How a Solo Founder Built a $30K/Month App with 5.2M Installs

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0:17What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the place you go when you want actionpacked content related to helping grow app downloads and more importantly those revenues. And today I got a phenomenal guest. He's a returning guest. His first episode that I will link up into the show notes was phenomenal. But today we're going to do something a little bit different. When you've gotten to certain part where you found a little bit when you found success but then growth suddenly stalls, what do you do next? So without further ado, let's bring in John

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1:00John, we got like a country vibe now. John, welcome back to the show, my friend. Hey, thanks for having me, Steve. It's been a No, it's been a whirlwind couple years since it was last on and it's great to be back. I know. I'm super excited. The last one was phenomenal. You talked a lot about like payw wall tests and how adding video to the pay walls actually helped out. And one of the big takeaways for me, John, was you tested so much on your pay walls that you sound you found that like real photos of humans work better than like graphical images, illustrations. So, I loved all the stuff

1:32that you shared. So, you guys got to go check it out. All right, John. So, here's your app, Flamingo, and thank you so much for putting together slides because, you know, I love me some slides. And we're going to kind of walk walk through it. So, I'm going to bring the slides up and

1:47then let you take over right here. Okay. Well, here we go. Pretty simple. Momeo is a an app for public transport. Okay. It gives you live bus times and train times when you're on a train or a bus. It give predicts if there's going to be delays ahead of you and lets you know if there's any kind of alternative routes to your destination. That's kind of the USP of the app. And it's been running for about 10 years now. And over that

2:18time, it's gotten bigger and bigger. More features have been added. In 2021, I switched from inapp ads to subscriptions. And that's where things really took off. And just last year, I was lucky enough to be featured as Apple of the Day on the Apple App Store, which was a huge milestone in my career.

2:43That's awesome, John. Yeah, it's a really really exciting thing. And is is it available just in the US? It's available worldwide. It covers about, you know, three to 400 cities around the world, all of Europe, all of North America, some parts of Australia and Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea. So, with each passing year, I managed to get more and more of the world covered. And one day, I'll have it all. [laughter] I love it. Where did you start? I mean, I know we we kind of talked about it, I think, in the first episode that we did together, but did you start off with the entire world or did you start off with

3:22certain regions? No, the idea was I wanted an app for me. Okay. The the best ideas come for things you need for yourself. And I was living in Edinburgh in Scotland at the time. And even was a way to see the countdown of when the bus would arrive. I wanted to see where the bus was on a map like you're calling it an Uber that kind of experience and that was a big success. So kind of launched in more and more cities in the UK and then when I launched in North America with New York, Chicago, San Francisco and into Canada, that's when things really took off because people

4:04they just they don't just want to see when the bus arrives. They want to see it. They want that that that experience of knowing that it's two streets away and it is definitely coming. That's what makes this different from so many other transport apps. Sorry, John. You you hit it on the head, Dee. I think when I look at Uber, it's not like it's faster than getting a taxi, you know, but for some reason when we see it on our phone where the car is, how far they are, you know, and we get to see it, it feels like a a better experience than just like, you know,

4:40waving down a taxi or calling a taxi, you know, it's about trust, right? It's about reliability and trust by seeing the vehicle on the road coming towards you just feels better than just a a number, you know, just makes a a huge difference. John, I asked be where you started because I think a lot of times we compare ourselves to Mingo of today versus Mingo of 10 years ago when you first started, right? And we try to build the same features as some of the people that we really admire in the space. And a lot of times you don't need all that. And you said launching in

5:16Canada helped explode it. Is that did I That's right. What what happened there? Like was it just a better market to easier go geo to market into? Yeah. Just it's kind of weird in the sense that different cities have you they take the app on in different ways. So like places like New York got it and and even like say like smaller cities like Edmonton and Canada, right? They've really kind of latched on to it as soon as as soon as it launched there, you know, whereas other places like Toronto, they had their own established apps. They've been there for years. So

5:53it's much harder to break into. I see. But it's all about finding the the the right niche, you know, like you say, Steve, it's always about to niche down. And that's what that's what this app does. It niches down into specific cities, as many cities as possible to try and get through the cracks to find

6:11the users. I love it, John. Well, Denise is here. Good to see you, Denise. Joe, good to see you. Shane, Frank, you changed your name. I'm glad Carl says, "This is interesting." Joe remembers this. John, you gave us the idea of the app icon hard press to bring up something wrong item on your last stream. I implement that and have had success. So, thank you

