App Store Optimization AMA for 2025

what is up appnation it is Steve Pou young founder of app masters.com the place you go when you want actionpack content related to helping you grow your downloads and more importantly those revenues and part of that downloads equation is in ASO and these videos always do well when you got a lot of questions for me related to growing your downloads through ASO so if you got a question make sure you leave a comment in the chat and one thing I want to open up with is should I move the start time of this live stream a bit earlier all right if you guys can do the math for me right now it’s 9:00 am in California if you like seven 8 put it in the comments below because I’m really curious to see if we need to do it a little bit sooner especially with daylight savings okay don’t mind me I’m going to Tweet this really quick got whoops wrong profile okay I’ll have to do it a little bit later while I try to do both all right so the the news we have a newsletter if you haven’t joined it make sure you join the newsletter we have a presentation that I’ll go and these are questions that I got from the newsletter folks so we’re going to prioritize that first all right let me say hi to a few people what up Miguel good to see you Krypto crunch Baboo crypto wolf oh we got got competitors here we got the Crunch and the Wolf here what’s up Vic good to see you I like this time what’s up Nathan good to see you from France who’s this Babu perfect time it’s 5 aam okay all right no earlier morning Steve please no earlier for me okay all right South Africa that’s awesome what’s up Shane all right and then I know Rudy I I see your questions all right okay so we might keep it the same then I thought you guys would want earlier ta you they don’t want earlier maybe all right here here we go with hashtag man I still can’t get that premium on Twitter that verified for some reason I don’t know all right let’s get started enough having fun all right lots of people Bera good to see you all right I do want to say hi to a lot of people thank you guys for being here I’m excited all right and look I love doing these Indie app Santa giveaways so if you got a dad joke and you want to compete with me make sure you got something ready all right we’re going to compete here we go all right oh one more thing I do want to thank our friends at Asom mobile.net they are a longtime sponsor of the show we love supporting them too they’re your Ukrainian company they’ve got a great Black Friday deal I’m already logged in here but I will go and show this off to you guys they got a great Black Friday deal where you can get access to all their tools for absolutely free absolutely free and so go sign up for ASO mobile you can unlock it try it out and if you like it well then you can use the code ATMs 40 ATMs 40 to unlock 40% off any of their plans right right so again no risk to you go sign up for all their tools during Black Friday week it’s only available during this week and then if you like it go use ATMs 40 to save 40% off and I’m going to be showing off their tool along the way as you have different questions all right let’s get to it got the housekeeping out of the way Roger says Steve thanks for making this AMA no problem Roger in the App Store do you fill metadata to the character length some say less is better that it that it somehow EMP emphasizes the remaining keywords I usually try to fill them up to 100 what’s your experience in this area Roger I can’t remember if I put more keywords into this app that we just launched and I’m trying to be more private I’m trying to give you guys details but like anyways I’m trying to balance between share oversharing and the right amount so that you guys can it’s actionable I usually fill up the 100% now I’ve seen some apps here’s what I’ll say I worked with a client where they barely filled it up and it was the worst ASO but they ranked number two for a very very high traffic keyword and the reason is they were driving a lot of user acquisition paid acquisition right Facebook Google everywhere they’re driving so they were without just suboptimal ASO they were able to rank number two for a very valuable term and they did not fill it up now when I launched my app this new app that I’m talking about I repeated the keyword in the title The subtitle and in the keyword field all I had was my main keyword so whatever meditation comma app comma free and then I launched it and using some of our ASO tricks we were able to get to number one for let’s say meditation as an example right so test it what I would say is if you’re early on and there’s just a handful of keywords that you really want to rank for and that’s been my strategy if I’m brand new launching a brand new app I’m going to pick three to five keywords and really go all in on those keywords don’t do don’t fill it up to 100 it worked for me and then I’ve then since I think Roger I’ve filled up the 100% of the keywords and now I am still number one and two we’re fluctuating okay do you recommend making social media posts about Black Friday holiday deals or would it hurt the current customers who paid the full price no look look what all use used to it right like it’s almost like we’re we don’t want to buy anything at this point we’re waiting for the Black Friday deals so I would say don’t worry about the people who have bought it at full price they’re not going to care as much and they might not be following you so it depends on your audience but I think we’re all used to it at this point where we’re like oh shoot I think the people you have to be careful about and are the consumers that bought it like a day or two before versus a year or two before so I wouldn’t overthink it I don’t just do it all right Don Dev from Morocco I love it I love it Goan says hey Steve I prepared a couple of questions for you hope you get a chance to take a look yeah I will oh and then it’s on you I’ll hope I’m going to rely on you to try to get some questions and maybe just their names would be good for me too I love that it’s a diverse community so I guess everybody is okay with this startart time is that a yes or a no can I get can I get some feedback all right Johnny I’m GNA assume this is Johnny hi Steve on Android Google ads work pretty good I tried on iOS and was able to get pretty cheap downloads but the traffic is garbage do you find any success with Google ads in iOS I wouldn’t say zero apps but it is definitely a lot harder I think with apple with iOS apps Google has been very very very hard to make it work Google for Google ads for Google no problem amazing amazing Google ads for iOS very very very difficult and a lot harder from our experience too we spent three to five grand on Google using our app testing various other things and just did not see anything good come out of Google so I think with iOS I would probably just focus on Apple search ads ASO and then meta or Tik Tok you know these other channels too so you’re not I guess part of it would be you’re not the only one having this problem Johnny or Joanie okay FEI says hi Steve thanks for all the great info you put out you’re welcome thank you all right we learn by doing isn’t that so how do I find keywords with traction that I can build an app on what does search traffic score mean and what does difficulty score mean and does adding keywords compound does it lead to higher ranking okay let’s start with the first three questions how do you find traction with keywords that you can build on well all that is related to the second and third questions FEI so what I try to find is using a tool like ASO mobile you can put your app or you can put your I would just put your app but if you haven’t launched put your competitor’s app right oh shoot I put the wrong wrong one Vera I think I put in your Android App instead of your let’s see yeah okay this should work better let me do that so for berda because he’s here right the the thing I would say is here’s what you can do you can go to app find app keywords on Asom mobile.net and then what you can do is now this will show you John that’s Verda all right John so this