[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire

Rally09 said:
Niche is bit close to these. One of my ideas is a simple app, closely related to something like a to-do app but not exactly. Obviously, average user retention would be lower but I attend to make it super modern. Don't know if ads would work effectively because users would only use it once in a while so I'm thinking implementing a credit system where in-app actions demands credits which are obtained from watching rewarded video ads.
I would also like to clarify if free tiers of the regular AI models available are enough to assist in the app development phase or some paid versions would be better?
I can handle the marketing, and I have the ideas. But I need help putting it out there on the app stores
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It really depends on your approach and who you make the app for. Also depends on the marketing approach.

Would it be possible to make the app with free tiers AI? Defintiely, but would require more time and quality will probably less. Some good AI models are quite cheap. For example QWEN 3.7 or also Kimi K3 which is pretty good. Grok 4.5 is also cheap.

There are some sales thread in here that sell cheap Gemini, etc. accounts, get one of those. As far as I know Google will publish Gemini 3.5 Pro soon, might be good as well.
 
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Welcome to Japan! 30 apps is a big number, according to pareto I would say 1 of your apps make 50% of income.
 
AllOutAnime said:
Welcome to Japan! 30 apps is a big number, according to pareto I would say 1 of your apps make 50% of income.
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Yeah, i have around 3 apps which are absolute winners. But to be fair I also spend almost all marketing effort on them. The others are no effort at all. All organic. I am going to change it now tho. I will make YouTube shorts, reels, tikTok accounts for each app and then start auto posting.
 
nakamura said:
Yeah, i have around 3 apps which are absolute winners. But to be fair I also spend almost all marketing effort on them. The others are no effort at all. All organic. I am going to change it now tho. I will make YouTube shorts, reels, tikTok accounts for each app and then start auto posting.
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Yeah once you have a "winning strategy" you know that works you can easily replicate and scale it for all your apps. I'm still looking for this and probably every app is different but socials should be a good start.
 
Im confused how i should price my ai image gen app. Im also using nano banana. How much are you charging and is there a usage limit?
 
nickirv said:
Im confused how i should price my ai image gen app. Im also using nano banana. How much are you charging and is there a usage limit?
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You have to calculate this carefully.

Check the price per image of nano banana. I think its $0.04 for the first version. Nano Banana 2 and Pro cost more.

Then it depends how you wanna monetize. Token based? Subscription based? Both?

Token based would be the easiest, just price the tokens so you always have a high margin.

Subscription based is a bit more difficult, because you dont know how much users use the app. Power users might generate 500 images. Normal users maybe 30-40 images here and then.

I dont know what provider you chose, but if you do it directly from Google, Replicate or Fal.ai there is no usage limit. The only limit would be your threshold.

Generally speaking, AI Image Generator apps are not that popular anymore because it became really accessible through ChatGPT, Gemini app, Grok app, etc. so the most users dont get a third party app anymore for this. Only if you make it niche specific like AI Anime images, etc.
 
Any ASO tutorials or suggestions?
nakamura said:
You have to calculate this carefully.

Check the price per image of nano banana. I think its $0.04 for the first version. Nano Banana 2 and Pro cost more.

Then it depends how you wanna monetize. Token based? Subscription based? Both?

Token based would be the easiest, just price the tokens so you always have a high margin.

Subscription based is a bit more difficult, because you dont know how much users use the app. Power users might generate 500 images. Normal users maybe 30-40 images here and then.

I dont know what provider you chose, but if you do it directly from Google, Replicate or Fal.ai there is no usage limit. The only limit would be your threshold.

Generally speaking, AI Image Generator apps are not that popular anymore because it became really accessible through ChatGPT, Gemini app, Grok app, etc. so the most users dont get a third party app anymore for this. Only if you make it niche specific like AI Anime images, etc.
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thanks for the reply. I was thinking subscription based. Are you usually using token or subscription based for ai image gen apps?

