| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GvJprsRLjs |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kv42ynds7vn69q6ycbhfvs4j |
| Readwise ID | 01kv42ynds7vn69q6ycbhfvs4j |
| Date | 2025-11-07 |
| Author | App Masters |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5GvJprsRLjs/sddefault.jpg?v=690a40a7 |
It’s loading. What is up App Nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of App Masters.com, the place you go when you want action-packed content related to helping you grow app downloads and more importantly, those revenues. And this live stream is going
to be a little bit different. We’ve got a somebody that we’ve been working with and we’re going to do more of a live coaching call with Neil to kind of break down, all right, now that we’ve got ASO and ASA locked in, what should we do next? And we’re going to answer all his questions along with all yours. So, if you got questions for us, leave them in the comments. And without further ado, let’s bring in Neil.
Neil, welcome to the show, my friend. Thanks for having me, Steve. Well, you are the founder of Scribed AI and I’m going to pull up your app right here. AI note-taker, very popular category, Neil. Sure. >> But, congratulations on the launch. You got 103 ratings, 4.5, super impressive. All this stuff is super impressive. Congratulations on the app. You want to talk about anything about the app and why you decided to create it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the main reason that
we we made this app is because uh a lot of the big boys who are well-funded in the VC world, um don’t actually have good notes. And uh you know, if you look at Otter and the quality there and some of the other players that are out there, you know, we were just disappointed with the quality of notes that comes out of their systems. And uh with a small team, we think we’ve we’ve done a little bit better. So, that that’s that’s why we made the app and and it was that frustration that led to this. I love it. I love it. What makes you different
then? Why do you think it’s uh why do you think the quality is just the AI, the training? So, um we have a lawyer that’s a kind of a power user of our app. And you know, kind of what he said is, when I use your app, I feel that it’s like a senior lawyer or at least a mid-level lawyer writing the summary of this meeting that I had versus uh some of the other apps I see, it’s um uh you know, entry-level lawyer, you know, first year, second year lawyer. And um I think it’s we’ve
done a lot of smart engineering around the models, you know, stitching them together and so on. Um and I think that’s it’s the that engineering that I think is really the differentiator. Awesome. And I know you got some amazing feedback. We’ve ran some different campaigns through Reddit and other things and you’ve had some amazing feedback along the way. So, yeah. Yeah. >> I don’t think you Meaning, I’m backing you up. Like, meaning you’re not just speaking it as a founder. Yeah, you did get some amazing feedback. >> out the app and I think you’ll you people can decide for themselves, right?
You don’t have to take my word for it. Well, Neil, I wanted to do something different. So, what’s up, Kevin? What’s up, Nurex as well? Leave a comment if you guys have questions below. But, I want I know you sent me those questions, but where did you want to start with this? Yeah, so I mean, I think for us, you know, where we’re at, we’ve been working with you guys for a while. And where we’re at is, you know, we we did our Indie AppSanta campaign, you know, we did our um AppAdvice campaign, uh ASO ASA, pretty good pretty good shape. Um but, you know, we’re thinking bigger, right? And so, we’re we’ve got downloads, we’ve got
revenue, we’ve got all those things, right? Uh but, you know, how do we get into that top tier of apps, right? Like, if you look at the App Store data, a very few apps get more than 20,000 downloads a month, you know, and how how do we get into that top tier? Um and you know, you’ve been doing this forever. And so, what I really wanted to have a conversation with you about is is, you know, what are the strategies once you’ve got that initial base together, what are the strategies to start focusing on to sort of get to that stage? And then um how do you make that systematic, right? anybody could say,
well, you know, my buddy here did this or or someone here did that. But, how do you create a system a system so that anyone can follow these steps to sort of find those uh those those ways to really get their app out there? Yeah. So, it’s a great question and one that I I’ve been grappling with as well. And so, I’ll give you the first part of my question is a two-part answer, okay, Neil? For well, part one is look, there’s multiple ways to do anything. You know, people talk about like organic Tik Tok and they see a trend and they follow that trend.
And you just got to find one that works for you. And so, it’s going to be app-dependent. I think ASA can get you far. So, there’s two routes that you can take. I think the more affordable route would be to think about the localization. And we’re going to have a an interview in a couple of weeks with somebody, client of ours, that’s done fairly well in just Thailand. And so, think about like other markets that you might not be considering. And he’s done pretty well in Thailand and I’ve been I’m like shocked by his numbers. And I asked him to come on and share it. And
so, he’s going to do that. That’s the cheaper way. So, you can leverage ASA even a bit more through other localizations. And that’s the, you know, you don’t need much more than just AI can help you with some of that localization. Now, to take it to, let’s say, 50, 100,000, beyond, you’re going to need meta. And that’s what we’re doing. And so, our approach, Neil, with our own apps is launching a few, knowing what we know best with ASO and some of that tactics that we work with you on, and then finding that app that’s going to help us
scale even further and then using meta. And so, you said, give me a system and a process. System and process is pretty simple. It’s there’s different tools out here and I’ll kind of get to it. One, I’ll shout out to Henry, friend of mine. He’s been pro talking about appmagic.rocks. And I’ll kind of break down what they’re able to do is, and I have a screenshot for another video that’s coming up for you guys. I will kind of let me pull that real quick
for you guys. But, what App Magic allowed us to do is see the actual impressions of it. Now, you’re going to have to pay for this. But, here I’ll this is a future video, so you get a sneak peek of a future video. And I’ll give you a screenshot of what App Magic looks like right here. So, you can see the impressions for this particular app, right? And you can see the ones So, you can obviously look at the Facebook Ads Library. That’s the free way of
doing it. And finding a really old ad should tell you that the app is performing well. But, what App Magic does is, hey, here are the impressions. So, here’s probably what’s working well for this particular app. And this particular app that we looked at was making 2 million in the last 30 days, right? The last 30 days. So, and you I kind of break down, it’s not ASO. Because the the keywords that they’re ranking number one for are just their brand. So, it’s not like they’re number one for learn English, right? They’re
just number all the other keywords that they’re one for, they don’t have that much traffic according to App Figures. And so, meta is the main thing. And the systematic process is using an ad intelligence tool like App Magic or, you know, even the Facebook Ad Library if you’re just starting to get going. That has worked for us. Like, when we work with clients, we found winning ads through the Facebook Ads Library. But, meta is probably the main thing moving forward, man. And so, um when someone starts to
implement this this meta strategy, I think the the struggle for Indie apps is finding an app that has a low enough uh cost per install that then um you know, is economic and that they can monetize off of, right? Um it’s uh you know, it’s so so maybe talk talk about that and how and how you think about that. Yeah, that’s a great question. And that’s the way I That’s why I start with ASO, ASA, and AppAdvice, like all the things we’ve
done for you, because I want to see if the numbers are there, right? And one of the things that we’re looking at for our app. So, I’m just going to tell you because this is what I’m actually doing, not just like saying it. We looked at the RevenueCat data and I said, okay, what is the lifetime value of a user? And how much do I need to get? And with meta, you know, the unfortunate thing, Neil, is a lot of clients that we work with, as well as like just people that I know in the space, they’re not profitable. Like, you see the Sensor Tower data, but they’re actually not
profitable, right? That’s the secret. And so, don’t always look at the Sensor Tower data. And so, that’s why I love talking to like my friend Henry and Desmond, who’s been on the podcast. But, like they bootstrapped it. Like, they didn’t raise money, they need to be profitable. And so, with meta, Neil, and with some of the things I’ve been thinking about is we just discussed this right now. But, it’s for an Indie, like using the ASO ASA to make sure that the funnel works because it’s a lot cheaper.