6:30for that. Great to hear. And then the cold makes the bus a ride. And then we got great work and Rudy is here as well. All right, John, let's take it. Well, let's go back to the presentation because you you as you said before I teed it up, something happened in 2025. What happened? So, basically, it was a combination of

6:50things. Yeah. A lot of my customers were coming from New York City and a couple of things happened there. First the MTA launched their own app which put a lot of kind of competitive pressure on me but also some of the kind of the bigger apps in my space started using search ads to kind of target those cities target those keywords that I had previously been number one for. So at that point I'd never really used search ads for distribution. It was always for research to find

7:25keywords that people were looking for. But at that point, I realized I can't just rely on organic ASO anymore. That time's over. Now it's time for to bring in some more distribution channels to augment the ASO that that had already been built up over years. Yeah, I love it. So, John, what's the blue line? Is that the renewals and this is the new what's

7:50the Okay, cool. So green is a new and blue is renewals. Nice. I'll get that soon because one of the big problems I faced was as I was growing, I don't give much thought to keeping subscription customers after a year because there's always new customers coming in, right? But now I had to refocus my efforts on delighting those customers, making sure they kept coming back again and again. So I took a few days and laid out a plan, a three-stage plan to get

8:25things back on course. Okay? And that's right, distribution, localization, and retention. And the first thing I need to do was come up with a a good search ad strategy. There's loads of strategies out there for people to look at and find. You got great ones yourself, Steve, in the in the atmasters academy. And mine's a little bit different in that I wanted to find keywords that I could bid for but weren't too popular because I could see that my competitors because they have such big budgets from VC funding and growth teams. They were going after the big high popularity keywords. So

9:10once again I need to niche down. Mhm. So instead of like searching for keywords, sorry, instead of bidding for keywords like bus times, which is really popular, I would niche down into locations. So like Chicago bus times or New York bus times, because those keywords have less popularity, which means you have less competition. that bring that brings down the the cost per acquisition which makes it more reliable to get revenue back

9:43from that from that ad. So I went through this process. It took a few months of going through all these different keywords to find out which ones were profitable. So you'd collect some keywords, bunch them, bunch them together as a group, and then create a brand new CPP, a custom product page. And sometimes this is really simple. You're basically just taking your 10

10:09screenshots and replacing the first one. So, for example, if the the normal screenshot say the first screen says you live bus times, if you're targeting say Chicago bus, you would change the first screenshot to say live Chicago bus times. Mhm. That way you increase the the tap through rate which reduces your cost per

10:34acquisition. John, are you doing anything here? Watch your ride move on the map and putting more Chicago. I That's a lot of work, John. I like that. It's it sounds like a lot of work, but once you get a template uh system up and running, it's actually not too It's not too bad, you know. For example, with this the screen the screenshot set, I would typically change the first screenshot to have different

10:54text. Yeah. You know, and keep the rest the same. It's really just about keeping people from scrolling. That's all you need to do. That's why, you know, I have the purple icon. That's why I have the the bright purple screenshots and a sea of like white backgrounds and blue backgrounds and green icons. Having something to just get someone to stop just for a

11:18second makes all the difference. Yeah, even your presentations went up a level, John. Look, this is the white one from 2023 [laughter] and then now we got a purple one. It's all about Flash now. John's Flash, Mr. Flash. Exactly. You got you got to have good design, but So once I found the keywords, yeah, I would then give progressively increase the the the CPT, the cost per tap, I'd start at maybe like say 50 or 60 cents and see how much impression share I was getting. It was it was kind of

11:52Go for it. Can I break down because you're a designer, so I'm going to assume the CPPs you kind of broke that down. You you design it yourself. How are you identifying these keywords? Any tools that you're using to identify these keywords? Yeah. Yeah, I use Astro. on the Mac. Yeah. So, it's basically like a kind of ASO keyword finder. So, essentially what I do is actually I'll go back a bit before I do any of that. I would actually use um a small web app called Switcher and this allows me to change my phone's app store region. So, even though I'm in the UK, I can switch to

12:25the US or Japan or Germany. I would then go through the top lists for navigation and travel and look at what's popular for public transit in that country and then note down the keywords they're using and then I start using the the search function inside the app store. So start like start typing in a few characters and see what comes up because what comes up in the autocomplete is what people are tapping on because most people don't tap type till the end. They just tap a few characters