And when is your ebook coming out? I currently have 4 apps on the app store and earning roughly 1k-2k a month but im going nowhere. My last 3 apps were flops and not making much so need a guide asap thanks.
 
nakamura said:
Sorry guys, there hasnt been an update for a while. Was super busy recently (flew to Japan, had to deal with some private stuff) and Google Play started to fuck around again.

Out of nowhere, Google Play suddenly started reviewing three of my apps. One app is still in review. Two apps have been suspended. One of the suspended ones is still in appeal.
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what if you make your app age rating 18+? do they still review for nsfw keywords?
 
vin42 said:
what if you make your app age rating 18+? do they still review for nsfw keywords?
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yes, I think so. because its against their policy generally

nickirv said:
Any ASO tutorials or suggestions?

thanks for the reply. I was thinking subscription based. Are you usually using token or subscription based for ai image gen apps?

And when is your ebook coming out? I currently have 4 apps on the app store and earning roughly 1k-2k a month but im going nowhere. My last 3 apps were flops and not making much so need a guide asap thanks.
Click to expand...

ebook will come very very soon.

i am making it subscription based. tokens are kinda headache to deal with. some users dont know how to prompt correctly and then they will email you and ask you to reimburse their tokens, etc
 
Update:

Revenue has been quite stable. Still around 60-70k USD per month. MRR is 45k USD. I see a lot of traffic from my landing pages, all fully SEO optimized.

Generally speaking, the app traffic is generally lower in June, July and August. In summer time people spend much less time on their phone, especially in western countries.

So right now my primary objective is: publish new apps, get the marketing right.

In the past 60 days I have published 8 apps (all for iOS).

Google Play removed 2 of my apps. One of the apps I have sent to review with a new package name.

But yeah, this is also a reason why I havent published the ebook yet, I wanted to wait to see how it play out and then I will include the entire reason and fix inside the ebook.

The past few months I had huge monthly payouts. I reinvested a bit of the time mostly into SEO related things.

I bought featured articles on:

- Venturebeat.com
- Yahoo.com
- MSN.com
- Entrepreneur
- Mashable

all top tier. Primary goal is to improve organic traffic through SEO and LLM / AI. Lets see how it plays out.
 
Hi Nakamura, I've been reading everything you post here for a while now, and I find it very impressive and inspiring. I started with apps (taking it seriously) about two months ago, and I've already made over $900 with a few apps, all with ASO and no marketing. Most are annual subscriptions, and the apps were built in two or three days using Gemini.

However, I received complaints about the names of two of my apps within a short period, and I had to remove them because I received a message from Apple Legal. It wasn't a major issue, though; I resolved it as quickly as possible.

I know that by doing distribution/marketing (TikToks/shorts/UGC) I could scale some of my apps, launch new ones, and easily reach $1-2K MRR, but I have a question. I hope you can help me: are those two previous complaints like strikes? Could they close my account if I commit another infraction? I don't think my other apps infringe on names or brands; they're more generic words I used in keyword research.

And what do you think about mobile games with Ads + IAPs?

Thanks for your response, and best of luck! I hope your book is available soon.
 
Mr_r00t said:
Hi Nakamura, I've been reading everything you post here for a while now, and I find it very impressive and inspiring. I started with apps (taking it seriously) about two months ago, and I've already made over $900 with a few apps, all with ASO and no marketing. Most are annual subscriptions, and the apps were built in two or three days using Gemini.

However, I received complaints about the names of two of my apps within a short period, and I had to remove them because I received a message from Apple Legal. It wasn't a major issue, though; I resolved it as quickly as possible.

I know that by doing distribution/marketing (TikToks/shorts/UGC) I could scale some of my apps, launch new ones, and easily reach $1-2K MRR, but I have a question. I hope you can help me: are those two previous complaints like strikes? Could they close my account if I commit another infraction? I don't think my other apps infringe on names or brands; they're more generic words I used in keyword research.

And what do you think about mobile games with Ads + IAPs?

