[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire

[ScaleClickOps]

solid approach focusing on retention over volume, i made the mistake of chasing downloads with a fitness tracker app back when i was doing UA campaigns and hit 50k installs but 90-day retention was like 8% which basically killed the ltv and made monetization pointless. curious what niches youre eyeing first, because some categories like health or finance have way stricter app store guidelines that can slow down your launch timeline a lot.

 

[nakamura]

Have apple algos started removing ratings during onboarding? It seems they are penalizing apps which ask ratings during first session? Can someone confirm/

I am doing it and they just approved an app update that does it yesterday

solid approach focusing on retention over volume, i made the mistake of chasing downloads with a fitness tracker app back when i was doing UA campaigns and hit 50k installs but 90-day retention was like 8% which basically killed the ltv and made monetization pointless. curious what niches youre eyeing first, because some categories like health or finance have way stricter app store guidelines that can slow down your launch timeline a lot.

i focus on getting organic targeted traffic, so the retention and also conversion rate is usually high. Cheap installs can be beneficial to get a better ranking on the app store. Last year I ran a free giveaway campaign and got 30k downloads from Germany within three days. I made it to the Top 3 in the charts, ranked for countless keywords on spot 1. After the giveaway stopped the app slowly lost its ranking. But it was a good initial boost (also in ratings!). The bigger probem I see with cheap installs is there is a lot of bot traffic, especially from tier 2 and tier 3 countries. I can see it with my Android apps. For example, 100 downloads through Meta Ads, but only 60 person actually open the app.

 

[p3n7357]

Have apple algos started removing ratings during onboarding? It seems they are penalizing apps which ask ratings during first session? Can someone confirm/

I am building app using resct native and I use a library to implement that and for years now that has a warning that says it's prohibited to ask for ratings during onboard or repeatedly google and Apple may refuse your app or bann it from store

 

[nakamura]

I am building app using resct native and I use a library to implement that and for years now that has a warning that says it's prohibited to ask for ratings during onboard or repeatedly google and Apple may refuse your app or bann it from store

Many apps are doing it and if you dont do it, its a huge disadvantage because ratings are heavily influencing rankings

so far they never asked me to remove it.

the only thing that is prohibited is the wording: you are not allowed to ask them for 5 stars or a good review. you are also not allowed to give them anything in return for a review.

if you write: "Please let us know your feedback and it would mean the world to us and help us as independent developers" blabla its totally fine. But of course, if you write "Please leave us a good review" you will have problems. There are a lot of idiots out there who probably did this and then wonder why their app didnt get approved.

 

[darkblitzrc]

Hi naka,

How do you handle your marketing? Currently I have an app and im doing strong marketing on tiktok but im seeing wierd behavior regarding views. One of my tiktok accounts got shadowbanned on feb and i haven't posted on it for like 2 weeks now but the views never recovered. Then, created a new account, warmed it up nicely, first post 87,000 views (sadly did not plug in my app on it so obv no downloads) but now second post did 37k views then last 2 posts did like 1.4k views then even less than that. Its so frustrating, i dont get it what am i doing wrong? I try to act as normal as possible, i log in daily and scroll and interact with other posts on the feed but man wtf. Also i use residential isp static proxies aswell so not sure whats the deal with that.


How do you handle multiple tiktok accounts if any? or marketing in general since that is most important part now that building is basically free.

 

[nakamura]

Hi naka,

How do you handle your marketing? Currently I have an app and im doing strong marketing on tiktok but im seeing wierd behavior regarding views. One of my tiktok accounts got shadowbanned on feb and i haven't posted on it for like 2 weeks now but the views never recovered. Then, created a new account, warmed it up nicely, first post 87,000 views (sadly did not plug in my app on it so obv no downloads) but now second post did 37k views then last 2 posts did like 1.4k views then even less than that. Its so frustrating, i dont get it what am i doing wrong? I try to act as normal as possible, i log in daily and scroll and interact with other posts on the feed but man wtf. Also i use residential isp static proxies aswell so not sure whats the deal with that.


How do you handle multiple tiktok accounts if any? or marketing in general since that is most important part now that building is basically free.

Its all random mate. I have the exact same happening to me. Some videos I think are bangers perform poorly with 200 views, another random video makes 50k views. Etc.

its just part of the game.

on my part, I am focusing on all possible marketing channels and I try to automate things as much as possible.

 

[vin42]

Its all random mate. I have the exact same happening to me. Some videos I think are bangers perform poorly with 200 views, another random video makes 50k views. Etc.

its just part of the game.

on my part, I am focusing on all possible marketing channels and I try to automate things as much as possible.

How are you able to do so much?! i can hardly do one thing at a time and sometimes a single task takes my whole day!

 

[nakamura]

How are you able to do so much?! i can hardly do one thing at a time and sometimes a single task takes my whole day!

now you know why i still didnt finish the ebook even tho I am working 12+ hours per day.

i try to automate as much as possible with ai workflows and auto publishing

 

[nakamura]

Little update:

I applied the same marketing strategy I used for this app: https://verified.revenuecat.com/bhw

to this app: https://verified.revenuecat.com/bhw3

for the app with /bhw3 I didnt fully apply the strategy yet even tho it has a lot of potential. why not? right now I am still fighting a lot of bugs and some users message me every day because of some dumb shit. Also, some users are trying blackhat techniques to get free access (i came the full circle here guys, from perpetrator to victim) and they try to create countless accounts, etc.

So in total I make around $80k+ per month now. Including ads revenue, other apps, etc.