12:56and tap on the first thing in the list. So by grabbing all those keywords, I've got a nice comprehensive keyword list for each country and each location. Love it. So once that's done, go back into search ads, put them all in, and start testing them out. Some are, you know, just they don't have any popularity, so you can't get any

13:20impressions. Okay. Some are too popular. So you got you got competitive bids. You don't want that. I want to avoid that if I can. Okay? Because that would that drives up my cost per tap which drives down any kind of profitability from that keyboard. So that that keyword and so I find a nice selection of keywords in the middle and I kind of increase the CPT until I have almost 100% impression share during the time I'm running ads for that keyword. And how you know if

13:49you have 90% impression share or not? Are you using any tools for that? Yeah, you can use I mean there's a couple ways you can do this, right? You can use like an MPP like apps flyer or adjust but because I'm cheap I bought my own system, right? So basically [laughter] so basically it's a simple system.

14:08That's awesome. That's where chat GPT and Codex come in. [laughter] Okay. I love it. Essentially what it does is once a day it generate it goes it connects to the the Apple search ads API and generates reports downloads them and then at the same time it connects to revenue cat which can send out a bulk report each day. It downloads that combines the two together and that gives me a overview of this keyword has this many impressions. This how much it costs per tap on average. And most importantly, thanks to revenue cut, I now know how many of those taps turned into trials and how many of those trials

15:00turned into paid customers. Okay, we'll have to have you back on if you're [clears throat] interested to share this because I think that's an episode all to know. Okay, I love this AI for but basically now I know if I put $1 into an ad, can I get at least $120 out within three months? That's my that's my give threshold if I

15:23can. And you're looking at revenue cap for this? That's right. Three month. Okay. Love it. And I can share how to do that in a little bit, but I love the strategy. so simple and easy to follow. It's it's don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work, but the way I see it is that the comp the competitors with like growth teams, they're the ones going for

15:41the the big high popularity keywords. I'm down here in the middle kind of carving my way through the keywords no one else looks at. That's perfect, John. It's perfect. And I like that you're looking at the LTV. Why three months out of curiosity? just because we I've got a combination of like weekly and annual plans. So, it's a case of just seeing the kind of LTV over that time gives a good kind of it's not a perfect indication, but it's good enough indication to say this keyword is

16:13profitable. If I keep if I scale this keyword, will I make money from it? If I put $1,000 into this keyword, will I make more than $1,000 coming back out of it? Are you using revenue cat for the attribution to see what the LTV is? Yeah. Yes. It's it's so simple. It's like one line of code in the app itself to pass the attribution along and essentially it's all in the charts within revenue cat and also as part of the bulk export. So they you can say that absolutely they basically upload all the data to S3 an S3 bucket once a day and then my system basically pulls

16:52it down combines it using the the same IDs and the same keyword names to give me the full report. All right. Well, we'll get we'll beg John to come back and share us this exact strategy. But one last question, John, because I think this could be an episode in itself. When you're identifying these keywords, are you are they all exact match campaigns? Have you

17:12gone about setting up? Okay. Yeah, I've made a mistake too many times of doing broad match. There's too much noise. There's too much wasted cash going into it. [laughter] I just used exact match for everything. Okay, brilliant. I love it. And I'm assuming you probably categorized it obviously with the different key keywords like all Chicago related

17:32keywords, CPP, all that stuff. Love it. All right. So, you probably have like maybe three or four keywords in one kind of ad group. So you have one CPP, right, for those keywords. Okay, John, let me let me do this real quick. Oops, wrong buttons. The Joe asks, hey, what was that app again? I use store redirect, which Frank says as

17:53well, but what was the you called it? Switcher. Switcher. So spill it out. S Wii TR. So Switcher without the E. Without the E. It's like a small website that you can you can just save as a save to your home screen and it allows you to quickly choose a country and it will switch your app store location to that

18:13country. Is it an app? Like do you need it the app? No, no, it's a just a it's a small website. Oh, okay. I think it's switcher.io. Oh, okay. Switcher.io.