Thanks for your response, and best of luck! I hope your book is available soon.
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Hi, thank you for the nice words. It has been a really rollercoaster, ups and downs all the time. But now I can say I have made it. Currently my ARR is 550-600k USD the business is worth over 2 million USD already.

Yes they are like strikes. Its better to remove the apps when they message you otherwise you can get into deep trouble. In some cases they immediately terminate the Apple Developer account, so you already got lucky with this one. Try to avoid have any other infringement.

Probably whats going to happen when you publish another app with such words, they will immediately terminate the account because they think you do not care about the guidelines and you have been warned twice. So yeah, do not use copyrighted names etc in the title.

Its more important than ever to play after the rules. There is a such a big influx of new developers and apps that Apple and also Google do not really care about anywhere whether they suspend an app or terminate an account. Their tolerance got way lower. Well, Google were assholes before as well as you can probably see from this thread .

Yes, mobile aps with ads and iaps would work well, but games are difficult. you need other hook the players. most players try a game for 5 minutes and then immediately uninstall it.
 
Thanks for the journey update and providing these new insights.

I've started setting things up, identified an app idea I want to realize and I am working on setting everything up based on your advice and book contents.
 
For your iOS apps, are you marketing only through ASO? Or are you also using Apple Ads?

How are you marketing your iOS apps?

Also do you make many iOS apps? Like 4 per month?
 
Really interesting post, how much AI are you using nowadays?
 
praxxx213 said:
@nakamura how much you make profit monthly from ads , and how much from IAP ?
from like ios and android users each one how much it generate profit ?

and there is no cost at all ? as running fb ads
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i would say iaps are 98% and ads are 2%. but my apps are optimized towards iap. believe me, you will make MUCH more money with iap subscriptions than ads.

why? because you only earn from ads if the user is actually using your app and doing certain actions with the app. with subscriptions its different. the user can make a weekly/monthly subscription, close the app forever and get charged over and over again until they cancel the subscription.

but this eavily depends on your niche and app. you can not make a iap subscription for a quick hypercasual game. but you can make one for a pregnancy tracker. most people hate to watch ads. me too. i added rewarded ads videos as a ragebait attempt to push them just subscribe to the app.

about the profit and earnings:

apple takes a 15% cut from their iap purchases (small dev program)
google takes a 15% cut from their iap purchases

from middle of july until now i havent run any paid ads, but will run soon.

api costs per month around $1-2k

spending on marketing and saas tools depends. few days ago bought backlinks and featured articles. saas tools cost per month maybe 100-200 USD, not more.

oh yes, I am also subscribed to Claude Code Max 20x which is around $200, but this is the most expensive subscription per month i ever bought. but totally worth it tho.

so I would say if I earn around $50k revenue per month i keep around $40k profit

i have waited a few months to fill my companies bank account just as security, etc. so I can pay myself a decent salary for the next years even if things start to look very ugly. just for security.

June, July, August are always bad for apps, also for paid ads. From end of august and september i will start to heavily invest in paid ads (tiktok ads, meta ads, etc.). right now i am optimizing my app store listing and run some test on the paywall (different videos, images, fonts, wording, etc.) luckily revenuecat makes it really easy to a/b test different paywalls for the same app.

these days i have published a lot of apps and done a lot of work for SEO on my landing pages. keyword research, optimization for llm, blog posts, etc. to get organic traffic/downloads through the landing pages to my apps.

this was more like a general update than just answering your questions tho.
 
nakamura said:
i would say iaps are 98% and ads are 2%. but my apps are optimized towards iap. believe me, you will make MUCH more money with iap subscriptions than ads.

why? because you only earn from ads if the user is actually using your app and doing certain actions with the app. with subscriptions its different. the user can make a weekly/monthly subscription, close the app forever and get charged over and over again until they cancel the subscription.

but this eavily depends on your niche and app. you can not make a iap subscription for a quick hypercasual game. but you can make one for a pregnancy tracker. most people hate to watch ads. me too. i added rewarded ads videos as a ragebait attempt to push them just subscribe to the app.

