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TL;DR
Steve Young and indie developer Ben map the stage-by-stage channel roadmap: start with cheap, high-intent ASO + Apple Search Ads to reach ~$2–3K/mo, build a portfolio to find the one or two apps worth scaling, then graduate the winners to Meta/TikTok paid. Paid creative beats organic because it scales for months, not days. This source belongs to the app-masters-youtube batch.
Biggest lessons
- Sequence channels by cost and intent. ASO/ASA first (cheapest, highest intent, no creatives needed) — one client went from 200 to 7,000 downloads in a month, another made $1,600 in 22 days off two keywords. Move to Meta/TikTok only at ~$3–5K/mo once you have data to scale.
- You only need two keywords with search score ~30. That’s enough high-intent traffic to validate and grow an indie app.
- Run a portfolio, then concentrate. ASO hit rate is only ~30–40%, so spread bets across categories and multiple Apple accounts, then funnel the 1–2 winners into paid scaling. One developer sold a portfolio (no app over ~$3K/mo) for $1M.
- ASO winners often bleed into SEO. Keywords that rank in the App Store also rank on Google, driving backlinks and web downloads (one app jumped 50→200 downloads/day).
- Paid beats organic on durability. A viral organic video scales for days; one winning Meta video creative can scale to $100K/mo. Just use the Facebook SDK at indie scale — skip the MMP until multi-channel.
- Hard paywall for paid traffic. Bootstrapped Meta advertisers run hard paywalls (13% trial activation vs ~6% with an X) for the best signals.
Why it matters
- This is the wiki’s clearest articulation of the stage-gated channel ladder underpinning product-led-growth and paid-ads-scaling.
- Validates the portfolio + ASO-to-Meta pattern and the SEO spillover from ASO keywords.