And now that you feel like you have a solid funnel, then you try to scale with meta. And with meta, the things that I’ve sort of think started thinking about was look, a lot of these tools and I kind of break down Learnna as well. Like, you know how, Neil, one of the things I was thinking about was if a lot of the apps will ask you, where did you hear us from, right? Like, Cali AI does this and so does you know, Resemble AI. So, on the
onboarding, they say, where did you hear where did you hear about us? And so, with meta, right? If they hear App Store, you just show them the onboarding. But, you personalize it. And so, one of those why that screen, let me pull up that screen. Why that screen is so important is a couple of reasons. One, it gives you a backup attribution. Because meta and all these MMPs, they’re just going to lose a little bit along the way.
So, here, this, okay? So, one, it helps with the backup. So, you’re like, you know safely that, “Hey, this person found me through Meta, but they might have to actually download it through the App Store.” Okay? That’s one. So, you have that data yourself. Two, what I was really considering if you’re running Meta is if they select any of these things, if they don’t pick App Store and they select something else, you show them a hard paywall. Because then you send signals to Meta a
lot faster and that that’s the way to go. And, you know, we have a community where we talked about this stuff and there’s some strategies that we’ve shared during that in that community that I’ll share with you offline, Neil, but that’s how we that’s how I’ve been thinking about it. Because I don’t feel like hard paywall is good long-term. It is good, but I it also leads to like one-star reviews. And you have to be careful as an indie, you know, if you’re already big-time, go for it, right?
We’ve got apps that we are doing like 400, 500,000 dollars a month organically, but they have a hard paywall and it’s working for them, right? But, at the same time, like for indies, it might lead to some lower revenue numbers. So, trying to balance a hard paywall with the medium that you found us through is what I’m thinking through right now. Yeah. Right. Okay. And, um how much of it is actually optimizing
the copy of the Meta ad itself, right? So, we just talked about the this part of it, but what about that part of it? It’s 100% that. It is 100% that. And that’s why I’m kind of highlighting the App Magic stuff because Henry loves it so much as well. Like, this is this is it, right? Just looking at through this. And, you know, a lot of the the people that have found success through Meta almost like 90, 80% of their time is
spent on creatives. What looking at all the creatives. And it’s almost like hacking your own algorithm, Neil, to see your competitors’ ads and to start to see what’s trending on Meta and all that stuff, right? Like, yeah. So, you this is the way to go. And just paying attention to and the reason why we picked these guys out is they’re using AI creatives a lot. And if you look at this hook, Mino English, right? Like, it it’s a great hook and
they do it for multiple languages. And so, that’s part of the video is like really breaking down that, “Hey, one, yes, most of the revenues are in the US, but they’re also running ads everywhere else and they can take one piece of creative like this one using AI and localize it for multiple languages and translate it.” And so, they’ve done an amazing job and that’s the the point of this story of this the video. And and are you seeing people do, um, all AI creative at this point or a kind
of a combination? What’s working the best on that? It’s So, we’ve been relying on AI just because it’s a little bit cheaper, but I think we’ve seen I mean, success both ways. I think I would leverage AI because it’s a little bit even, you know, like shout out to our partners, Arcad, they can Arcad’s I’ve found I haven’t played around with all of them, but they, you know, funny enough, Neil. Okay, I’m going to answer this with a story. The my team used me
and used AI to generate an ad for one of our sponsors. And my wife and my son were listening to one of the podcast episodes and I happened to listen to this one, too, and they heard me read that ad. My son knew right away it wasn’t me. My wife was confused. She was like, “No, that is him.” I knew that wasn’t me as well. Arcad’s allows you to like the fluctuations, the emphasis, the dramatic pauses. That is what Arcad’s can do for
you. And so, I I like AI. I think it allows you to test different hooks. And then if you find one that really works, then put in a real person. Because, Neil, we’ve done real UGC people and those haven’t performed all the time well, either. So, it’s kind of like I’d rather do it cheaply versus trying to really, you know, hire all these UGC folks. Yeah. And so, okay. So, um
it then it really though requires kind of a pipeline of consistent production, right? So, you really do need to set up a pipeline of consistent production, um, be putting out, you know, I’m going to say the word five, but, you know, some number every week of new creatives and testing creatives. Um, as an as an app founder, right? A lot of us are developers, um, but we really need to sort of have the discipline to be able to do that and create this consistent pipeline and and and and be be about that and focus on that.