18:32Okay. We'll find it because I don't think it say this. No, I don't think but I will I will send the details after the show and you can put it in the show notes. Okay, perfect. Thanks, John. All right, let's get You got a lot of stuff here and a lot of great stuff. So, I don't

18:48want to delay any anymore. That's right. If you need a bathroom break, just let me know. We'll be here for [laughter] we'll be here for a while. I've got an adult diaper on. I'm ready to go. Four hours, John. [laughter] Okay. So the next step of distribution is I wanted a way to get more visits and downloads without paying money. And one of the big changes since we last talked

19:11is the rise of chat bots like chat GPT. More and more people are using them almost like a search engine. Okay? They ask questions like when's the next train from Union Station. Now these AI systems don't have that information. you have to go out to the web and get that information. All right. So the first step is for me I wanted to make sure was front and center

19:38when AI is recommending transit apps. So here's what I did. Yes, I completely reformatted my app store description because that your app store description page on the web, your listing is probably the most authoritative page for your app anywhere because it's Apple, right? It's Apple's app store, your listing. So, search engines will give it so much more weight than just

20:07some random website. So, I changed my listing to include a Q&A section just like chat bots love this, right? They love this kind of Q&A systems. They can basically just grab the text and put it back out to the user on their site. So, anybody can do this and I definitely recommend it. It's so easy. Just go in and change your App Store listing. Add to your

20:34description. There's plenty of space. Add to your description. That's it. add a few Q& A's in and I'm sure you'll see some results. John, how did you know what to ask yourself in a way? I'm looking at from the the customer's perspective, they're looking they don't ask for like countrywide questions. You don't say, "What's the best public transport app?" They'll say, "What's the

21:00best way to find my bus in Chicago?" So knowing that I've brought the Q&A down by location like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and this is like different on each storefront. So in Canada, you'll see the same questions but for Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, and that replicate that across all the different storefronts. Really, really Hey, look, I see Switcher right here too in the screenshot. I know you guys can't see it because it's probably too small for you guys, but yeah, I love it. Should I go on to the

21:34next screen, John? Go for it. Yeah. All right. All right. So, this is the next stage. I have all this data, like hundreds of gigabytes of data locked behind the app. Okay. I thought, you know what? Let's make it easy for AI to recommend Momeo by giving out this information for free. Brilliant. Right. So I basically handcrafted this website livebus times.org or to give out live bus and train times, route maps so that AI and search engines would see see it as a kind of an authority, a trusted

22:16source for public transit information. And the way I designed it is it's handcrafted. Doesn't use any frameworks like Tailwind. It's just basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. because it needs to be fast. It needs to be very reliable and also you can't see it but within each page is a whole bunch of structured information that's invisible to you and me but search engines and chat bots can pick up the information grab it and use it for themselves. So when now when you say when's an exchange from Union Station, I can go to this website, grab that information in a structured way and

23:00bring it back to the user. Wow. Showing my my website as a source. You're brilliant, John. You know, it's not just me. Joe says the same thing. Petition to bring back John every month. All right, John. So you need you did this to yourself. All right. You did this to yourself. [laughter] This is brilliant. I love it. All right. So this is the get a real chart from Cloudflare showing how many visitors we've had for the website over

23:29last over the last month. Bro, and you see it's just getting bigger and bigger. When did you launch this livebusign? September of 2025. That's right. All right. It was really simple. Ordered was I submitted to Google search the Google search console. I submitted to to Bing which also chat GBT uses for their search index and I created a site map as well. So basically I built a system that basically regenerates the site map every day because you know bus stops and train lines are always changing. So, by having a huge site map for every page, and there's millions of pages on this website, the search engines can continually

24:14reindex, grab the information they want very easily. Well, John, you're getting a lot of praise. John, I know John is a legend. Saw him on other podcasts, too. Hey, John, we're going to sign an exclusive contract with John. Okay. [laughter] This is my favorite. You know, this is my favorite, Steve, because we can really do a deep dive. We can really get

24:35into the weeds and this stuff. Yeah, I love it, bro. Thank you, man. Thank you, brother. Okay, check out the next one. Go for it. So, this is the result. Wow. Okay, so now we've got like 1,200 searches from chat GBT per day. This is people actually asking a transit related question like when's the next bus from X. It comes to the website, gets information, brings it back and from that because and because it shows this website as a source, people tap on that source, that link, they come to the website and at that point they see advertisements from Mago. They see, hey, if you like this, what about being able

25:16to see your your bus on a map coming towards you? So I get roughly between 70 to 75 downloads per day attributed to the website. Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. How did you know about the number of searches, John? You can see in in uh in Cloud Player, I use I I don't use like bulky web analytics. I I keep things really fast and sharp. So player has like a free um anonymized analytics system. So I can see how many searchers coming in from that that user agent which is chatgbt-

