Overview: A friend of mine's son has recently built a web site, and it looks impressive, and we started discussing his project, this turned into a detailed technical conversation to everyone's horror at a BBQ. This chap is 14, and all I can say is wow. All hosted and built without spending any money. I interview many developers, and his knowledge is outstanding.
I've drawn his architectural explanation below, added a few items to check and what my next piece would be.
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| Clarification of High Level Design |
Thoughts:
- Build the Native mobile apps, getting users buy-in with a Native App will be considerably higher. As you have used React, use React Native (React is separate to React Native, a completely new codebase).
- Cordova/PhoneGap is a wrapper that would allow you to keep a single code base and merely inject the existing code into Native wrappers for iPhone and Android. As your app is HTML 5, and already looks like a modern mobile app, I'd use PhoneGap. At least try it out and see if it fits. You'd then only have to deal with a single code base to update all the platforms. You could always use Google's Flutter if you wanted a single code base for the web site and Mobile native apps.
- Ensure your API's are OpenAPI/Swagger
- Security - the API already has some protection. Ensure the database is protected/secured.
Revenue model: Ads (Gambling Ads pay well). Make a premium-paid for service (keep end-user usage/sign-up free). Sign-up and collection of money while not directly applicable to this venture, can be done and kept dead simple using Shopify.