Absolutely. I mean, that’s the one thing that I would do. I mean, the people have talked about like creating viral content. I just don’t think that’s scalable. I’m on the I’m on the side Now, if you’re on the other side and you know how to do viral content, go ahead. I’m on the side of creating really good creatives and really figuring that out. And I think developers, this is the my message to all you developers out there with AI, it’s becoming a lot easier to make stuff. And so, you have to get really smart about what is
working on social media, the marketing side. And I think, you know, as as I talk to developers and I say marketing, they’re like, right? Like, and it’s like, “No, no, no. Just think about what makes a great video.” That’s really it, right? Just you know how to you know what makes a good video. You like watching videos. So, just think about what makes a good video rather than think about it from a marketing perspective and then start thinking about it. Because it is just that and even those that are if you’re able to get ASO and ASO a little bit
right, you’re far ahead of those just relying on Meta, right? Because I feel like when we do this stuff, then our ASO starts picking up a lot faster. And that’s what we saw with one of our indie clients who was just running three to 3,000 on Meta. We’re able to get it to 7,000 organically and then he started running Meta and that what that’s what helped him get over the 10,000 mark per month and then, you know, get to 15, 17,000 and it’s it was the help of a little bit of help with Meta.
Makes sense. Um, so, um it in in it is possible, I guess. I think one of the questions that people have is, you know, is it possible to get, uh, cost per install at $3 and $2 on Meta? It it is possible, right? That’s what you mean it can be done. Um Yeah. Okay. Well, the problem, Neil, is it’s not the install you should be looking at. It’s the other thing after that. Because we can get there. We’ve done that. Like, one one of our clients is doing like in the AI space a buck 50. It’s under two. But is that
actually driving revenues for you, right? And so, it is through a a ROAS campaign where within Meta you can send your revenues back to Meta, you know, for every subscriber. And a lot of people with Meta, they’re doing hard paywalls, right? They’re doing no trials. And that that’s worked pretty well and, you know, another app that’s in your space, Way Josh, I did an interview with him and he talked about that he has no trials, but he gives away 30 minutes for free.
So, they can see it. And, you know, like those type of tactics work. And so, what I would That’s why I started thinking through like, “Okay, if I’m running Meta, I want to send Meta those strong signals. So, if you pick that you found us through Meta, I need you to show you a hard paywall cuz that’s the only way I’m going to get for sure get a high signal, right?” And our stats say that an X on a paywall is will half. Like, you can double your conversions without an X. And so, it’s
more like budget. Like, let’s just double it, right? Like, we need to get to 50 events per week on Meta. So, we need to feed that algorithm a bit. And yes, it might take some time. And as an indie, like, you guys got to really run through your numbers. And so, that’s why as an indie, I think my best approach this and the one that I’m deploying on my own is ASO, ASA, get it to a certain point when I feel confident that this app could scale in Meta, then start running Meta versus starting with
Meta from the very from the get-go. Yeah. Okay. Um, I wanted to to ask you also about the the strategy that you just said you don’t think is scalable, which is, um having a fleet of TikTok influencers and trying to find the viral content that way, kind of Cali AI strategy. Um, it’s a little crowded to me, but but but what what do you think about that? I think it works, right? Like, it’s just we we did a we did an interview we did a thing for our community, our App Founders community, with a client of
ours who was able to scale their app to like 80, 100 grand a month just using these TikTok influencers. But I’ll tell you, Neil, it’s a lot of effing work. It’s a lot of work. And so, it if it’s going to be that much it’s one person, Neil, doing just that. One person doing just that and he’s literally and he has he came up with the system and I’ll I’ll share that video with you, but he came up with the system, he did everything, and then I’m just like, "Dude, that’s a lot of
freaking work." One winning creative on Meta can scale for like months, right? You can use that for months. But one winning creative on organic, I mean, that shelf life is a lot lower, right? And I was even looking through one of their most successful videos in that account from that TikTok influencer. One video has like two, three million views. The other ones are in the thousands. You know, so that’s why I’m kind of like I’m off that train a little bit just because it you you’re going to spend
time, you’re going to spend money on all this stuff. Why don’t you do one where with a longer shelf life versus one that is a low short shelf life, right here. I’m looking at it. I’m not going to share it with you guys, but one video the most popular video and he’s the one that he pointed out like this drove a lot of downloads and sales 2.6 the more recent ones 121 views. This is not million by the way. 2.6 million the latest ones 121 no zeros after that. 877 no zeros after
that. 4,431 so okay, decent. But that that’s why I’m kind of coming off that train a bit. And um are these apps that are successful doing that? Are they in viral areas, right? So certain things food apps, right? There’s a natural virality to that because there’s a natural community on Tik Tok for those kinds of apps, right? Or those kinds of videos. Um but uh you know, maybe a business app or
productivity app doesn’t have that natural virality kind of built into its its area, right? It’s sector of the app. >> is a it’s very similar to what you’re doing but for a different market. So, yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a utility app. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah, just did it right up. Okay, cool. Um And so um you know, one of the questions I have for you that I sent over beforehand is what types of of apps are able to find uh
success on meta where they can get some sort of a a campaign going where the the lifetime value is more than what they’re paying to acquire the customer. Are there certain apps that are are set up well for that versus apps that are not set up well for that? I think so one of the metrics that I know AppMagic has is the revenue per download. So like fitness apps tend to do really well. Educational apps
tend to do very well in this space and one of the things I’ll pull it up right here. I’ll do top grossing I’ll kind of pull one that you guys can see. Let me just pull Let me see what this app Learna has from AppMagic real quick. Ah, premium. It used to be free, Neil. It used to be free. But I’m trying to work out a deal for them.