will show you all the keywords and I would sort by search ads that you are ranked four right so these are the index ones that you are ranked for you can go into your competitors ones too and see some competitors see what they’re ranked for you can come here and see keyword finder and see new keywords that you might be able to rank for and the thing that you’re looking for especially if you’re not if you’re going to rely on ASO only right we have bigger clients where I’m like I’m going to go after the most competitive the highest traffic keywords and some of our more bootstrap customers who have not hit 10 grand or 100 Grand in sales well I’m going to try to go after lower competition so with ASO mobile you can see that these they tell you hey these are low competitive keywords right and then you can just do search by search score and so what you really want to find is the right keyword blend of traffic and competitiveness now going back to your question you’re looking for keywords around search traffic score of 30 I don’t have any more data around like bigger apps but I all the data I do have is I have one we had one app and we have multiple apps are ranking number one or keyword around 30 search traffic and that is bringing about there’s a couple of those keywords though but that’s bringing about 100 to 150 to sometimes 200 downloads a day two keywords number one with the ranking of 30 that’s why I say 30 sixf figure business right difficulty is just the look every tool has its own difficulty score so you’re going to have to take every difficulty with the grain of salt the easiest way to think about difficulty is use the scores as a barometer but not as the truth right use the difficulty scores as a barometer and not as the truth okay so complexity is the difficulty score here the the search score is this is what I’m trying to find right and then what I’m gon to also try to find is what’s the question oh difficulty under three right depending on the tool you use either 40 or three or four three or four that’s what I find but what you can also do and I love tools like this is like SoundCloud right so if they say Okay difficulty is not too high but you can look whoops let’s see what comes up I thought I wanted to see C live results there’s a thought there was a way to do live results here yeah okay so this is s SoundCloud right and you can see that for this keyword there’s SoundCloud so I don’t care what the tools tell me because the tools all always get it wrong I care about what I see and so one of our apps that we helped launch in 2023 two years ago at this point we I found the keyword and the difficulty wasn’t under 30 wasn’t under the 40 but I when I searched for the keyword here I was like no one’s going after you want to call your app this he’s like let’s do it and we were able to do that and we just did it for our app and that’s what I’m going to talk to you guys about next week is we built an app was making no money found the right keyword didn’t really care about the difficulty difficulty score I saw the search ads or the search ad score was above 30 did a search for it nobody was focused on it got it number one very easy and then we sold that app recently so I’m going to kind of break down that app and if you got any questions about selling your app let me know and I I’ll break down that process for you but that’s what I would do all right hope that answers your question let’s get through the the rest of these and these these amas my voice goes does adding keywords compound does it lead to higher ranking yeah I mean look the more downloads you can drive Apple will just automatically start ranking you for random keywords too so I I would say like focus on a if you’re just starting out focus on just like five keywords and go focus on those and get them going right because you don’t need that many keywords and then you just need other ways of driving traffic and Apple just eventually rank you better how does what does it mean to rank for keywords that means you need to be in the top three FEI you got to be in the top three definitely top one to see any like real significant downloads but top three to get some downloads getting do I automatically rank if I add certain keywords to my app title not always but most of the time and does the order matter in which keywords are added yes that’s what I will say I’m trying to not overshare everything I need some strategies for my own too and for our clients so but yes the orders does matter all right next question maybe I’ll have to play it John from the UK Ru is here what’s up dude Victor good time all right start time is good yes for New York yes okay all right guys I like it I we’ll keep it we’ll keep it all right let’s get into Rudy because he’s a friend of mine Rudy love you so I’m going to answer your question Rudy says hey Steve upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday got me thinking about buying a hugely discounted subscription to ASO service which one do you recommend the best bang for the but Rudy well great question may I didn’t ask you to te this up but I would say check out ASO mobile right here because it’s free like literally you can test out their software and just start tracking your keywords getting some data on the keywords I really love because most tools Rudy won’t show you the keywords you have to add the keywords and I love any tool that will tell me the keywords because it saves me so much freaking time right I don’t have to think about it they just you would just add your app and they just load all the keywords so Asom mobile.net Rudy and just play around with it it’s absolutely free you have nothing to lose all right let’s get into the newsletter I know you guys showed up live so but I love my newsletter people too okay because you’re just watching these guys at least I have their email address all right the I don’t know who asked this question but we blocked it out hey Steve questions for me is it worth targeting lots of five popular keywords when you are struggling to get higher oh popularity keywords even on 14 I’m only fourth yeah so this is what I would say John do I would say yes especially if you’re having this difficulty and that’s what I started doing too I was like forget it let me just and especially if it’s relevant right go for it because that is part of the strategy you start indexing for a few of these keywords Apple starts seeing some traffic come through and then you go and start track track you know going after higher traffic keywords but this is why I love the app advice campaign because you drive a lot of downloads through that service and it will start getting you index for a lot of keywords so that’s why I like it you know all right can you explain this Behavior I’ve seen lots of new apps taking over a keyword and pushing my app down but I’ve just released a different app and it’s not getting initial boost for keyword and targeting does initial keyword boost no longer exist and perhaps these apps are using black hat strategies note they have very few ratings they could be that’s probably what’s happening in there and that’s probably why I keep s telling you guys look it’s I feel like it’s a necessary evil some of these black hat strategies because a lot of people know about them now a lot of people are utilizing it and you know so it’s important to either figure out different marketing different ways of driving down loads or utilize black hat strategies because you got to think people are either using black hat strategies with ASO using paid marketing like meta or apple search hats to drive downloads and if you’re only relying on wh hat ASO it leaves you very very very like your chances of success is a lot lower right that’s why that’s what I feel so unless you go viral on Tik Tok organic Tik Tok you have to have a different way of driving downloads can’t just white hat ASO that’s not going to do it these days all right that’s it all right let’s get into some of the questions you got here as well all right Muhammad was here this was the first question most of our users from the USA and we want to scale our games on