25:56user. Wow. That's the the the system that actually goes out and searches the web for a request made by a user using the chat GPT app. All right. Talked about distribution. John want to go back to your three three-prong process. Distribution. You nailed that. Brilliant stuff. Literally, we could probably do episodes just on this AI stuff and the Apple search ads, John. And then now we're going to get into the localization aspect of it as well. And so I'll bring that up right

26:29here. Okay, this is this the second part and this is a big one because until this year until last year I had maybe 25 different uh localizations on the store for different countries and different languages but they all kept pretty much looking the same right it's basically the the left hand is a US English version and the rest were basically identical but the text was translated so I decided to spend a long time in 2025 five doing AB tests on what actually works, what actually resonates

27:08with each audience. So, for example, you see with the the German one, it's kind of the same. The text is bigger, a shorter message, but with the Italian, I found through AB testing that they love widgets and love activities. So that became the the the first screenshot in the list. Wow. With with the Dutch by moving just by moving things around for a test. I find that the law wreath and the and the the testimonial that really resonated with Dutch users. I think the Japanese one is really fascinating because when I actually looked through the Japanese app store and looked through the all the popular apps that people were

27:54downloading, Japanese really prefer lots and lots of information like very little white space. If you ever go to like a Japanese website, you see it's just filled with stuff, right? And the same with this screenshot. It's basically trying to get as cam as much information as possible into a screenshot because that that's what

28:16works in Japan. Oh my god, that's freaking brilliant, John. You're brilliant. And no, it's just plain research, Steve. It's just doing the work, checking out all the different app store storefronts, seeing what popular apps are using, and then you copying some elements, trying it out, doing AB test for like two weeks or a month to see what works and what doesn't. And there's no magic here. In fact, over the course of maybe the last year, I've run dozens of experiments and most of them failed, right? Most of them just didn't go

28:56anywhere. Nothing h nothing changed. It's only when you do like maybe the 10th experiment or the 20th experiment, you actually start moving the needle. You have to put the work in in order to see see the results. That's amazing. Well, congratulations, bro. I then thank you for you know only giving us the best being like all right I failed a lot here's the best ones that I thank you for share Frank says thank you for sharing John this is amazing so I want to make sure you get your applause as well [laughter] and then now you're going into price optimization so part of localization still this is a big one and this is so easy to

29:33do as well like I think everyone should be doing doing this you see because when you set a price for a subscription or an inapp purchase. Apple gives you what it thinks is to give the the relevant price for each each country. But that's, you know, so many countries have different kind of like exchange rates with the US dollar. It doesn't make sense, right? So by changing the the prices for non US countries to be more kind of resonant with the the purchasing power of that country, you can make your subscription much more appealing, especially in like tier 2 countries where they may not have as much money to

30:22spend. By shifting your price to match their purchasing power, you can make a big change. And it can be so easy. I use this tool called Subkeep, which basically it's basically a web app and allows you to go in update the prices for all the all the different uh locations. And it has different like price indexes. You can use like a big Mac index. You can use the use like a Spotify index which kind of tracks what Spotify charges in each country. Um once you make the changes, you push the button and it all flows

30:58straight to App Store Connect. What? job. Crazy. Yeah, that's here. I've got the the website up, but this is it. And what what index did you use, John? I use a combination of a subkeep like average index. They basically combine all these different indexes together to give kind of an average number and also a few sometimes the Spotify index was more reasonable and then it would change some prices because

31:28I like having rounded numbers. Yes. On my pay wall, right? This is a it's been around for a long time, but instead of having $24.99, you change it to 25.00 and then in your app remove the 0. It just looks like$125. And that seems to add a few percentage points onto your conversion rate just by doing that. Just by having a nice round number really. So you just do 25. Not even

31:562500. Just instead of 249. That's it. Wow. Okay. I love it. John, you're everywhere. Look there. There you logo is right here. Mingo. That's brilliant, bro. The great guy who runs it. is got one person who you started this this website and he was great when I needed like a some technical advice he was right there great guy great guy all right I'm going to I'm going to reach out to him this is seems like a cool tool I'm going to definitely check it out too all right John okay so what's the result so I ran an AB test using these different prices for three months so 50% of people in every

32:42country would see the normal Apple mandated prices and 50% would see the prices get updated to subkeep and the results were astounding. Track conversions went up by 17% and revenue was up by 23%. And I got to mention by the way the the US, Canada, UK, they didn't change prices, right? It's just the the secondary markets

33:12that change prices. Wow. Love, love, love all of this. And John, another John says, I was getting confused like I just How do you learn how did you learn patience with all this analytics and all this optimization test? Because you said it. You said, "Hey, I failed more often than I succeeded. You're the big wins for me."