This thing. This is what I look at. But you can do the math, right? Like you can start to do the math. And if you look at like I’m going to put Ladder cuz they were a big part of the RevenueCat event that I was just at. And you can start to see like 2 million a month with just 100,000 downloads. So I So you can start doing the math for the revenue per download and you can start to see oh that has a high revenue per download that you can charge. And so your space definitely one that you can you should have a high revenue per download. I think it’s the the weekly
ones that struggle a bit, right? Like okay, now you got to figure out how long they’re going to stay because it’s per week and we have one of them and the RevenueCat gave us some data on like a lifetime value of that user and so we’re roughly at $30 for that lifetime of that user and so we’re trying to aim for okay, I’m like Okay, if I can break even on meta, I know my ASO is going to kick in and my ASO is going to kick in a lot easier because I know ASO. And so that’s my competitive advantage if I can get
meta to just break even for me or even run at like maybe an 80% ROAS, I’ll be okay because I know I can make up the rest on ASO. Right, so high value obviously is important. Anything about the categories though or anything else about the app that makes them more likely to be successful on meta? Hm No, cuz I’ve seen almost a lot of apps work on meta. So I would say look at fitness and
health probably the main things that do well. Anything you can charge more like one of our clients it’s a to-do list app that we’re working with and he was charging 20 bucks a year for the longest time, you know, and I was like look, we can’t scale on meta if you’re charging $20 a year. There’s no way that I can get this to go, right? Because that revenue per download is just going to be insanely low. So I said we need to test if 40 works cuz if 40 doesn’t work then
meta won’t work for you. So we did we tested 40. It’s actually working pretty decently for him and the sales are starting to grow. Yeah, they’re small but they’re starting to grow and so now we’re testing meta. So you’re really going to have to play around that price point but I do know for your category, you know, people have scaled meta very very well just in that because you can charge. You’re you’re you’re more to B2B and so you can charge a bit more like 100 bucks a year versus a productivity app that might you know, might have to
stop be stuck with $40 a year. You can charge $100 a year giving you a higher yeah, you have more leverage with that. Right. Um yeah, I know. I mean I I think in the category that we’re in the revenue side is is pretty healthy mainly because AI models are so expensive that that kind of creates the you know, pricing umbrella at least for right now for us. Um Uh what about community-led growth strategies? So Discord, Reddit, you
know, other forums uh what about that? So in what way? In the in the top of the funnel or more of a retention? Uh top of the funnel. Top of the Top of the funnel. Like I think it’s it’s sort of like my AppAdvice stuff. It’s it’s a one win type of thing, right? Like And so you know, we use Reddit a little bit to try to offset AppAdvice and try to be like okay, can we use Reddit to promote these type of deals on there? I think they help, right? They give you that one-time boost. And so that’s what I’m
looking for instead of trying to create viral content. I know I can go on AppAdvice and drive it’s just many downloads, right? And hopefully leverage that into sales. So I think they’re interesting and I don’t know anything about it but I know a lot of people have done pretty well. But it’s a lot of freaking work too. So that’s why I’d rather spend my time on something that I can if it works, it works for months versus if it works, it works for days or weeks. So that’s the way I go about it. The the the the idea of creating a
recurring community of some type and then having an app kind of around that. That is what I’m hearing you saying is you know, with you’ve seen apps for years different types different flavors. That is not something that that it that is maybe something to focus on at this stage, right? Using that as a primary channel to to to get users and downloads. That’s just my opinion, right? Like I’ve heard from people who’ve done it. I just find it a lot of
work. So I’m like if I’m going to spend all this time and like effort, I’d rather spend it on something that’s going to help me cuz if I win find all if I spend all that time finding a winning creative, that’s going to I can use that winning creative for months versus if I find a great Reddit strategy, it’s probably just days and then it goes back down and you’re then looking for the next carrot, right? So that’s I think if you use it as a retention metric, I think that’s very interesting because a lot of like
apps with a community element of it and even our founders com our founders community like I you know, the way that I see that and just you know, full disclosure to everybody it’s just like okay, you come for the content but you stay for the community. You stay because of the people that you’re around with and you’re like energized and for me that’s more important. So I think it’s an interesting strategy growth strategy. It’s probably more like product-led growth where a community drives keeps people on your platform. They’re not
coming for it but they’re probably staying on it for that. And I heard a RevenueCat podcast with Healthy a fitness app and the CEO said exactly that like hey, we give a lot of it for free and you can read the community stuff but you can’t post. And if you want to post, you got to pay. So that’s their that was their thinking with community. Yeah. Okay, makes sense. Um I want to go
to back to something you said at the beginning where you talked about one of your clients in Thailand and so on. One of the things that we have considered is picking a foreign market truly making an app for that market, right? That’s foreign language. It’s it’s not in English. You know, now we’re not going to have anything in English in the app, right? And it’s going to be truly for foreign market. We already support all of the meetings in those in those languages but the app interface is in English always, right? >> Yep. Um Uh
You gave an example of someone who’s been very successful at that. You know, to do that is it do you really need to to just localize the interface, just localize it your your presence on the app store? What what’s required for that? Yeah, great question. So I think I would understand the market, right? I’ve had multiple people do this. So the Thailand one I’ll I’ll let him share his exact numbers. I know it but there’s another one another one in our App
Founders community who was just in Germany. And Germany was way easier from an So he’s from he’s German way easier from an ASO perspective. We had another client that was more in the stock space and they were German too and I’m like looking at the revenues although all our marketing efforts were in the US. I’m like bro, like all the revenues are from Germany. Like let’s just make ASO ASA in Germany. It’s a lot easier to go after, lot cheaper. And so I would try to understand the market a bit because
depending on the the the industry or the the country you’re targeting, like they might have different cultural differences than the Western countries. And so that’s the only thing I don’t know about, but I might you might you might be you might just get away with just studying the top apps in that category and just seeing what they’re doing from a screenshot perspective and replicating that. We um we looked into a couple of these foreign markets and your team helped with this and and it was really interesting. One of the um