the App Store we are considering using Apple search ads and Google ads for user acquisition which platform do you recommend if it’s a game I would try out Apple search ads first and then maybe move to meta like I just said Muhammad Android downloads Google for Android is better now it’s not to say it won’t work for iOS I just it’s just rare to see it work on iOS it just there’s all there’s one client and every other client we’ve tried it on iOS it just hasn’t worked for Google so all right let’s see Coan Ronnie said congrats on the India app Santa equation acquisition thank you I’m running a deal with you all soon great what country should I expect the most downloads from I assume USA yes it is USA Ronnie sometimes you know we’ll even see China like different countries will pop up but look if India Santa is just a distribution Network right your deal in your app is what gets us whether we get 5,000 or 30,000 downloads one of our clients did a lifetime free on Indie app Santa before we acquired it and we saw 30,000 downloads right 30,000 because it be it got picked up by other deal apps deal sites out there so that’s why I’m like if you’re just starting out give up the lifetime long as it makes sense for you from a cost perspective and just think look the cost I just talked to a client yesterday we did any app Santa Sal like Steve my costs have gone up to $60 a day but he got like six seven, downloads so I was like all right well what let’s calculate the cost like at a week maybe it’s let’s just say $60 to make math easy in 10 days it’s $600 you got 6,000 the usage hopefully will go down you can fix it so it’s not a marketing cost it’s a usage cost right if you think about it so but you have guaranteed downloads and guaranteed users and what you can discover especially if you’re brand new is do you have any faulty features because it’s a free way of running it right just think how many how much money you have to spend to get 100 1,000 users and if you rather if you just need a 100 then maybe don’t do app advisor IND app s but if you need if you want a th on your platform really soon livetime free is the way to go all right Goan since you prepared so much how would you go about identifying keywords to optimize and iPads ranking in the app store oh okay also what are the best practice to incorporating those keywords into the keyword list all right Goan this is great question I love it iPad what I’ve been saying is the blue ocean I saw somebody from MVM they’ve got lot of great apps and a lot of big apps talk about this on LinkedIn he’s like iPad is a gold mine I was like yo I’ve been saying this forever watch this video he’s like yes anyways so what I would do is you have to go higher traffic keywords all right Goan because iPad scale-wise we had one client doing two million overall in sales 1.4 on iPad amazing right so you do the math the you want to find a really really high traffic keyword because iPad has less users less search scores and no tool differentiates iPhone and iPad search scores so you got to really go after the really I would say 40 and up just go after it but it’s a lot easier to rank for those keywords it’s a lot easier to get to number one for those keywords so you have to pick the higher ones and what we’ve done for certain clients and we did this you know we made a thousand organically off of iPad for this other client I’m proud of it because we were spending 2,000 to make 1,000 actually and they were fine with that too but I was like uh we need to get profitable here so we’re barely spending any money on marketing but making about a th000 and you know it’s been fluctuating but it’s all on iPad that’s just my way of saying we went all in on those keywords for iPad so we didn’t care about the iPhone listing for that because it just way too competitive on the iPhone side of things and we optimize for the iPad so the title you can’t differentiate iPhone and iPad titles so we just went we went with the keywords that were targeting the iPad right right hope that answers your question Eric says hey Steve we can use app advice in Indie app standa campaigns to boost keywords do they also be boost keywords which have difficulty higher difficulty this is for a brand new app um for a brand new app Arc like like I said I wouldn’t go after those keywords especially if you’re not running any paid marketing I wouldn’t just go after those keywords I try to focus on 40 and less look even with that if it ranks and nobody’s focusing on it by having the title and subtitle that’s what I mean right if you search if you find a keyword in the 50s and 60s difficulty score but nobody has it in their title and subtitle go ahead and use it but yes it does help but you probably won’t get super high than you would for a a lower difficulty keyword all right go Che here just a second if you’re analyzing App Store rankings for a specific keyword what factors would you examine to understand why competitors are ranking higher than you yeah I mean dude it really freaking depends there’s a couple of FR factors that I’ve been playing around with so one title obviously right two ratings three revenues four black hat strategies and then five click-through rates and the click-through rate is the a metric that I never paid attention to but we are trying out new things for our app where we are we have a new we have an app event we have a new screenshot that we think will help with the click-through rate and we’re doing what we need to do to maintain it so we’re number one right now and we’re trying to maintain that number one ranking as well so I’m trying out new things but those in that order just hit rewind that’s how I would do it all right thank you for all the start time stuff Roger says thank you so much is as always very insightful the lifetime is good but not earlier please man you guys you guys love this late time all right anybody in India okay with this time too oh Victor’s got a oh Victor’s got a dad joke all right we got to remember this Victor you’re you and me oneon-one all right Rudy says Kinder QR Rudy you got a new app bro if I use us index localizations like Arabic Spanish me Spain Mexico I didn’t know that read Russian should I repeat geometry solver as a title in all of them or can I use different titles without Lessing the weight of the US title yeah you can use different title I’ve done it Rudy go ahead Rudy you know I was just thinking about you earlier because yeah I was like we’re doing a revenue cat challenge growth challenge so if you haven’t looked at it go to the revenue cat blog and then you can learn all the details where we’re going to grow in public uh we’re going to pick an app with Revenue cat and we’re going to build in public so you’re going to go work closely with me and our team to grow your app in public but Rudy you’re the first one where we grew in public too all right Yousef said is it possible to see how much a keyword costs or its price range for Apple search ads I don’t think so I don’t think so unless you just put it into the Apple search ads algor like platform but I don’t think any tool is going to tell you is it free the price of platforms like this is high I think you’re talking about ASO mobile don’t say it that and all that stuff okay if you’re talking about that Yin yes ASO mobile is not there is a free plan that you can get started with and then it’s free for this week like the the big plans so you can trust us out their premium plans for this week only to yeah give it a shot and see if it works all right Don Dev says how often should app metadata and keywords be updated to maintain or improve ASO performance at least once a month at least once a month all right Nathan says I trust more live results and difficulty like if the keyword is used by apps and title subtitle and the ratings on last three 30 days are for those apps I agree Nathan I agree it’s just really really hard so I use as a barometer but I also look at the live results FEI you’re here good to see you bro all right soup master all right soup master I have a good Niche I have a good Niche and can and can get users from things like Facebook