- Mar 22, 2013
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[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire
- Thread starter nakamura
- Start date
- Mar 5, 2016
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is that all from tiktok auto posting ? how many accounts in tiktok currently ?
Hi Nakamura,
Impressive results—congratulations.
I previously posted about this: I received two complaints regarding my app names on my App Store account—one on July 28 and another on August 10. I responded quickly—within hours of receiving the complaints—and removed both apps from the store; Apple closed both cases on the respective dates.
Do you think they might have blacklisted me or that I now have two "strikes" against my account? I’ve had the account for about three years, though I hadn't uploaded much other than the occasional test game and a few apps.
Do you think I can keep uploading apps without issues? Obviously, I’d avoid using existing brand names or anything similar.
Thanks in advance, Nakamura, and best of luck!
Impressive results—congratulations.
I previously posted about this: I received two complaints regarding my app names on my App Store account—one on July 28 and another on August 10. I responded quickly—within hours of receiving the complaints—and removed both apps from the store; Apple closed both cases on the respective dates.
Do you think they might have blacklisted me or that I now have two "strikes" against my account? I’ve had the account for about three years, though I hadn't uploaded much other than the occasional test game and a few apps.
Do you think I can keep uploading apps without issues? Obviously, I’d avoid using existing brand names or anything similar.
Thanks in advance, Nakamura, and best of luck!
- Mar 22, 2013
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From Admob maybe $4-5k. All rewarded ads and some interstitials. No banner ads.
Its all mixed. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, Pinterest, etc.
I set up autoposting for every almost every platform. Currently around 20 tiktok accounts. 12 ig accounts, 15 youtube accounts, 2 pinterest accounts, a handful websites
I am not sure how they handle it internally, but it could be possible there is an internal notice on your account.Hi Nakamura,
Impressive results—congratulations.
I previously posted about this: I received two complaints regarding my app names on my App Store account—one on July 28 and another on August 10. I responded quickly—within hours of receiving the complaints—and removed both apps from the store; Apple closed both cases on the respective dates.
Do you think they might have blacklisted me or that I now have two "strikes" against my account? I’ve had the account for about three years, though I hadn't uploaded much other than the occasional test game and a few apps.
Do you think I can keep uploading apps without issues? Obviously, I’d avoid using existing brand names or anything similar.
Thanks in advance, Nakamura, and best of luck!
If you upload new apps, do NOT do any copyright infringement or use any trademarks or brand names in the title, subtitle or description. From my experience the keyword field is okay.
Also make sure everything you build and publish is original. Do not copy other apps.
20 tiktok accounts
How do u handle multi account without been flagged for multi accounts.. do u use any antidetector browser or proxies or what?
Also for the auto post.. what do use for it?
- Mar 22, 2013
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i am posting via their official api
- Mar 22, 2013
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Update September 2026
It has been a pretty good month.
Overall made around $75k in revenue.
I had some expenses:
- Google Ads (all for Android apps)
- Facebook Ads
- Apple Search Ads
and I also tried OpenAI Ads, whcih have been quite successful for me so far.
Overall expenses were around $10k including API costs for AI models. Most of the costs for ads were primarily testing. Testing different ad providers, different ad creatives, etc. luckily I brought myself into a position where I can simply spend money on testing and "wasting" money.
So profit is around $60k+ overall.
What else?
I think I did a small mistake, I started working on 4 apps simultaneously and one month has passed and none of them have been released yet. Right now working hard on releasing the most promising one for iOS, Android and Android.
Another thing: Apple App Store reviews have been a real pain. They took so long! One app was stuck on "Waiting for review" for 19 days. They then tested it for 5 minutes and approved it. Crazy work.
Now I am just working on getting all apps done and publish them. Next step is to use paid ads for all of them. See which ones are winners, which ones are losers. Kill the losers, focus on the winners and scale.
It has been a pretty good month.
Overall made around $75k in revenue.
I had some expenses:
- Google Ads (all for Android apps)
- Facebook Ads
- Apple Search Ads
and I also tried OpenAI Ads, whcih have been quite successful for me so far.
Overall expenses were around $10k including API costs for AI models. Most of the costs for ads were primarily testing. Testing different ad providers, different ad creatives, etc. luckily I brought myself into a position where I can simply spend money on testing and "wasting" money.
So profit is around $60k+ overall.
What else?
I think I did a small mistake, I started working on 4 apps simultaneously and one month has passed and none of them have been released yet. Right now working hard on releasing the most promising one for iOS, Android and Android.
Another thing: Apple App Store reviews have been a real pain. They took so long! One app was stuck on "Waiting for review" for 19 days. They then tested it for 5 minutes and approved it. Crazy work.
Now I am just working on getting all apps done and publish them. Next step is to use paid ads for all of them. See which ones are winners, which ones are losers. Kill the losers, focus on the winners and scale.
brocollini
Newbie
- Sep 24, 2025
- 12
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How long do you usually wait before killing an app? And does killing mean you remove it completely from the stores? even if they make some revenue but very modest?
Mr.Sinatra
Regular Member
- Jul 7, 2015
- 442
- 192
Amazing work nakamura!
Just bought the eBook, and it has great information for anyone serious about apps.