one of the things that we noticed is in some of these foreign markets, there’s not even like a word for what we do and there’s not like an uh ASO keyword that already has high volume. So in a situation like that, is that is that a positive for entering this foreign market or is that a negative for entering this foreign market? In other words, like you know, there’s no word for you know, an AI note taker in this foreign market, right? Um and unlike in the US where that is a keyword that you know, people are you
know, optimizing ASO for, there’s not that much volume for for that right now in this foreign market. So do you view that as like a gating factor or do you view that as like a virgin this is virgin territory to then be able to go maybe create that market in? The so I see it as neutral, right? Then that just signals to me I can’t be relying on ASO. Okay. I have to figure out a way to run ads through meta and you know, the the the client that’s doing well on in Thailand
is running a lot of meta ads. And so it’s like, all right, that’s what you would have to focus on, right? If they’re not familiar with that category, then run ads. You’re going to have to run ads. So I think it’s neutral. I think what I would try to see is the top grossing in that particular market and see what apps are doing well and maybe use that as a gauge to be like, okay, this could work in this particular market. We even did some ads in the
Philippines just to test and we’ve seen like for one of my apps, the Philip it’s only in a few hundreds of dollars per month, but at same time like we’re Philippines like top three. Again, it’s just all US primarily and then Philippines and UK are two and three, but we’ve run ads in the Philippines. We know we can get really cheap installs for it and then just really figuring out what the pricing should be in the Philippines versus what it should be and that’s like, you know, and it is an AI
app. So Yeah. So in other words, you kind of view it as build the market with meta. Um and then use ASO as a lock in once it’s successful. So you’re ranking for the top keywords and now you’ve got some kind of a locked in position once once your app becomes a known thing or the category becomes a known thing in in this foreign in a foreign market. Absolutely. Like I I mean, there’s a keyword that I was the really paying attention to and the found you know, the
founders, but I know they’ve been relying on meta running and they’ve been able to get this app very successful, but now they’re number one for that keyword that back in the day we talked about and they beat me through just sheer meta volume. They have it in their title. We both have it in our title, right? Like we both have optimized for it, but they’re number one just because of the sheer download velocity and the revenues that they’re driving through meta. ASO becomes a lot easier. Um what about um
you know, black hat strategies, right? So you talk gray hat and black hat strategies. Um you did separate videos on that and I I don’t want to make you go through all of that now, but is that something to focus on at this stage or or or or not? Um It there is always a time for it. I think Apple’s starting to get really smart and these campaigns are got starting to become less effective, right? And it’s like it’s this cat and mouse game where
I used it it was a it was a strategy that in 2019 Neil, working like a charm like and it’s stopped. And so I stopped and I started started thinking about other things and then a couple of years later people started talking about it again saying, hey Steve, have you tried this again? I’m like, well, I did, but it just wasn’t working anymore and like, no, no, no, it’s working again. And so I think it’s this cat and mouse. Right now Apple’s got the leverage and so wait, cool down, right? We got to
find different things and then come back. And I think you know, like for me I’ve been doing this for so long now that I’ve seen it I’ve seen all the cycles and history does end up repeating itself. So while it might not work now, there’s no it might work in a couple of years from now and you just kind of have to stay on top of it, but I would say it’s an interesting thing to think about. Like it’s still I do know that I think I haven’t talked to them in a while, but I was talking to a really big company and we were talking about some
of these strategies and going back and just trading knowledge with each other. And so it was working and I know bigger companies are doing it. So It’s all good. It sounds like maybe not a Yeah, go ahead. No, go you first. Go for it. >> It sounds like maybe not a focus at this stage. Maybe that’s this is Yeah. Yeah, it’s not something I would just rely on anymore. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like maybe optimizing meta is
is really the thing that once once that initial piece is done is really the next thing to kind of figure out for most apps. Yeah. And yeah. I’ll answer it not publicly. How about that, Neil? Yeah, I got it. Okay. Cool. >> let me ask Adam’s question. Thoughts on ethics on AI ad tools. In my opinion, so gross. Understand they are driving results, but the sea of AI slop is making me drown in authenticity. Makes me blah. You know what, Adam, like
uh don’t be Blockbuster, bro. Like you know what I mean? Don’t be Blockbuster. The it’s coming, right? Blockbuster be like, nobody’s going to stream shiznit in the internet. Like don’t let don’t become Blockbusters to Netflix. I think it’s it’s happening. It’s happening fast and I would say utilize it instead of and see, they’re getting so much better that I think you’re going to be it’s going to be a lot harder to differentiate between AI and real people eventually. So I
would say it’s it’s cost-effective than using real people and real people can get more costly. So do what’s best for you, all right? All right, Neil. What else you got for me? Um well, um I guess the other question I’ve got for you is maybe you can talk about just systematizing all of this, right? So I’m sort of a big process person Yeah. >> and um you obviously are too given just all
the dashboards and things that you’re always showing on all your videos. But you know, how should we think about that? Right? You know, how how do how do you think about like systematizing this? Um there’s the obvious metrics, right? So you want to know what your retention is. You want to know what your paywall conversion is, but beyond that, how how do you think about that? Look, I like to think about it in simple terms. That’s just my approach, right? Everybody has their own. I just want to know
how much I’m spending on marketing and how much we’re making. Clearly that. Because I think I can get lost in the ROAS of a different channel. I can see like, hey, like clients will be like, well, this isn’t working well. Like Facebook Look, it’s not working well. And I’m like, are you granted, are you making more and spending more than what you’re spending? Cuz for me like I just think we need to simplify math and simplify business instead of like getting bogged
down by the weeds. So one of our clients we saw that meta was break even. And sometimes certain months were they were we were losing money, but we also saw the sales coming from App Store search going up at the same time. And so how do you explain that? Like it only and I’ll show you the chart. It only started going up when we started to run meta campaigns. So here, here’s the chart that I’ll show you guys. This is one of our clients. You can see the blue line is App Store search. So we