33:34How did you practice that patience? You're a lot more calmer than I am, John. It's not easy because some days you wake up, you think that it's not this this test has failed again. You think, is this is this how it's going to be forever? Is this is it done? And you just you have this image in your head of everything just crumbling to dust around you. But you just need to get up and get on because there is always levers you can pull, changes you can make, probably things that you didn't even think of would be important turn out to be really important and those are things that they

34:10could push the needle forward. I mean, this just says it alone, John. The fact that you are AB testing the different types of screenshots and the different This is a hard work. This is a lot of work and for you to do it, it it shows you just the process and sometimes this is what I told my team John too and the approach that I had is like you know you think about any great like athlete it's always about like the process of testing and implementing practicing the different moves versus the end result because if we're just Jordan said this too he's like look if I was trying to be

34:45the greatest basketball player of all time I might have never gotten there but I just kept practicing and practicing and practice practicing and practicing and that's what John did too. Now that's why I tell my team it's like I don't care about the results. I don't care if you get any case studies but we have to keep moving and we have to keep trying new things otherwise we're going to get stuck and kudos to you man because you were already doing very well. Then you're like hey something's happening here. How do I do even more? You just got super granular. Love it. It's very

35:14inspir in inspirational. Thanks so much Steve. I appreciate it. Yeah man. All right, John. John gets uncomfortable with compliments. I can see. [laughter] All right, let's go into the third phase, and that's retention. John, you said valuebased onboarding. That's right. So, one mistake I made in the past was I once I found the perfect onboarding and payroll, I didn't change

35:40it. I was too afraid to, right? because I was worried that if I change something or tried to experiment it would just all come crashing down and this was like it was working so well I didn't want to touch it but that's my mistake I should have been experimenting all when things were good I should have still kept on experimenting still moving because that's the only way to keep moving forward so over the course of last year again just like with the localization There's probably this is this here is a result of 30 different experiments, [snorts] different AB tests. And some sometimes there were big changes,

36:25sometimes small, but what worked in the end was I realized that my customers tend to download the app at certain points. They're not just sitting around and kind of scrolling through the app store. They're at a bus station. They're at a train station. So, you got to make the onboarding short because I tried long onboarding with like lots of

36:49questions and people hated it, right? They just drop off. So, I needed a short onboarding but had a lot of impact. And that's really difficult because as a developer, as a founder, your your instinct is to go for for features. But in actual fact, what really resonated was forget about features. What are the

37:11benefits? Don't don't show UI. Don't show live activities. Show what what this app would do for you and how it's going to make your life more convenient. So, love it. Let's break that down. Get there on time. Stress free. Share your location. Never miss your stop again. Be the first to know. Join millions. Saving

37:33time. Brilliant. And the the fifth screen, Steve, that's you. This is something you've said many times. Always have a kind of a warm up to the pay wall. Don't just like have an onboarding sequence and then boom, here give us some money. You know, it's this kind of shows social proof but also kind of gears people up to say, listen, if you want all the features of this app,

38:00get for 7 days. We have a we have a premium a [clears throat] premium tier just for you. Yeah, I love it. This is this is great. And one special lever I wanted to mention here is weekly pricing. Avoid avoided it for years. Used to have like annual, monthly, and lifetime. Back in August, I switched to annual, weekly, and lifetime as an AB test. And the results were off the charts. They

38:29almost doubled my trial start rate. You know, it's we weekly is interesting in the sense that it does several things. Number one, it really kind of grounds your annual pricing. You can see 90% off for annual now because the weekly is more expensive compared to annual. Yeah. Over a 52- week period. But also so many people just want to try out an app and areite quite happy with weekly pricing that suits that suits their lifestyle. Lots of people are still paid weekly. So this suits them and the way they operate. So by changing from monthly to weekly, I was able to increase trial start rates and increase

39:17revenue significantly. John, if I may too, what I love about your week, the way that you messaged the weekly was you say pay as you go, no commitment. You're not just saying it's a weekly subscription. You literally just say, "Hey, pay as you go." And so your whole valuebased onboarding is true on your on your payw wall as well. I

