How to deal with the gas fee in DApps properly?

Hi guys, so I am a bit new to the Blockchain business and I would like to create a little project with it. I thought a good start would be a little DApp. Unfortunately, I came across the gas fee system. After some research, I now know what the gas fee is and why it exists and it makes sense now.

I recently tried estimating the gas fee for a single Hello World contract. The contract should only save an integer and can be returned. The estimation said, that it would cost at that point 39$, which is for a small fun project too much money.

Also if I would create a DApp, I think I would need to create multiple smart contracts which would cost a tremendous amount of money. If I understand it correctly the smart contracts should be used as the database of your project and each row of the database is a smart contract. Unfortunately with less or no smart contracts, I don't find a good idea I could create and publish for learning purposes.

I am aware of the idea that there are tools I can use to create a development Ethereum blockchain but I think it would be great after creating a little thing to make it available for someone else, no matter if someone will use it or not.