were able to get to five like this was maybe like 8 thousand, seven thousand per month through just ASO. This blue line, you can see the red line the green line which is primarily through social media, nowhere not even existent, right? And so when we started running ads, you can see the blue line starting to go. So how do you explain that, right? And so if you start to see this is what I’m looking at. This is all I am looking at versus trying to get bogged down with, all right, what is the ROAS? Now obviously you need to pay attention to
it. I’m not saying don’t pay attention to it, but for me I feel like people get so lost in these dashboards and I just get I’m just like, what am I supposed to look at, dude? Like come on, like what am I supposed to look at? And so am I just is this worth it? Am I making more money than what I’m spending? If so, let’s keep going versus trying to overcomplicate everything. That’s just my approach though. Makes sense. And then thing I look at, Neil, and the one of the is just revenue per download, right? Like I this is all I look at. I’m just
like, all right. In the beginning days, you know, kind of what you talked about, trial conversions, trial to paid. This number doesn’t matter as much. How much are you charging per year? And I just try to simplify it. And I was talking to She was a client at the time, but I was talking to her and I was trying to show off this off to other people when I first started developing this. I was like, “What do you think about this? Is this too simple?” And I’m like, she’s like, "No, this is perfect because ultimately you want to keep this that simple. You just got to figure out like, okay,
you’re like, “All right, what is my break even?” This gets you to your break even. Revenue per download, revenue per trial, so you know what your cost per trial should be on Meta, and then your cost per trial or your cost per subscriber or what your CAC should ultimately be, right? So, anyways, this is sort of what I look at. It makes sense. I mean, we have something kind of like this um as well. And then um you know, we also try um we’re just getting going in content creation and so we’re we tried to sort of systematize that a little bit um
as well. >> I mean, we did do that. There was a a resume video that’s no longer on YouTube, but anyways, they talked about that. Like, what is the hook rate? What is the What’s the other one that I have forgot about? The click-through rate, right? What’s a hook rate and click-through rate? And then you’re systematizing all that stuff. And she put in a whole notion board with a bunch of different ideas. And so, that’s what I would get beyond like what we talked about from a creative production perspective, really systematizing that and just figuring out, all right, who’s doing the
research? What are the hooks? And then yeah, pushing it through the pipeline. >> Yeah, that that interview, by the way, was fire. I thought that was an amazing amazing interview. So. Okay. Sweet. All right, let’s get into some of these questions here. Remains 223, I’ve got a solid app and planning to start running ads on Meta. Should I optimize directly for purchases? Also, can I make the purchases event eligible for AEM if I start with an app install campaign first? So, I think Remains, I would just start with the purchases right away.
That’s what we’re doing. We’re going to start trial right away with AEM because I you said you have a solid app, right? Like, we have a solid app, it’s making about 2 to 3 grand a month organically. Now I’m going straight after purchases. So, that’s what I would personally do with an app install campaign. It does work. It not saying it doesn’t work, but sometimes what we figured out what we found is the the installs don’t actually purchase. So, your cost per trial is extremely extremely high. While we’re getting
like, Neil, we’re getting a dollar 70 per install, nobody’s really buying from that. So, Meta’s good at getting you whatever you want. And I think simple to simplify everything, Advantage Plus broad aiming for trial or purchase is the way to go. All right. Artower, launching that very soon is making the product perfect from the start is a good idea or can launch as is and perfect make it perfect on the go. What do you think, Neil? I got some thoughts on this topic. Um
so, uh I think you should just launch um because your users will give you feedback as to what you need. Um that said, uh you know, I we still do all of our own support and we talk directly to the users. Um I do as well. Um people will get angry um and drop your app if you have major bugs that you have not fixed. So, um you know, make sure that before you launch the core Whatever the core thing that your app does, you know, your
Notion import doesn’t have to be perfect, your Gmail integration doesn’t have to be perfect, but whatever your Whatever the core thing your app does works and that it works consistently. Don’t launch before that. Love it. Couldn’t have said it any better. There’s a term I’m reading Adam Grant’s new book, Neil, and he calls it the imperfectionist. And it’s like indexing like you said it perfectly, making sure certain things work, are perfect, but the other things are good enough. And so,
your core value prop should be perfect. Everything else does not need to be perfect. All right. The which MMP would you put in Absolut? I would go with AppsFlyer. They’re a partner of ours as well. They’re one of the biggest in the name, so that’s who I’ll I’ll say right now. And then Joe says, “If you’re not embarrassed by your first launch, you waited too long.” And Artower, “Thanks, Neil and Steve.” There you go. Some love for that. All right, Neil. Let’s get into the app audit side of our show. And you know
what we like to do. I got so tired of saying we like to start off every app audit with some dad jokes. My same cadence every single time. All right, Neil, you’re the guest, my friend. You want to go first? >> So, uh Steve, why did the dad use AI? Okay. Why, Neil? Because he wanted to be a model parent. That’s a winner, my friend. All right.
I’ll give you a crappy one. Neil, what did the pirate say when he turned to 80? I don’t know. What did he say? I’m 80. There you go. All right, put S if you thought my joke was better and put N if you thought Neil’s joke was better and we’re going to pick a lucky winner to get a free Indie AppSanta campaign. And guys, I do think I have a way to bypass all the warnings that Apple’s been sending for those running a lifetime free offer, and I’ll share that in a different
video, a private video. Maybe H, we got to we only share it to those in our newsletter community. There you go. All right, Apple, we’re going to filter you. So, anything Let’s make sure there’s no Apple people, but I think that will work. So, if you’re scared, don’t worry. I think there’s a workaround and I’m testing it with my own apps right now on Reddit and Indie AppSanta to see if I get any warning emails. All right. We need more We need more votes. Come on. All you got to put is a letter, S or N. I don’t even care if you heard the joke,
right? Just for bragging rights. Okay. All right, Neil, let’s get into Lee’s app and he wants feedback on Let me share. App Store page, growth, monetization. So, this is Neil’s app. Interior design. What do you think about the the App Store presence so far, Neil? Look, I think these are high-quality screenshots and images, so it’s good. I think I would like to see more before and afters. That’s it. I love the fact that your best AI remodel assistant. So,
a little bit before, a little bit after. I would love to see more visuals because it’s such a visual app, Lee, that I would try to put like maybe the modern stuff that you have here, like really show off. And you know most of the prob like the most popular styles. And so, maybe show off the modern styles, the before and after in a couple of modern styles, but overall, I think the the screenshots look really good. Big bold text in your face, super good. So, yeah, I agree with you, Neil.
