| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqY54IBPhJk |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kw1fad94angnn42bp6qv0c2c |
| Readwise ID | 01kw1fad94angnn42bp6qv0c2c |
| Author | Adam Lyttle |
| Category | video |
| Site | YouTube |
| Published | 2026-06-03 |
| Saved | 2026-06-26T08:04:12.196000+00:00 |
| Tags | adam-lyttle, app-development |
Readwise Summary: Web2app is the trend of 2026… but everyone keeps saying it’s about avoiding Apple’s 30% fee. After months marketing my own apps on Meta, Instagram and TikTok… I think the real story is much bigger: the App Store has changed for new apps (and web2app is the market responding)
Watch my App Store Ads Visibility strategy here: https://youtu.be/Z6DTKkfDqg4
Follow my journey here: Website: https://adamlyttleapps.com Twitter: https://x.com/adamlyttleapps Github: https://github.com/adamlyttleapps Instagram: https://instagram.com/adamlyttleapps TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@adamlyttleapps Substack: https://adamlyttleapps.substack.com
Shout out to my amazing video production team at https://clipwing.pro/
#indiedev #iosdev #buildinpublic #indiehacker #solopreneur #web2app
Glam AI saves 30% on App Store fees with web to app. Actually, no. That’s only half the story. After spending months marketing my own apps on Meta ads, I can tell you the real reason developers are switching to web to app funnels, and it’s not why you think. Web to app is kind of like a landing page with a sales funnel attached. Think of it like the bridge between someone seeing your TikTok ad and actually downloading your app. Instead of sending someone directly
to the App Store, you send them to your sales funnel, complete with a web paywall that lets the visitor subscribe to your app before they’ve even downloaded it. The side effect, Apple loses their 30% cut. Well, not quite 30%. If you’re doing under a million dollars a year and you’re part of Apple’s small business program, that fee is actually 15%. And the fee has been around since like forever. It’s not like app developers have all of a sudden gotten greedier and they’re trying to squeeze out every single last dollar of
their app. No, something else is going on here. Over the past year, Vibe Coding has flooded the App Store with apps. There are more apps submitted every day than in the history of the App Store, and each month seems like a brand new record broken for most apps submitted. Apple’s response seems to be rank suppression, making sure new apps just don’t get seen. And some app developers are reporting it takes 6 to 12 months to start even ranking for their targeted
keywords. I’ve seen this myself. December last year, I released a game called Swipe the Cat, and it had a massive viral launch with great initial traction. It was one of my biggest launches ever, but once the virality died down, so did the downloads. And none of my keywords ranked. In 2024, that viral launch would have got me ranking in the top 20 on the App Store easily, maybe even the top 10. But now, nothing. It took 6 months to finally show up in App Store search results
ranking 154 for the keyword cat game. And now, it’s climbed 32 spots to rank 122. Woohoo! I’m not the only one noticing this. Nikita recently posted that App Store optimization is officially dead. We released an iOS app and only got seven daily installs in the first month, almost no purchases. Two years ago after the app release, we got 10 times more daily installs and a lot of purchases. Organic just doesn’t work anymore. Hard
times for indie devs. Look, to be fair to Apple, the oversaturation problem isn’t actually their fault and they really needed to do something about the problem. Their solution of limiting visibility for new apps makes sense as a quality control mechanism, I guess. But that creates a whole new problem for indie app developers. How do I actually get my app seen now? And Apple have responded. >> Hey. >> Hey guys, we’re adding a second ad spot to search results now. So now, you can
put your ad in spot number one and spot number three. Have fun. Now, you got to create an App Store ads campaign just to rank in App Store results, just to be seen, even if that’s your own brand name. You got to buy that visibility. I’ve talked a lot about this in previous videos and I’ve even shared my exact strategy for setting up a visibility campaign with App Store ads. Every app that I launch now is paired with this type of campaign. It’s non-negotiable. I’ll put a link to my strategy in the
description below. As an indie app developer, the old model was simple. Pay the 15% App Store fee, they handle the distribution, the payment, and the customer trust. It felt like a good deal and distribution was baked in. Now, the model is pay the 15% App Store fee. Oh, and by the way, you got to pay for visibility now. Have fun. As an indie app developer, it kind of feels like I’m paying twice now. So, the market responds, and developers start asking
themselves, “If I’m paying separately for visibility anyway, why am I paying Apple specifically?” That’s what I started to wonder anyway. And I thought, “Hey, I could buy visibility on Meta, I could buy visibility on TikTok, I could find users where they’re actually scrolling. And if I get the campaign right, if I get it working well, it could cost me less than an App Store Ads campaign.” So, I went ahead and I set up a Meta Ads campaign. But soon, I noticed the problem. Sending people straight to
the App Store doesn’t work the way you think. The user clicks your ad, lands in the App Store listing, then they either download it or they don’t. Maybe you just have a bad app, or maybe your app is the most amazing thing ever created, you’re just not communicating it properly. Who knows? And you’ll be spending weeks, maybe months testing what what works and what doesn’t, all the while burning your ad spend. Enter web-to-app. Instead of pointing your Meta ad at the App Store, you point it to a landing page, and that landing page
becomes the bridge between the user clicking your ad and downloading your app. With a web-to-app funnel, you control every screen, and you can test what messaging works, what features resonate, and even collect market research along the way. So, even if that visitor doesn’t actually buy through your funnel, you learn something about your app that can dramatically improve it. Compare that with just sending them to the App Store, where you maybe get a download. So, yeah, it’s not just the Apple fee. A web-to-app funnel lets you
get actionable signals even if they never download your app. My prediction is that we’re going to see a whole lot more of these web-to-app funnels as a valid strategy in 2026. And we’ll see even more people reporting that developers are just trying to cheat Apple out of their 30% cut. But that’s not the whole story. In reality, this is the market naturally responding to changes in the App Store ecosystem. Web to app funnels are here to stay and it’s kind of really exciting actually because
all of this is still in its infancy. We’re really early here. And if you’ve been following my journey recently on marketing, you’ll know that I built a funnel last week that was initially converting at 5%. Like I was excited and I thought, finally I’ve cracked this thing. But a week later, that funnel is now converting closer to 1%. A reminder not to jump to conclusions too soon. I’ve been slowly testing a new paywall and it’s starting to show promising results. As always, I’ll show you what
works, what doesn’t so you can grow your app portfolio in 2026. Subscribe so you don’t miss out.