groups but the keywords are very competitive I plan to Target Apple search ads on competitors any advice I’m assuming sup Master you mean any advice so yes Apple search ads look um and we’re going to do some more videos on Apple search ads but Apple search ads there’s only a handful of keywords that will be profitable for you beyond your brand right so if you’re trying to figure out like hey I can’t make apple search ads work don’t worry if you literally for one of our clients we’re spending $40 $50,000 a month on Apple search ads and I can count on my hand how many on exact match work as an Roi positive so I feel like moving in the future there’s some new campaigns that we have new campaign structures when Apple search ads that we’re putting together for clients and they will only be available in the ATMs Academy as well because I’ll show you how you can set up these exact match campaigns but this other one I don’t want it publicly known because where’s my advantage so anyways we’re going to we’re going to share that only in the academy but I feel like those two campaigns are the only two campaigns you need for Apple search ads sticky games says hi Steve how much time we have to wait until ASO results for after an update thank you siky look it’s usually pretty immediate right and that’s why I’m like I personally believe if you have just done the white hat way it might work but a little bit of black hat always without a little bit of black hat I won’t know for sure if I can rank for that keyword that’s my that’s the stand I’m taking because I’ve just seen it with our apps and I’m like oh we shot up to number one great no and by the way guys like I’ve done this with my own app I’ve shot up to number one using some strategies okay let’s call him gray hat let’s not call him black hat let’s call him gray hat and I’ve maintained it so it’s not like I’m Contin doing it anymore I did it once just to get to number one and I stopped and you and I’ve stayed number one so usually finding the right keyword is the hardest part but once you do you don’t need much more than just a little push Jay good to see you great great to see you oh joy okay hey Joy sorry Jo Ronnie you interested in me sending some of my Indie apppp results data to you after I run my campaign Ronnie yes please if you guys run an indie app campaign one if you’re happy with it definitely share it two if you’re unhappy with it definitely share it with me like let me know and you can even share it publicly we’ll we’ll figure it out like it I want to get better at making this a great platform for Indie developers to get early traction and even for established apps to even grow sales from that right if you’re just starting out do a lifetime free I think it’s definitely worth it if you are established do some discounts because really you’re just trying to get Roi positivity on that campaign right just a couple hundred bucks okay let me get into this got it all right let’s I I see some more questions here and let’s go into the app audit because you know what they want to do this all right so let’s do some app Audits and then Victor you and I will battle in the dad jokes that was alloud right I got to fix that all right hu I’m kidding you want to fix that for me all right all juul says hi I just launched my app in one country and the rest of the world is in pre-order that’s awesome I didn’t know you can do that Jules Jules did you put everything in pre-order and then just hit available in a certain country if you did that I didn’t know you could do that that’s a great idea all right I’m glad I randomly went into this all right Victor here’s Victor’s joke and then you’re GNA do my joke right let me see all right Victor says why can’t all right let me just read I like this Victor says why can’t the T-Rex clap their hands well that’s because they’re dead Victor that’s too on the nose my friend too on the nose all right that’s Victor’s joke and because it’s Thanksgiving around here I’m gonna give you a Thanksgiving joke where did I put it by the way chat great for thaning all right Victor you and me Victor what sound does a turkey’s phone make what sound does a turkey phone make wing wing said wing wing there you go put V if you thought Victor’s joke was better and put s if you thought my joke was better and if Victor beats me excuse me if Victor beats me then he’ll get a free Indie app Santa promotion on us so it’s a very very important vote all right come on Judge fairly I don’t want to just give away all these apps Santa promos all right we’ve got this app and let’s go into this app right now oh if you want your app featured or audited or tear down in a future live stream just go to atm.com audit ats.com audit and you’ll see all the links to have a consultation with me or even sign up for our Academy all right I see some votes coming in thank you guys all right let’s take a look at Hong’s app hung is got this life hacks app and then he wants help with the uiux content and monetization shoot Hong I forgot to put my phone quick time insu on my team he he and I were chatting looking at IMAX then last track of time so it’s all his fault that I don’t have this prepared okay guys all right honk well let me go into as I do this yeah let me go into your ASO real quick and then we’ll get started I know I I listen to my podcast over sometimes I’m like on these breaks are weird how many podcasts actually go into breaks okay my stalled all right here we go H sorry all right I want I want to this is look life hacks really cool but I don’t know how else you can drive traffic so one of the things that I like bring life hacks or you can say life hacks app right the here’s one of the things I would do from an ASO perspective I’ve got your app hung on our ASO mobile see this is why we were looking for new iMacs and my computer’s going crazy okay so here’s your app the problem is there’s just not a lot of download keyword searches for life hacks on the App Store so you you have a discoverability problem right when I do life hacks the search ad score is only five you are ranked number five for it but it’s only five so you want to think through like what are the different life hacks there’s an interesting keyword that I found yesterday for somebody who wanted to work with us and I was like looking at the ASO tools and I was like what this one has search traffic I was like let’s work together on this keyword because I saw like to Nathan’s point and my point like the live results didn’t nobody was targeting and the search score was 44 I was like I never even thought of this keyword interesting so anyways you want to just try to find new keywords that have so you might want to come into ASO mobile do it for free go into the lower competition keywords sort by search traffic and I kind of did this Live 360 probably not worth it maybe this right like and then this is how I find keywords I’m like what does this even mean and so I can click this and see the live results so the keyword I found is knowledge is power I’m like what is that okay there’s an app called knowledge is power or game I don’t know it’s on Playstation anyways so that’s how I try to find new keywords literally that’s how I find out about different things Life 360 life save so that’s the problem there’s just not a lot of volume for this keyword but I know you wanted me to just take a look at the app itself too so I will get into that as well all right I like it got over a hundred people live here that’s cool let’s get into hung’s app bring hacks all right read hacks smarter every day now hung like be careful with this because if you’re seeing a lot of drop off here then go ahead and keep it but if you’re not then I like that you have continuous guas so what should we call call you all right Steve whoops it’s going through the app does this idea seem interesting to you and you might just want to remind people what this app is all about right kind of like Headway does they okay access short form content over whatever I might want to add a little bit more but that’s up to you does this idea seem interesting set up your kids email address