Anything else you want to point out on this stuff? Um you know, I like the clean design here. Um you know, he’s a obviously designers and architects. It’s probably easy for them, but I think the the shots really are nice and clean here. Yeah, I like it. Okay, let’s get into the app itself and see if we can help Lee. Category is tough. It’s getting tougher, that category. But all right.
Oh, anything in your app, Neil, that you want to show off that you’re really proud of? Um yeah, we can go through it. Um You want to go through it? Yeah, sure. All right. So, uh these are our onboarding flows. Um we’ve actually got uh some new onboarding flows that we’re going to be implementing. Um but honestly, developer time is so um so much so focused at the moment on core features and things like that that people are kind of burning down my phone asking for that we’re going to try to
finish those up and then um and then uh and then kind of work on our onboarding flow. Love it. Yeah, I want to I want to show you a different paywall. I don’t know if we tested that one yet, but I’ll show you that offline with uh the paywall testing. Sounds good. Okay. >> Um Yeah. Yeah, so so I mean, that’s that’s really our main flow and really the magic happens on this on this record screen. You know, you you tap record, it records your meeting.
Uh a few minutes later, you get notes. And Very cool. And uh and they show up in the files tab. So. I love it. >> it. I won’t cause you more. Uh And we try to keep it, you know, clean um and easy and and straightforward to use. Okay, let’s get into Lee’s app. Best design app. Okay, Neil, I might just Oh, Neil. Lee, I might just put like model, remodel,
things like that, home renovation again, just to instead of best design app, like, you know. I might do that. All right, let’s get to know you. I like this. Homeowner, design your space. Okay, I’m going to pick modern. Love these. Kind of fast, but I would probably go for Nah, it’s nice. They’re both nice-looking photos. I was like, “Give me a bad one.” Right, Neil? Give me a bad before, not a nice before.
But I like this. Yeah. This looks like a uh revenue cat paywall. Yeah. What I would test here, Lee, is just putting the And I think he maybe he has tested this because I can see the weekly doesn’t have a trial, but figure out if the if you can remove trial from all these other ones versus
just putting it on annual and monthly. Maybe you can just put it on annual or maybe you can just put on weekly and just play around with that. I like the pricing here as well. Now do you think the annual versus monthly here is like my initial reaction looking at the use it you like the pricing. My initial reaction looking at this is it maybe the annual should be more. Um but Yeah, I think you know I we’ve tested that like in this space you know I’ve seen $50 do pretty well and you’d have
to play around with it. I think the Yeah, I almost prefer to go your route Neil where the the monthly is just a a decoy like you’re not going to pay attention and I want you to pick between weekly and annual and that’s it. Right like I almost want to pick those and for you like it might be interesting to try like a higher monthly that just gets you in there because it’s more of a B2B play and you’re like no this is more for professionals versus students or casual folks. And those looks like somewhat I like these paywalls it looks
like a hard it looks like a hard paywall cuz there’s no X but you just have to swipe down. I do like those type of paywalls. But yeah overall looks pretty decent pretty decent. It’s good stuff. I always like to do this. Why don’t we do this? Like second open and I’m like pressing on this. Okay, nothing. Yeah, okay. Showing the paywall again. Love.
Yep, that’s it. All right, good stuff Lee. Let’s see if we got some questions. Uh do too much tax mixed the jokes. I was working. Thanks Mo. All right, then ask cuz Neil’s I did not get much. I’m dumb. Model parent. You know AI models, okay.
All right. The Joe’s got some good feedback. The mobile action I use mobile action I think it’s really interesting as well. All right H, why don’t you come back? Why don’t you let us know? Let’s see if H got some more dramatic. Like give me your most dramatic reveal to the joke to the the scores H. Let’s see. Okay. Okay. So the score is 11 on five. Okay. And any guess who is the winner? I’m going to guess me. >> Uh no, it’s not you. The winner is Lee.
Congratulations. deal. I owe you a drink. Coffee, beer, wine, whatever you got. Next time we see you in Cali. >> I’m in California I’m going to take you up on that. Yeah, absolutely bro. We’ll do lunch. How about that? Let’s >> All right H, who is our lucky So I want to thank our sponsors Xola which we’re super excited to have them on. If you’re testing out hybrid monetization we talked about with this with Daphne last week hybrid monetization models are going to be interesting.
Uh we’re testing out our app Neil we’re trying to give away credits or you know recording minutes for free by watching an ad and then the with Xola you can kind of do stuff with games and get people to even buy off the App Store. So Xola is a really great partner that we just started working with and obviously Arc Ads for all your AI video needs. H, give it a spin bro. Let’s spin the wheel. The winner
Mo? Thomas? No. Thomas. We’re had some multiple like the same winners a couple times. Lot of good jokes. Yeah, sorry. My joke wasn’t good Mo but thanks for the support bro. All right Thomas just email me steven@addmasters.co or .com steven@addmasters.co or .com they’ll both work and I’ll get you in touch with our team. So Thomas you are the man. Where’s his comment? Where’s his joke? Where do where do you go? Right here this guy.
All right, it’s Thomas Mystrick. There you go. Okay, Neil we’re going to get to the last app and then we’ll we’ll let you go. All right, this person they’ve got a lot of downloads actually 10 million plus. I you’d think we only have small apps talking to us but Audio Lab audio recorder editor recorder pretty interesting here. They want help on ASO and any improvements so we’ll get into the app but like anything here that you want to talk about Neil?