I have a question about setting up marketing accounts. There's a major debate about posting from real devices versus using the API, and the same applies to account creation and management. Have you noticed any differences when posting from a real device versus the API?
If you're comfortable, a PM is very welcome.
Thanks in advance.
Just bought the eBook, and it has great information for anyone serious about apps.
I have a question about setting up marketing accounts. There's a major debate about posting from real devices versus using the API, and the same applies to account creation and management. Have you noticed any differences when posting from a real device versus the API?
If you're comfortable, a PM is very welcome.
Thanks in advance.
Rally09
Regular Member
- May 1, 2021
- 220
- 62
This has been soo inspirational and I'm trying to get along with something on my own.
Regarding ASO, does keyword related app name helps? Also, I realized most developer accounts just have one app under them, I don't know if this is intended for some deliberate reasons but I would like to hear your thoughts.
You did mention getting some AI credits grant from AI companies like Microsoft, etc; do you have an orchestrator to maximize these credits without producing varying results in AI responses?
Thank you.
Regarding ASO, does keyword related app name helps? Also, I realized most developer accounts just have one app under them, I don't know if this is intended for some deliberate reasons but I would like to hear your thoughts.
You did mention getting some AI credits grant from AI companies like Microsoft, etc; do you have an orchestrator to maximize these credits without producing varying results in AI responses?
Thank you.
- Mar 22, 2013
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This process got a bit harder because before, Apple gave you an initial boost of around 500-1000 downloads. You could immediately see if you got purchases or not, how people use your app and how popular the niche is.
Now it became a bit more difficult.
There are niches that are 100% going to work and niches that are hit and miss.
I usually dont wait this long, but I also just let the app rest on the account. I dont remove it. Its just there and getting downloads, maybe making 50-300 USD per month. Thats fine for me.
Thanks a lot!
I dont see much of a difference posting from the API or from a real device. I tried both. I think its just random. Example: I have around 200 posts on one of my TikTok accounts. Most get around 1000 views per video. But maybe once or twice per month, there is a video suddenly getting 100-500k views. Totally random.
I think the most important is the content itself.
Yes, definitely helps with branding and also conversion when you have a keyword related app name. Just look at apps like "Calm", "Duolingo", etc. the app name should either be related to the keyword, be a keyword itself, or describe the keyword. I dont recommend using random words. Random words can work, if they are short and fit to the target audience. For example, for GenZ there is an app called ngl "not gonna lie", which is not a keyword but it just fits to the audience.
I think the reason these companies just have one app is because their entire strategy is to focus on ONE app. They probably got financed, have an investor, etc. got money from someone they had to provide a business plan to. They can not just use the money and make 10 apps if their business plan only presented this one app. This is my guess. Some might be limited by budget, some might be limited by time. There are also benefits to just focus on one single app instead of 10 or more, especially when it comes to distribution.
For example me, I have so many apps that I barely can create content for all of them. I can not make 5 HQ tiktok videos for 10 apps in different niches per day. It would be much easier to make 10 videos for the same app, for the same niche, in a day.
- Mar 5, 2016
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congrats , any paid ads running ? or all from organic ?
I’ve just spent the past days reading through your journey, Wow! An amazing journey and thread. Great success with your continuing journey and thanks for your generous sharing. A question - I noticed that you switched backed to Flutter and I’m wondering how you are dealing with the updating issues it was causing you earlier. Thanks for your help and goodluck!
- Mar 22, 2013
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Thanks for reading everything!
Dealing with the updating has been really easy since I use AI for coding. It literally just fixes these issues. For example, when Facebook or Google publish a new version of their SDK and make breaking changes, I can just tell the AI to look up how to migrate and do these changes.
Doing this manually was really a pain before. But now its just one prompt.
- Mar 5, 2016
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@nakamura pls answer mine also
- Mar 22, 2013
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oh sorry, didnt see it.
not all organic. i started trying openai ads and also run facebook ads.
however, from what I can see, its mostly organic. i am really not sure how well openai ads and facebook ads are performing because of the attribution...its not showing correctly. but I definitely got purchases from openai ads. i would say maybe 5-10% was from openai ads.
Awesome journey! I've been reading it on and off for more than a year, you're doing a great job with reporting your progress.
I've been curious if all your apps are a front end for AI agents that need AI API tokens?
If so, how do you limit users so they don't spend more tokens than they spend money on the app?
I've been curious if all your apps are a front end for AI agents that need AI API tokens?
If so, how do you limit users so they don't spend more tokens than they spend money on the app?
- Mar 22, 2013
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Thank you!
Not all apps. Maybe half of it.
I do not really limit them. Most users wont spend more money than they spend anyway.
Some ways to limit it:
- charge them for extra usage (credits)
- nerf the ai models (use cheaper ai models after a certain amount of usage)
- charge higher prices
- make everything usage based (no subscription, just credits per usage so you will never need to worry about it)
- Sep 7, 2012
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I just started reading this thread, few pages done and its better than watching a movie. lol
Long time to go, before I go through all of it, but just one quick question, if you don't mind. Would you share what niches worked for you best in the app world?
Thanks in advance.
Long time to go, before I go through all of it, but just one quick question, if you don't mind. Would you share what niches worked for you best in the app world?
Thanks in advance.