39:38love it. Thanks for sharing that. All right, John, I got a uh let's let's finish this stuff. And I I see your question. I know a lot of people want to I mean not a lot of people but some some people second guess that but I'll get to this. So let me finish this up with the

39:53retention part and go from there. This is this is great. I love this. This is a basically a reverse trial. Okay. Because because it's a short onboarding. Yeah. To keep people from dropping off. I wanted to show people that all the features in the premium tier of the app. So, how it works now is you have a reverse trial. So, if you don't, if you just close down the payable, you still get a week of premium for free because I want you to try out the app as it should be with all the features unlocked and it takes you through a quick kind of post onboarding process where you can

40:36customize your notifications to get the theme of the app. and just give it also gives you a way to say look there's more features here but we're going to have a small button in the top right corner you can tap that anytime and you have like video tutorials and you know advice on how to get the most out of the app and this was a real game changer because before very few people would start a subscription if they close the pay they would just become free users and see a few ads, right? But now the that's changed completely because more people get to everybody gets to to enjoy 7 days of

41:23using the app to its fullest with widgets and live activities and you know delay alerts and all all the cool stuff that's locked behind the pay wall. They get to use it. they get used to it and so they're more willing to to pay at the end of the seven days. I thought so before I think it was like 0.4% of people would become a paid subscriber if they close the first pay wall but now

41:52that number has increased significantly. Yeah, that's insane. So you even tracked it well on the reverse payw wall. So, after the seven days, do you still give them an additional 7-day free trial or do you do you have a different payw wall? Now, it's basically a few things happen. So, during the if they go for if they don't if they close down the pay wall and they go into the reverse trial where they get 7 days complete for free, then on day five, I send them a notification saying you're on day five of your 7-day trial, tap here to find out more about the features. And then on the seventh day,

42:27they get one final notification to say, "Listen, here's a discount." And that's how you give almost like a win back campaign, but before they become real customers, you know. Got it. So, you give them on the seventh day, you give them a discount on the annual. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Beautiful. That was loud. Okay. [laughter] Oh my god. Like what a

42:49huge difference, John. This is insane. Like this is from like not even 1% not even.5% to now 4.5%. Which on a normal app of 4.5 is pretty decent for trial activations or you know but this is like legit purchases now right and that's it. Yeah. So this is after people have closed the pay wall. No, [clears throat] they're not interested. But by showing the value, showing them what they could have, Steve, for your listeners, I'm going to tell you, widgets and live activities really are the lever to use if you want

43:24that extra monetization opportunities. Those kind of features where those kind of outside the app features make all the difference. If you can find a way to get get those into your app, people love widgets. People love live activities. Interesting. I love it, John. Okay, there's so many great ideas. Let that sit at home. Thank you, John. Thank you for that moment of silence. All right. And then the last point is make everything

43:53sharable. Oh, yeah. This is a big one. So, this is another way of it's almost like distribution as well. Yeah. But by making it so that you can share your your ETA with your friends and family, it almost becomes like almost like a like a version of life 360 where you imagine your kid takes a bus to school and they can share their journey with you the parent. So you can track their bus, track where they are just now and make sure they get to school safely, right? And people love this. They love being able to kind of share with anybody and you don't even need to have the app

44:33to use it because it's a universal link. So there's a website behind it that basically mirrors the app that one feature of the app as a website with obviously an advertisement to download the app as well right here. Beautiful. Love, love, love. All right. And the last but yeah I think for your your listeners you know if you got anything that you can share where it's like progress if you're doing like some kind of tracking app or something that you can you can you can post about on Facebook or Instagram or whatever then get it out there because anything that can make your app viral in that way is always

45:14worth doing. John, this was the message that you would send people. That's right. So, this is for people who've already subscribed. They may have a monthly or an annual subscription. [clears throat] And thanks to Revenue Cat, I can see if someone's about to churn. At that point, I can send notifications 5 days, two days before the subscription ends, and they can get, you know, I'll show the features that they'll miss out on that they probably got used to because what I find is when people stop subscript subscribing to your app, it's not because they don't like it. It's because a lot of time they've actually forgotten the value it brings or even

46:04over the course of the year you've added so many new features they just don't know about. So even a small reminder of what they could miss out on can push them into subscribing for one more year. John, the So, it's not technically because we know when somebody cancels a trial, right? Yeah. So, you're not triggering this when somebody cancels a trial. You're triggering this based off of Revenue Cat's churn predictive churn data. Is