start saying them memories and give them yeah that’s cool I like that put a lemon wedge in salt waterer when boil eggs oh yeah love that it’s a great idea soaking your feet in hot water is one of the most effective really that’s great love this when someone avoids your question pauses and maintains maintain eye contact this simply implies that you’re aware of the truth making them uneasy and prompting them to share their thoughts one was there question your question pause and maintain I cont this implies that you’re aware of the okay search custom stuff dog on Google a lot of websites allow you to send them a picture of their dog and they will create a stuff Amal I don’t care about that no it’s no offense Luna she’s over there that’s my dog I got you I don’t need a stuff animal your hacks are ready so your hacks are ready hung not is ready just FYI okay allow I like that ah save your personal hacks I love this I think email marketing is very important guys don’t sleep on it right it’s the stage one of our clients just added email marketing and it’s been around it’s like it took them two years but we obviously making money from this app scaling this app and now it’s like okay let’s do some email marketing and so I love it and he gives me a reason to tell me give me the email now see this is the problem hung you gota start free trial like nobody it’s going to be hard especially with the X up top to start free trial because I have no idea to scroll look a lot of people we assume people know that they can scroll but not everybody knows so you want to put this as high as possible I don’t like this pay wall because the the the $9.99 should be where this so I would change three days free put $99 a year so that I can just easily compare right and then put like popular and save whatever percentage but you want to show it above the fold right above the fold meaning I don’t have to scroll to see your pricing plans remind me before my trial ends cool yeah see like all this social proof stuff you’re burying all of it right it could be as easy as unlock your better self or your new self whatever it is pricing social proof and then features too you can play around with it but that’s what I would do to this pay wall I were you all right tap on the top left category to leave okay love that tap on the right for SM okay I love that category tap on the heart to save yep got it love this promo this is a better promo but put some social proof on here too I started to see things that I’ve seen in apps like s some apps are saying 24 people have signed up in the last hour I think that’s definitely the future and I want to build a widget that you can easily do that for but like do that these are things that work on the web do that too so I’m going to claim now I’m going to hit X but I love that too welcome GIF love the timer on that yeah that’s great it’s really good everything else looks really positive man I think the content’s awesome you got ads on here too nice nice and you got a community that’s awesome bro I would talk about the community aspect of it too like join our private Community you know people love that love it okay great job H hope that’s helpful all right let’s get into the votes it’s aren’t you oh my God we got a lot of comments let me just remember where I left off you’re the OG thank you my friend all right the Shada Panda okay that’s the person I gotta come back to all right sorry Victor but it was all me S but painful thanks good thank you you guys are actually honest Vic you voted too many times so that’s one I think I won that one you you pulled VC voted too many for me no one two three four four versus one two three oo just by one oh my gosh all right yeah see I should stop giving stuff away you guys are always going to support it okay let me get to some of the questions here too holy cow hi Steve I released my app about two weeks ago but can’t drive any download to the app 55 till now how do I prioritize for building new features to make the app better and doing ASO that’s a great question Shido Panda everything is fixable if you have downloads that’s what I would say I built a basic basic app in the very beginning it was good enough and I just got it out there and I want to download you can always improve when you have the downloads so work on downloads first don’t worry about features you think people care about the features they don’t ultimately every equation becomes easier to solve when you have downloads so just focus on that in the time being that’s what that’s why I say give away the lifetime because why you want to be stuck for another two weeks or another two months or some people another two years give away the lifetime get some users then figure out what features to build we we did the lifetime for our AI app and I got some great user feedback that we were starting to implement so it’s a great way to get early user feedback the app had no ratings I just made the lifetime for free and I just wanted to see get early users that’s all it’s there for right that’s why I bought Indie app Santa because I was like like hey this is a great platform for early developers to get some early traction for their app all right what CPI range should we expect on meta for a mental health and meditation app in the USA I usually see five to six but at this rate profitability is tough even with good LTV any advice I would probably say that range you know with meta and E like what you really have to do in one of our clients we are doing this is not like look at your app store connect data too because meta will under report your actual downloads if you just look at meta so that five to six might actually be three to four right and that’s what we saw with one of our clients he’s like dude I can’t scale at this CPI and when we looked at it it was a lot lower than what meta was reporting and I can show them real true data that it it was meta was Under reporting because they started meta in May and if you look at the downloads through app refer through meta in April there was pretty much zero right there was like maybe one or two a day because of social media content but that was it so that’s just my way of saying I would probably aim for I think you can get to three to five right but look at the appor connect data and don’t just look at that true number from The Meta ads Manager David says experiment with the no payment now required text over start free trial the trial increased by 30% but trial conversion decreased by 50% any idea wow that’s crazy that kind of sucks then I usually see the trials increase by that rate but not necessarily trial conversion decrease so I would say okay David get people clo faster to the aha moment right maybe this isn’t a marketing problem maybe this is a feature problem because they were interested enough to start the trial now you got to get them to see the value quicker and maybe test that maybe some subtle UI ux changes to that and then work around that metric to try to get a higher trial conversion Don Dev says when is the best time to start running ads for an app launch how can this boost organic growth look the way I would do this dond if you’re launching an app the formula is app advice for Lifetime free or Indi app Santa here’s the way I would do it okay app advice lifetime free free to run okay been using them for so long love them then couple of months later go to India app centa us and you can either depending on where you’re at with downloads you can do lifetime free again or you can do a price drop on a lifetime offer and that usually drives a lot of sales right so for one of our clients we did exactly that we use app advice to get the lifetime free to boost the downloads to boost the ratings then we went to indap Santa now that we had the ratings we went to indap Sanaa and then we went to to do our magic there and we made the lifetime 10 bucks and we drove $1,000 doll in that day so that’s the value of India Absa you can do it that way one India appsa customer is using India apps because they’re having trouble getting ratings in the US so app advice they require ratings IND app Santa we don’t right so