I would say a little bit more modern maybe on the some of the screenshots. Maybe it’s Google they don’t care. I’m making fun of the Google. Yeah, I like it. The thing that I’ve noticed too okay they are doing it. Yeah, this is cool. So I do like the video on Google right? And I don’t know if you’re using custom store listing CSLs Kumar but I would start doing that. What we’ve seen with custom store listings is let’s say you’re going straight after audio editor you can create a custom store listing
for just specifically for that particular keyword and then you can do another one for audio recorder and you can do another one for whatever keywords that you want to target like video editor video compression. So really leverage C CSLs custom store listings with this. With YouTube you know what I found is because I come from the web space as well. We do know that websites and you know blogs with video tend to do better from
an SEO perspective so I started thinking like hey Google owns all of this why don’t we try optimizing the video. You have done that with your video title. I would also leverage in the keyword video keywords field and I don’t have it in my thing right now but in the keywords field tag up your some of your competitors in there. That’s how we’ve been able to sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t but we’ve been able to get visibility through some of our competitors page right here more apps to try by putting their
their names in our video tags video tags. That’s where we kind of hide that we’re targeting those competitors. So it’s think of it as like the iOS keyword field then in the same way for the video tags. So I think through that. But yeah overall looks really really solid. Let’s go into the app itself. Oops. Yeah, you’re in New York yeah?
Uh right now I’m in Houston. Uh we moved recently. Okay. Used to be a long time New Yorker but I’m originally from Houston so we’re back. Nice. >> Yeah, I have a dog I have a young daughter now. That’s the main reason. Oh, that’s awesome bro. Congrats. Okay, let’s get into the app. Woof. I know. Talk about modernizing it right Neil? Oh grant storage. Okay, fine.
Okay. No ads upgrade now. I mean I would just show the paywall let’s see what happens. One year one month one week. Okay. The paywall really needs a lot of work.
Well, I don’t even know what to do. Okay, they just have a lot of tools that we can use. I think I would just instead of putting upgrade now I would just do it. Maybe you’re doing it because you’re Google you’re on Google. What we’ve noticed is on Google you know like putting start free trial tends to work a bit better than not. So I would probably put that in there for you. Like try it out with a trial instead of no trial and then what I
might also do is just give a like I do think that you know hybrid monetization is going to be a thing and I would try where I try to simplify this a bit more from the paywall perspective and try to do one where you can just do ads. So like no ads is like two bucks or whatever it is like a week right? You want one week of no ads and premium access that’s $1.99 so now they’re like oh cool but you’ll we’ll remove the ads and then do the one year
and try to keep it as simple as possible and try out a trial because we have seen trials do better. If you’ve already tested it great but like we have seen trials work better cuz it right now I’m missing the call to action and most people don’t know that these buttons trigger call to action and so they might just look at this page and be like oh yeah I’m out I don’t even know what to do I don’t want anything. So I’m going to hit the back button. So add a call to action in there so that people know what to tap on and the call to
action shouldn’t be get premium should be start free trial tends to work better. We did AB test well somebody in our community did where they did get start continue works better on iOS but start free trial works better on Android. So. And then oh the last thing would be app open ads. That’s what I would try to play around with. Let me Uh let’s quit this and see what happens. Yeah, play around with app open ads. I think that’s going to help you a bit.
Let me see if I can Okay. Merge. I was wondering if that would get a an ad before I start doing this. I didn’t. Anything you want to say Neil? Um no I think you’ve covered it. Okay. It sounds good. All right, let’s see. How are you on time? We got a few more? Sure. Okay, let’s go on let’s go to the questions.
Start AB test yep. How do you AB test? Yep. How do you AB test screenshots? It’s built in, yep, super easy. It’s called product page optimization in App Store Connect, and you can do that. Yeah, Joe kind of tell you told you that. Mr. Mr. Z, is it a bad idea to have a 3-day free trial on both yearly and weekly? I think so. I’d rather just have it on one or the other and pick the one that you want most people to buy. Cuz we had one app in the AI space where we’re giving a 7-day free trial on our
yearly, and then we moved it to a 3-day trial on the weekly. We changed the paywalls around, too, but that worked a lot better. That like 3x our sales cuz people were converting starting the free trial on the yearly, but they were just canceling. And the case that I showed is we actually made more money from the yearly without a trial than we did with yearly with a trial in that preceding 3 months. I think one of the things that’s going on is people want to try because there’s so much experimentation going on in the AI space. Often times people want to try
an AI app on a weekly basis longer than they otherwise would. And then, you know, we’re seeing this and I know others are, they upgrade to yearly, but they do that four or five months after using the app every week and paying for it weekly. Um, and I think it has to do with the fact that AI’s just new and people are still kind of figuring out what they want to do with it, what apps they want to pay for, this kind of like I love that insight. Adam says, do I Steve, do you force quit intentionally to test the app behavior or just your habit like everyone else?
Uh, bit of both. So, when I’m doing it for you guys, I’m I want to see what the behavior would look like. Adam, I want to see what the second open looks like cuz that’s where I get most of the intel. So, if I’m testing apps, I’ll always intentionally force quit just to see what that second open looks like. And that’s where I found some of the interesting strategies where people will do discounts on second open. You know, and that’s where I came up with that idea because I just force quit everything. All right. Neil, anything I missed that you want to cover before we say goodbye?
No, I think we’re good. All right. Check out Neil’s app. It is called Scribed AI, scribed.ai in the App Store, and that is linked up in your favorite podcast app as well. Neil, if the audience wants to follow up with you and say thank you for coming on, do you want to send them anywhere else besides the App Store? >> Uh, just you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, send me a message on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with people there. Nice. All right. Well, next week we’re going to do solo episode. I always try to bake in a solo episode that I so that I can get your questions and answer any of
your questions and kind of think through some of the things that we’ve been working through. So, we’re going to do a solo episode. Join us every Friday 9:00 a.m. Pacific. I know the time went back in the the US, so bear with us, but I’ll see you guys. I don’t I’m not going to do anything else. H, you got anything? Nope, okay. Neil, thank you so much for coming on doing this, my man. Thank you. All right, guys. Thank you guys for watching. I’ll see you next week. Bye.