my Steemit introductory post, I'm aware that another project (@utopian-io) already exists on Steemit and because of that I was about to dismiss the idea but since I took a different approach and tackle it from a different angle I think the two apps will be different enough for me to give it a shot.

I already have some working code for it since that was the first one I was gonna publish but its development ended up being more complicated than I thought at first so I paused it and gave betsteem.com a try because you know FIFA World Cup is here and its a great opportunity to launch and test its viability.

Last but not least, I wanna give special thanks to @jfollas for his Write a Steemit Web App series, since Steemjs is still poorly documented his posts helped me to overcome some bottlenecks I've found along the way, so if you're struggling to create something with Steemjs you should definitely read his posts.

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If you've made it all the way, through my badly written English, to the end of this post, then Thanks a lot, and maybe you could help me spread the word.

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