if you want to do Indi app Santa first to get the ratings you can also do that but that’s what I would do because the the Boost in organic the Boost in growth why I like these app advice in the appsa is because we can drive downloads people are less picky about whether you have a lot of readings or not but if you’re starting to run ads my assumption is that if I’m running ads for an app that has like a thousand ratings or 100 ratings it’s a lot better than running ads for an app that has one to five and that’s what I told one of our clients like I he’s like can I should I run Apple search ad I was like you have five ratings and you’re making 100 bucks a month let me try this lifetime Free Hack and let’s see what happens and the first month we made $7,000 because I’ll tell you guys with all these campaigns you only have to be free for two days if your app is good enough people will come in forget to do it and then just end up paying you anyways so you boost the downloads and you actually boost the sales pretty well too did it for our app on IND appsa we made $500 $600 from that campaign and we we did a lifetime free but the days after that we made $600 so you know do the math on that one IND the apps has like $2 $300 to run you made $600 that’s 2x Roi for very little amount right okay Harvey says have you experimented with not having many keywords and increase the weight of them yeah Harvey I have I really like your icon from Suits um yeah we have and look I can’t say for certain if it always works all the time but if you’re brand new and there’s only a handful of keywords you’re going after do it like for our app we just focused on two one main keyword and just that’s it and so we’re starting to see a few hundred dollars in sales and sometimes it’s ,000 like5 $600 in sales for this app that we have all right Rudy says I applied for Revenue cat growth challenge so I count on you to influence the elections here you got it Rudy do my job Captain all right Roman says hey Steve I have a company register for my app are there any advantages for incorporating the company Roman look this is what my team said because I was thinking about this what we launched this new AI app that I want to invest real money into and I was like ah I need to set up the LLC I need to do all this stuff and they’re like Steve let’s not wait let’s just launch it as an individual and then go ahead and move over to the LLC so that’s what I did and that’s what it happened so we launched it that’s the $600 Revenue app that we just made with the Indie app Santa campaign and we’re now I’m going to you know now officially put the LLC together and I’m going to transition it into an LLC so you can what I’m trying to say is time is the most important variable go after that so launch it if you haven’t launched then launch it if the app hasn’t launched all right what’s up nurx AI video dubbing or breathing exercises app which one would be good oh man definitely not breathing exercises so nurx maybe AI video dubbing all right sup Master says that all right rvx says I have an app that making about $50 a month but no ratings and reviews at all I do show The Prompt after the pay wall any reason behind that how many downloads are you getting because only 1% of all the downloads if you’re asking for the rating prompt early on only 1% of the downloads will give you a review so you do the math P pre time says what is white hat and black hat so white hat is just doing the basics pretty much right and black hat would be look there a bunch of black hat one black hat strategy that I no longer do and I no longer recommend but I did do this and it did work is buying reviews okay don’t do that so that’s black hat right buying reviews keyword boost I mean those would be the big ones that I can think of I mean some people people say black hat for like an x on your pay wall showing up 5 seconds later I think that’s fine you know I’m I’m in marketing like I’m not trying to be Shady like I’m not if you great look here’s my thesis if you built a great app and you’re trying out these little things some of these strategies are great for the short term not great for the long term so I’m not saying do black hat all the time I’m just saying there’s a part and stage in the app where you might need it bit more than if you’re later on right so and what I also know is these big really humongous apps are doing black hat strategies too so I know for a fact okay my app has around 12,000 users paying about 99 cents a year oh my God I plan to do a complete redesign and raise the price to reflect the competition in the market is it worth advertising before or waiting after after Matt after for sure sorry can you explain what you mean by clickthrough rate yes I think I said conversion rate I don’t know what you mean bian but I think I said conversion rate if you’re talking about ASO rankings so you let me know for that okay I Matt says fat map Fat Matt I Flo grandfather and old users a lower price but higher than it currently yeah I like it Apple search ads better used advaned yeah NX I look depends sometimes basic Works a little bit better sometimes Advance Works a little bit better I would say if you’re not going to plan to manage Apple search Edge start with basic because it’s easy start with one country and basic okay and then if it doesn’t spend then try Advance right because it gets a little tricky after a while okay juules says yes I did that I got 20 pre-ordered like that okay awesome I Bea all right great the next person is Jay okay Jay I got you anybody got any other jokes here San did you see any jokes next all right nope all right if you guys got one more joke I will compete with you thanks it’s on you wins just put in the com the private comment chat it’s on you if you know who W all right cool let me just answer John John’s questions hi better to rank number one for keyword with search for 30 40 or top three for 50 60 I mean obviously both but I would say number one for 3040 if my opinion because the top three for a keyword that search score 60 if it’s not branded johnes I don’t know long as it’s not branded I’m sure it’s fine but I would definitely try to do number one I think one is always better so I’d always vote for one okay be wolfa is the one that I will talk to all right let’s get into John’s app and John wants us oh perfect John John John just says ASO so I won’t go into the the rest of his app all right let me check out John’s app right here he’s got this baa app bird ID birding app Community AI bird identifier bird have more fun have more fun bird watching sync and grow your lists find new places to go birding connect with nature in just a few minutes John I don’t know if this is true yeah but community community might be important to some so think about moving that a little bit earlier into the screenshots or maybe even highlighting your community somewhere in these screenshots I love this by the way this is a very beautiful app and I love this Niche too I think it’s very very awesome so congrats to you mate on this it’s really cool let me see how well you’re doing in the US yeah it’s awesome dude good job okay let’s get into your app right here John so I’m going to put app keywords for now because I just want to see which ones you’re ranking well for and maybe they’re better in the UK so let’s go United Kingdom okay so yeah then I’m going to do search score here that’s just what I like to see now I want to find the keywords what I’m looking for is to filter off of this yeah looking for anything related to bird because I thought bird call or bird watching would be interesting so I’m going to come into the keyword finder I don’t know why you just got bird ID and birding and not like bird watching here okay let me while that Waits I’m going to I kind of put in a few keywords here so I’m going to put bird ID birding what else do you have in your title bird identification bird silence okay identif ification and then bird watching I’ll put all those keywords we’ll do it live oh I’m on the US oh wow okay not that much traffic here United Kingdom what happened to the US app keywords let’s