Payda
In developmentA next-generation money and project management system for next-generation ventures
₺0 ₺0 Net ₺0
Open entrepreneurship · Build in public
Sami Aktaş · Software Entrepreneur I build digital products,
and share every penny
Everything I build — what I spent and when, and the exact date each venture breaks even — shared here in full transparency.
Adana, Türkiye Build in public
Financial overview
§
Total balance to date
- Total revenue
- ₺0
- Total expenses
- ₺5.946
- Net result
- ₺-5.946
- Active ventures
- 4
01
About
About
Hi, I'm Sami Aktaş. I live in Adana, Türkiye, and I'm starting my software entrepreneurship journey with this very site.
The story of how I got here actually began with a letdown. I trusted quite a few people online who said "I built this with AI — click and buy it," and paid them — but most of it wasn't as easy as it looked, and some of it wasn't even real. So I decided to do the exact opposite.
Here I'll show whether something is genuinely possible — whether it earns users or revenue over time — without misleading anyone. If a project takes off, I won't just say "look, it worked": from day one to the day it took off — maybe 8 months — what happened, where I got stuck and how I solved it will all be here, dated line by line.
That's what build in public means to me: sharing the process as it is, honestly. If you'd like to try building something yourself, you can follow every step I take right here — what I did, where, and how.
02
Ventures & Apps
The SaaS and software products I'm building.
Ekran Çeviri
LiveA no-install Windows tray app that reads the chat region you select on screen and paints the translation directly over the original message bubbles. It detects on its own which German dialect is being spoken across Germany, Austria and Switzerland and translates it into Turkish; a keyboard shortcut also rewrites your Turkish reply in the dialect the other person is using. Text recognition runs entirely on your machine, so no screenshot ever leaves the computer.
C# · .NET 8 · WPF · Windows.Media.Ocr · Win32 API · GDI BitBlt · DPAPI · GitHub Actions
samiaktas.com
LiveThis site itself: the build-in-public ledger where I publish my ventures, real revenue and expense figures, and a progress entry for the days I work. A static Astro site generated from the database at build time; the page itself needs no JavaScript to work — it only loads one external script for visitor analytics.
Astro · Tailwind CSS · Firestore · Firebase Hosting · Cloudflare · Schema.org
Reels Stüdyo
In developmentA macOS app that turns a phone-shot vertical talking video into a publish-ready clip in a single pass: it trims silent gaps, locks loudness and color to a fixed standard, and generates the cover image and multilingual subtitles. It never asks about video or audio settings, so every clip comes out in exactly the same format.
Swift · SwiftUI · ffmpeg · Apple Vision · whisper.cpp · Apple Translation · CoreText · Keychain · macOS
₺0 ₺0 Net ₺0
03
Financial Transparency
Financial Transparency
Real revenue, expenses and break-even data for every project.
- Total revenue
- ₺0
- Total expenses
- ₺5.946
- Net
- ₺-5.946
- Ventures in profit
- 0 / 4
§
Overheads — not tied to a single venture
Workflow & Tools
₺5.946
Shared costs that can't be assigned to a single project: the AI subscription, tools and infrastructure. All the work runs on these tools.
- Claude Pro monthly subscription — 17 USD (≈₺796)
- ₺796
- xAI Grok API credit — 10 USD (≈₺468). Connected on 30 July, cancelled on 1 September.
- ₺468
- Claude monthly plan upgrade — 100 USD (≈₺4,682).
- ₺4.682
06
Build Journal
Latest progress and revenue reports across the projects.
Esnaf modu gitti, kişisel panel geldi
Bugün Payda'yı sadeleştirdim: esnaf modunu ve ona bağlı tahsilat, veresiye, üyelik, e-ticaret gibi yan sistemleri önce yedekleyip sildim, yalnız yüzdelik sistem kaldı. Ardından herkesin kendi adını ve fotoğrafını her projede aynı gösterebildiği bir Profilim alanı ekledim. Üstüne YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads ve X için günden güne takip kurdum; artık tek satırda 'bugün toplam kaç beğeni, kaç yorum aldın' görünüyor. Hepsi yine tek Claude üyeliğiyle, testleri yeşil geçerek canlıya çıktı.