Total MRR: $37k
ARR right now: $440k

means in a normal business valuation 3x / 4x annual revenue my app business is already worth over a million USD.

yes guys, i went from struggling with admob and google play developer to over a million USD.

whats the secret? making apps that are in demand and where people are willing to pay to use it and distribution. Targeted organic traffic. You dont need 100k downloads of users who dont wanna pay. You want 1k downloads from users where every single one of them is willing to pay. None of my apps are in the Top 50 charts for any country right now, still I am banking hard. What does it mean? Even my competitors wouldnt be able to tell if my app actually make 80k per month or not. Its simply not on their radar.

The only benefit to 100k users would be higher app store rankings + more organic targeted traffic.

 

[Nicololo]

Little update:

I applied the same marketing strategy I used for this app: https://verified.revenuecat.com/bhw

to this app: https://verified.revenuecat.com/bhw3

for the app with /bhw3 I didnt fully apply the strategy yet even tho it has a lot of potential. why not? right now I am still fighting a lot of bugs and some users message me every day because of some dumb shit. Also, some users are trying blackhat techniques to get free access (i came the full circle here guys, from perpetrator to victim) and they try to create countless accounts, etc.

So in total I make around $80k+ per month now. Including ads revenue, other apps, etc.

Total MRR: $37k
ARR right now: $440k

means in a normal business valuation 3x / 4x annual revenue my app business is already worth over a million USD.

yes guys, i went from struggling with admob and google play developer to over a million USD.

whats the secret? making apps that are in demand and where people are willing to pay to use it and distribution. Targeted organic traffic. You dont need 100k downloads of users who dont wanna pay. You want 1k downloads from users where every single one of them is willing to pay. None of my apps are in the Top 50 charts for any country right now, still I am banking hard. What does it mean? Even my competitors wouldnt be able to tell if my app actually make 80k per month or not. Its simply not on their radar.

The only benefit to 100k users would be higher app store rankings + more organic targeted traffic.

Awesome, man! You've found the formula for printing money.

I'm wondering... when you say organic traffic, do you mean TikTok? Or ASO?

 

[okatana]

I am not a developer. Do you think I should hire developers to create apps for me and then I upload them to Google Play and App Store?

 

[nakamura]

Awesome, man! You've found the formula for printing money.

I'm wondering... when you say organic traffic, do you mean TikTok? Or ASO?

All of it. ASO, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest, etc.

I am not a developer. Do you think I should hire developers to create apps for me and then I upload them to Google Play and App Store?

No, get yourself a Claude Code or Codex subscription and do it yourself.

 

[AllOutAnime]

Did I understand correctly you mainly focus on iOS right now because those users are more willing to pay?
In case you have a website and an app, how do you handle the subscriptions? From what I understand you can only manage appstore subscriptions through their ui.
So you have 2 sources for new subscription, website and app. If a user bought the subscription in the app, you cannot cancel/modify it through the website which is quite inconvenient.

 

[okatana]

All of it. ASO, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest, etc.


No, get yourself a Claude Code or Codex subscription and do it yourself.

I’ve heard that using AI for coding often leads to a lot of bugs, and fixing them can take longer than writing the code yourself. Is it true?

 

[nakamura]

Did I understand correctly you mainly focus on iOS right now because those users are more willing to pay?
In case you have a website and an app, how do you handle the subscriptions? From what I understand you can only manage appstore subscriptions through their ui.
So you have 2 sources for new subscription, website and app. If a user bought the subscription in the app, you cannot cancel/modify it through the website which is quite inconvenient.

RevenueCat handles Web, iOS and Android. So I am using them, very easy to set up.

I am doing all three above. Most money comes from iOS. Some from Android (most Android users I get are from Tier 3 countries). Right now working on SEO to rank my website, but it takes time.

I’ve heard that using AI for coding often leads to a lot of bugs, and fixing them can take longer than writing the code yourself. Is it true?

Depends on the complexity of your app and how you structure your prompts. Its getting better and better, context windows get bigger and bigger, so there will be less bugs

 

[okatana]

RevenueCat handles Web, iOS and Android. So I am using them, very easy to set up.

I am doing all three above. Most money comes from iOS. Some from Android (most Android users I get are from Tier 3 countries). Right now working on SEO to rank my website, but it takes time.



Depends on the complexity of your app and how you structure your prompts. Its getting better and better, context windows get bigger and bigger, so there will be less bugs

Yeah, I think AI will be able to code like human developers soon

 

[nakamura]

Yeah, I think AI will be able to code like human developers soon

i think they already do better if you take into account how fast they are. creating an app takes a few hours maybe. sometimes even just one shot prompt. what takes the longest is creating all the assets like videos, images, etc.

 

[inspectorgad]

Honestly with the way AI is going and how fast, it may be best to just mark a date/time to end the ebook and then perhaps release updates 6 months or so as AI continues to evolve.

 

[AllOutAnime]

From what I understand you manage accounts on all socials and upload content there.
Do you have multiple accounts per platform or just one? Do you use Ads to promote further or just organic?

 

[nakamura]

From what I understand you manage accounts on all socials and upload content there.
Do you have multiple accounts per platform or just one? Do you use Ads to promote further or just organic?

I do a mix of both. Manual content publishing (I have 5 iphones) and automatic content publishing. So yeah I have around 20 tiktok accounts right now. Also multiple youtube channels and instagram accounts.

Just organic right now. Sometimes on weekend I use Meta Ads and Google Ads, but thats it. But almost all traffic is coming organically.