just move it oh whoops yeah there’s not many keywords you’re number one for John so what I would do is let me go back to us okay same five keywords bird ID birding bird watching I felt like bird watching would have the most traffic and then bird identification yeah I guess okay you you got the right keywords so it looks like bird ID is the best one you had it birding bird identification love it all okay so I won’t say anything else I think you’re doing well from an ASO standpoint you’re going after the main keywords if Spanish Mexico is not as important to you it looks like uh did it did Auto translate yeah then leave it in English bird identification because that’s the the other keyword right bird identification and bird ID so put bird identification in English right here too but otherwise I think it looks really really solid the other thing I like to do is so this is the if it if you were talking about when I said clickthrough rate that question that we got so bird ID this is what I mean oops go for John Ah that’s fine so this is what I mean ah okay when I say look at the the screenshot so I might kind of take a look at this and this is what I’ve been playing around with I’m like okay well this one has bird ID so John this is what I’m thinking they have 10,000 they have bird ID this might not be the right keyword to go after bird ID bird identifier right okay 90 you should beat these guys you should beat these guys it’s not even in English yeah so bird ID is a great keyword there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be number two at least at the very least so work on that but that that keyword you should be number two and not wherever you’re at all right I don’t even know if I helped you so maybe I’ll go through the app because I kind of feel bad and I don’t know if that was helpful okay let’s go into the app and I’ll help you with this I know there’s some questions I don’t think I’m going to get through all of them so we’ll save it for next week and then I’ll come back your answer didn’t get answered come back next week I’ll do another one just like this bird watching for everyone okay 92% love this this these should be in your screenshots too six minutes of daily bird song reduce what amazing it’s great onboarding what brings you most what do you want most out of it probably bird identification for me I’m new to bird watching how did you hear about this you’re a friend love that okay loaded oh man John F that’s not my real birthday but whatever this is great looks amazing John baa love this okay expecting a pay wall love this boom I knew it uh love it so be careful with the free this is what I found I don’t mind it here because you’re not giving me too much but I don’t know what the redeem your first week I like that I like that looks really good yeah everything else looks really solid man love that log your first sighting love it now they got challenges sorry to the audio person podcast don’t worry it we’ll get better I’m just looking through the app and it’s looking good all right everything else looks really solid John I think the only thing I don’t see is maybe where’s the pay wall again this bird plus no don’t allow thank you don’t want to give away my address okay sorry John I didn’t want to do that but I just want to see where the pay wall is again I feel like you might be hiding it that pay wall yeah man everything else looks good yeah go get to number two man go get to number two I mean if you want to do y hat just do ASA campaigns on that but you should be number two for that baa keyword bird ID keyword all right let’s get through a few more I’ve got a call and I’ll try to do it for like 10 more minutes and we’ll go answer try to answer all your questions bewafa says hi Steve I published a new app recently and within 20 days I got to two and three rank for play store but the us retention is only 10 to 20% is there any suggestion to improve yeah focus on the key like the aha moment Google retention might be bad no matter what but the aha moment is really really important for you guys so really figure out like where the Magic Moment within your app is and get try to get more people into doing that one moment so yeah that’s really awesome Play Store Glenn says can you make a recommendation about finding these kinds of keywords just in general without being referenced to an existing app Glen why I like it I don’t know what the however was but why I like to use existing apps is that helps me find the new keywords there’s no way to find it without every ASO tool needs an app right so really it is about that like you use these tools to find keywords let’s you know the client had an idea he’s like this is how I would do it right one of my clients he said hey I have this idea for an app and I was like okay tell me more about it I just put a few terms into so mobile and I was like oh what tell me more and then I was like oh what is this keyword what is this app and that’s how I’m able to find it and build on this so I will share more details Glenn next week if you’re still around I’ll share how we found this keyword I rebranded my app to this keyword it went from making no money to a thousand doll a month and then me eventually selling that app to and so it shows you the power of just one little keyword 30 search traffic was all it was we got to number one to two different versions of that 30 both at 30 and then now it’s it’s gone it’s sold so I find that a success story because dude it was like a year where we were making no money from that app and just one little keyword change changed it forever so all right dick is here says how when you have an app that’s long established in the US but not getting no traction in Europe oh yeah I mean dick like dude like some people are just so us Centric they don’t even care about these other countries and localizing I think that’s where you can come in and fill in the Gap right and I think we work with German clients I’m like why are we focus on you us Germany’s a great country it’s a big country it’s we can get through a lot and so we focus our ASO efforts and saw better success in Germany than we did in the US so I know a lot of people just fault to the US for like sales and yes there’s a big Comm you know we pay a lot here we there’s a lot of people here but don’t forget where other countries too so John Su says can you review my app despite having over 110,000 downloads in turkey and Brazil I have been able to enter the US market I’m struggling to get organic downloads app name is Nur mind yeah I can just go to ats.com audit yeah you can’t cut you can’t shortcut that all right Jules we made an app for dog owners that’s awesome Victor says next time we’ll need to perform some dad joke optimization yeah I’ll help you do that my friend where am I okay Nathan Nathan says thanks for sharing areas so mobile you’re welcome well thank you for to as mobile for always supporting us Nathan says I just found out interesting keywords there cool app figures have a good tracking but suggestions are not as permanent pertinent so it’s hard to find new keywords yeah that’s what I love about them so thank you there you go ASM mobile hilarious she’s here Babu says I have I published an app last month and made a super simple icon myself any new tips on how to get better icon so yeah let’s look for app wait at 10 screen time control I’d be remiss if I just didn’t say work with us but if you didn’t want to work with us because we’re going to be expensive for just that term it’s not bad it’s not bad so let me just look at the icon that’s in yeah Fiverr is a good one and then fivr 99 designs they’re all pretty good for new icons too if you want more cheap like a few hundred type of Icon I’ve gotten some good ones through Fiverr canva try canva there’s a lot of tools how do I measure Revenue coming from users who download my app using Apple search ads crypto if you don’t have an MMP which is a mobile measurement partner they’re going to be services like airbridge apps flyer adjust then you can use a custom product page within the app the app store if you don’t have those and you’re not paying