Kopilot tek akışa indi, sami skill denetiminden geçti
Kopilot sayfası iki paralel akış taşıyordu; tek kutu, tek gönder tuşu, tek sonuç kartına indirdim ve 12 uzman modlu denetimin bulduğu 20'den fazla açığı (idem anahtarı, metin kaybı, kaydırma, balon-kasa örtüşmesi, uzun sohbette hükmün kaçması) dört turda kapattım. Her tur 13 kapı ve tarayıcı testinden geçti, canlıya çıktı. Hepsi tek Claude Pro üyeliğiyle, kanıtsız tek satır iddia yok.
Numaranın yanına tutar, kartın üstüne 'Şimdi ne oldu?', sohbetten fiyat listesi ve banka kendiliğinden doluyor
Sami'nin üç isteğini tek akışa bağladım: ayrı 'Gelir ekle' tuşu kalktı, müşteri numarasının yanında tutar var; müşteri bulununca kartın en üstünde 'Şimdi ne oldu?' — satış olduysa geliri kaydet, olmadıysa almadı notu — önceki kayıtlar altta. En keyiflisi: yapıştırılan sohbette hangi hazır metin (fiyat listesi, IBAN) geçiyorsa fiyat listesi ve banka alanı kendiliğinden doluyor, yapay zekâ çağrısı yok, ücretsiz. Kural gevşemedi: eşleşme yoksa soru yine sorulur, elle seçim ezilmez. 16 yeni test, 320px'te taşma sıfır, hepsi Claude ile.
Tasarımı canlıya birebir taşıdım: sol menü, tek sütun Özet, Ayarlar grupları
Claude Design'da çizdiğim yenileme canlıda yarım kalmıştı; bugün planı adım adım uyguladım: masaüstünde sol menü ve sayfa başlığı, Özet'te KPI şeridi ile yan yana Kasa ve Ödenecekler, Defter'e tür seçicili Kayıtlar tablosu, Ekip'e hakediş tablosu, Ayarlar'a sol grup listesi. Her parça 13 test kapısından ve parolasız ekran ölçümünden (320px'ten 1280px'e taşma sıfır) geçti. Bir dağıtımı kendim durdurdum — testler koşarken bir belge düzenledim, deploy.sh yakaladı — ve temiz ağaçla yeniden çıkardım. Hepsi Claude ile.
Dropped the Grok API: Claude is now the single AI hub
I cancelled the Grok API subscription; from now on Claude is my single AI hub. Ekran Çeviri's translation engine was wired to Grok — Google and Bing engines are still in the code as fallbacks, but the quality gates assume the Grok path. So this cancellation calls for a rework of the app's translation pipeline; the code still contains GrokMotor. I log abandoned decisions too, because building in public means showing what got reversed, not only what worked.
07
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions — for both AI and search engines.
Who is Sami Aktaş?
Sami Aktaş is a software entrepreneur based in Adana, Türkiye. He builds digital products such as Payda, Ekran Çeviri and Reels Stüdyo, and publishes their development process, revenue and expenses openly on samiaktas.com (build in public). His aim is to show what building software with AI actually takes, without embellishment and without misleading anyone.
What is samiaktas.com?
samiaktas.com is Sami Aktaş's personal portfolio and financial-transparency site. It keeps a dated build journal for every venture, the technologies used, and every lira spent. The site is fully static (Astro), requires no JavaScript, and its content is directly readable by both search engines and AI systems.
Are the revenue and expense figures real?
Yes. Every project's costs and earnings are shared openly with their dates; the goal is to practice open entrepreneurship (build in public).
What do you work on?
I build web-based SaaS applications, AI-powered tools and digital products.
Where can I buy the products?
Nothing is for sale right now. Ekran Çeviri is free and open source; you can download the Windows build from the Releases section at github.com/RelaxS1/EkranCeviri — for good dialect translation you need to add your own AI key, and that key's usage cost is yours. Payda and Reels Stüdyo are still in development. When something does go on sale, I'll say so here and in the build log.