about the profit and earnings:

apple takes a 15% cut from their iap purchases (small dev program)
google takes a 15% cut from their iap purchases

from middle of july until now i havent run any paid ads, but will run soon.

api costs per month around $1-2k

spending on marketing and saas tools depends. few days ago bought backlinks and featured articles. saas tools cost per month maybe 100-200 USD, not more.

oh yes, I am also subscribed to Claude Code Max 20x which is around $200, but this is the most expensive subscription per month i ever bought. but totally worth it tho.

so I would say if I earn around $50k revenue per month i keep around $40k profit

i have waited a few months to fill my companies bank account just as security, etc. so I can pay myself a decent salary for the next years even if things start to look very ugly. just for security.

June, July, August are always bad for apps, also for paid ads. From end of august and september i will start to heavily invest in paid ads (tiktok ads, meta ads, etc.). right now i am optimizing my app store listing and run some test on the paywall (different videos, images, fonts, wording, etc.) luckily revenuecat makes it really easy to a/b test different paywalls for the same app.

these days i have published a lot of apps and done a lot of work for SEO on my landing pages. keyword research, optimization for llm, blog posts, etc. to get organic traffic/downloads through the landing pages to my apps.

this was more like a general update than just answering your questions tho.
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Could help me with the pricing dilemma? Are you pricing based on your API costs or based on your customers buying potential? Some pricing might be cheap to specific customer segment, does that affect your conversion ratio?

Does SEO still work well in traffic generation and you just setup the websites/landing due to formal requirements?
 
Rally09 said:
Could help me with the pricing dilemma? Are you pricing based on your API costs or based on your customers buying potential? Some pricing might be cheap to specific customer segment, does that affect your conversion ratio?

Does SEO still work well in traffic generation and you just setup the websites/landing due to formal requirements?
Click to expand...
Honestly, if you have API costs, you should only make the price lower for specific countries ONLY if you can afford it, otherwise its a net negative.

SEO works well, but it also depends on the niche. Some SEO niches are saturated and its hard to get into. Especially in niches with really big brands.

If you want to know about pricing, you should check your competitors prices and see how they handle it. If you check 5 competitors and all have the same pricing, do it as well
 
Personally I'm kinda stuck earning 1 to 5$ per day on my old Android app that has around 300k downloads, even with ASO, paywall and subs optimization. It has some quality game progression and everything. I'm not sure I should just drop the idea or not, I'll try on iOS.

Meanwhile, I see apps that are unplayable and full of ads getting 1M and 4.0+ rating in a couple of weeks after they've been published.
E.g. "Keyboard Tower: ASMR Climb" on the Play Store.

I don't understand their business model, you must spend and insane amount of money for that traffic download and fake reviews...

Where do you buy reviews now days? Still on keyapp?
 
WilsonNox said:
Personally I'm kinda stuck earning 1 to 5$ per day on my old Android app that has around 300k downloads, even with ASO, paywall and subs optimization. It has some quality game progression and everything. I'm not sure I should just drop the idea or not, I'll try on iOS.

Meanwhile, I see apps that are unplayable and full of ads getting 1M and 4.0+ rating in a couple of weeks after they've been published.
E.g. "Keyboard Tower: ASMR Climb" on the Play Store.

I don't understand their business model, you must spend and insane amount of money for that traffic download and fake reviews...

Where do you buy reviews now days? Still on keyapp?
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Dont buy reviews. It got stricter. Getting yourself deleted and even paying for it is not worth it.

Something really important: It depends where you get these downloads from. If your 300k downloads are from Nigeria, Bangladesh and Yemen (no disresepct) its basically worthless. The ecpm for the ads is low af and they wont buy iap.

I currently have an Android app where I have 10k downloads from Yemen and not a single person out of these 10k made any subscription. I made the app unavailable there now. I dont want cheap ass traffic that doesnt convert, especially not if I have server costs.

Games are difficult to monetize, especially on Android. You need to have a really good game in order to monetize it.
 
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