for those tools then use a custom product page and tie your Apple search ads to that ad there’s it’s in the ad section you tie that custom product page to that the ad and you’ll see the sales and downloads from the from Apple search ads I have an app that gets 100 to 200 downloads 100 to 120 downloads organically but people are not retaining I didn’t improve it read time then you know this is where we you either you got to figure it out yourself or work towards getting people to prove your UI ux improve your features this is great that you got the downloads but you need to figure out ways to if they are using your app then we talked about this last week use streaks streaks are a great way to bring users back into your app and keep them into the app so add a streaks feature dick says I have an app that also has a premium VPN how do I get a share of the huge amount of traffic VPN traffic has with a custom store listing on Google so far I’m getting nothing be more niche in the VPN that’s all I’ll tell you be more niche in the VPN one of our clients we saw good success in the VPN Space by niching one level down okay I think app advice in India app Santa had a collaboration duing December last year hoping all yall work something out I’m not going to work anything out Donnie because look I have a great relationship the thing is the reason why I’m not going to work out anything is I want you to have the flexibility to for those two platforms right I don’t want you to because we don’t want to feature the same app over and over again there’s diminishing returns I don’t want to do something so big I rather keep them separate right so that you can use IND the app Santa or paid promotion you can use app advice for free but then you can also leverage one after the other and that’s what I did with my app we did about 12 10 12 10 to 12,000 on app device when we first launched and then did and the app Santa be it wasn’t mine I paid for that promotion and we did 20,000 downloads a couple of months later same promotion different results so I rather not do it all at once I rather you have the flexibility to decide if you want to do both at the same time you do it but I personally we’ll try to separate it so I can leverage another boost every other month so to speak congrats Jules on the dog owner app the useless shorts can you hi Steve can you please advise me on what to do if app is not indexing my app for the main keyword which is exactly in title oh useless shorts you’re going to have to join the academy for that but there are ways to get it index if you want you want for free do the app advice campaign for free lifetime offer and see if it index if it doesn’t sign up for the Academy okay Shane’s got one okay how much time does it take to show to rating show I made a lifetime offer some micro influencers I got some downloads but I still don’t see the ratings problem again do the math if you got 100 downloads you’re only going to get one rating most likely so if you got 50 and none show up you probably got zero all right that’s what I would say two if you got thousands of downloads then you should if you got thousand you should see 10 if you got 10,000 you should see about a 100 now with if you got 10,000 downloads let’s say or even 1,000 and only five are showing up it’s in the realm of possibilities of what’s Happening Apple’s but if you got like 100,000 and only 10 are showing up then you have a problem and Apple’s starting to so I’m not sharing everything so publicly anymore because feel like once I share it it becomes useless at the higher level because when I shared this strategy used to work all the time and now people are reporting back that Apple’s not always they’re they’re getting better about policing their ratings so not all the ratings are showing up anymore my buddy got suit Master said my buddy got bit by a black widow the other day she was 40 all right Shane you and me all right this is against Shane look vote fairly please okay vote fairly all right what about this Victor I’ll give you a discount okay so you got you have a d joke if you don’t beat me you get a discount for $100 and just you’ll email us and we’ll give you a promo code so if you submit a joke you get a discount if you win you get a free offer how about that okay fair right fair for for everybody all right Shane here we go all right Shane says why did the programmer put his job why did the programmer quit his job he didn’t get any arrays all right butcher he didn’t get aray there arays that’s a good one Shane I like that I like that okay all right uh what’s a good one then that was that was really good good uh all right I’ll go with this one Shane what do you call a running turkey what do you call a running turkey fast food there you go all right put because it’s my show Shane put s for Steve and put f for Shane because Shane’s last name is Shane fleager so put s for Steve and then f for Shane or if you want to go s y and SF that works well as well okay what’s up Steve another Steve Steve Carlton new ASO tool haven’t seen this one yet yeah they’ve been a long time supporter Steve come on now all right let’s get into the last few minutes before we say goodbye John says I used to work for I used to work at a keyboard Factory but I got fired because I wasn’t putting enough shifts in there you go all right John you get a discount too how about that there you go that’s the last three discounts all right his on you Shan Shane and Victor Shan Shane and Victor remember the last names too match their faces will you we need a face ID all right ah you guys Ryan says my app is only available in US and Canada for now should I make it available in all us speaking countries before doing app advice I need to look into GTP is that still oh yeah you probably should but if it’s going to delay yeah you probably should you probably should alte I agree sharing Secrets a bullet in your leg Yeah thanks man I appreciate that you guys understand I’m trying to share as much valuable content look I’ve been doing it for years so anyways f f f SF oh no you can’t oh no you did Steve definitely thank you user F okay all right all right Shane that was a that was a really good joke all right Shane you get a free offer to Indi app Santa share your results let us know how it goes but it’s free and then hu will follow up with you but just email me St atms. and then we’ll we’ll take care of it or email better yet indiaan gmail.com indiaan gmail.com if you have any questions about running promos on the India apppp Santa app all right once again guys go check out Asom mobile.net Asom mobile.net again it’s free you got no risk all right Rudy was looking for an ASO platform and Rudy the God spoke to you in the form of me Steve B Young I’m just kidding and then said Rudy we’ll deliver what you want we’ll give you ASO mobile for free for up to a week and if you’re interested in staying on and you love the platform just as much as I do we’ll use the code at Masters 40 at Masters 40 to get 40% off any of their plans ASO mobile thank you so much for being a supporter and hopefully we’ve done well for you as well and Shane you are welcome my friend that was a great joke dude all right next week I’m going to be in LA but you guys wanted me to keep the same time so I’m going to keep the same time I’m going to break down how we took an app making zero for the longest time and sold it and I can’t disclose how much we sold it for but I will disclose how much we’ve been making from the app how many downloads we got and what yeah that’s it I mean I like and how much we sold for it I was like no I’m not sharing that how much we were making at the time and if you got any questions on how to sell an app and the best process is obviously we bought IND the app Santa and we sold this app can tell you from both sides of the equation all right till next time and in two weeks I might be out so stay tuned for that but until next time thank you guys for subscribing if you got anything out of this make sure you like this video and share it with a friend that means more to me than anything else okay that is it have a great weekend