46:32that am I understanding you correctly? No. Predictive? No. Cuz with Revenue Cat, if you export the data, like for example, I've got a a web hook set up to my server from Revenue Cat. So when something happens when someone give cancels the subscription okay that's sent to brand new cat which sends it to my server and then my system will kind of check that and once it once it's 5 days until the scription ends I can send them a notification that way so I know they've chuned now it's just a case of trying to

47:06win them back. Got it. I love it. And I I love this too. There's a couple of things I love about this is like we as humans there's always loss aversion. It's psychology in terms of marketing. Loss aversion means more like instead of like us gaining something where losing something is greater than gaining something. And this is absolutely why I love your reverse trial cuz you're like, you know what, on me 7 days, but I know you're going to love my app so much that once you get and you have them doing stuff that, you know, tie them get into the app a little bit more, tie them

47:42into an app, and then they say, you go, "Okay, now all the things you love, they might they're going away unless you want to pay for it." I love it. I love it. This is so good. All right, John. Anything I missed, you want to make sure you're covered. We're at the end of the slides anyways. But I think the only thing I know you say a lot of time all the time, Steve, but ratings are the lifeblood

48:06for your ASO, for your keyword rankings. And I've tried different strategies over the years, but for me, the most reliable is the aha moment, right? When someone goes into app and they they tap on a tap on a bus and see the bus moving for the first time, that's when I hit them with a waiting prompt. not on boarding, not on the first first try, but just that very moment when they're happy and that's what keeps the ratings

48:33flooding in. Yeah, love it. Love, love, love. John Contourus says, "I bookmar this video." Thanks, John. [laughter] John, I love your advice on this. What would you give feedback for? How can I push my app from zero downloads to first 10,000 downloads? What would you tell this person? Okay. Well, I think and I've tried this myself in the past and I think it still works is you're a big proponent of this Steve but the kind of indie app Santa

49:02app advice campaign. Obviously, you can't really give push your ratings too heavily now, but by getting those downloads and having a ratings prompt at the right moment, maybe maybe not even the first time you use it, maybe the second or third time you use the app and after you complete the task, you can get lots of downloads and get reliable, attributable ratings for your app as well. That would be my go-to. Thanks, John. You know, I think it means more than you saying it than I, but what I how would I answer this too is John kind of gave you the playbook, you know, like this works with ASO as well, like

49:45identify those keywords. I've been saying this all along. We had one app, you know, we took to 10 figures a month and it was just finding these like you said, John, I mean, I would say I said 30, but I love how you have put it as 20 to 50, but identify these keywords. They exist. It's getting harder these days, but that's the quickest way with the lifetime free offer. Look, it's it's getting safer and we we got some videos that I'll record for you guys as well through India app Santa. But anyways, John said it too. If you want to do it the the really longer way, I guess would

50:16be just do this. John, I would love your take on this. Like I almost feel like with ASO, it's getting harder and harder these days that I'd almost just default to this. Like this this is what I would say. This is how I would answer it. I think it's a combination of both, Steve, because what I found is, and many other people have found this, if you have got a strong ASO presence already where you got the keywords kind of locked in and you have top 10 for medium popularity

50:43keywords. Mhm. Introducing introducing search ads increases organic ranking for related keywords. So you might if you got five keywords are kind of similar but you run search ads on one you will see your ranking for the other ones rise as well. So I think you really just need the days of organic ASO being your only lever that's over that's gone now really sorry it's done but 100% but introducing really targeted search ads can really drive that ASO as well. Yeah,

51:22they're basically intertwined now. I agree 100%. All right, Leo says, I think Leo, correct me if I'm wrong. I think this is Leo. Leonardo, do you think reverse trial might work in apps for kids? Meaning that the notifications might not be so powerful for parents. It's good. It's a good question. I don't have too much experience with that, but

51:43with an app for kids. Yeah. I mean, maybe not notifications, but maybe at the end of the seven days, just if you need to put up a hard pay wall, you know, so the parents are kind of notified, the kid comes up say that's not working anymore. And you the adult sees the pay wall. Oh, right. Okay. I understand. So yeah, that's I probably go back and I wouldn't I wouldn't really rely on notifications in that in that sense, but definitely have a hard pay wall at the end if if your if your costs

52:19require it. Yeah, love it. All right. Gian says, "My app is not an app that users are searching for in the app store. How should I approach marketing? Probably organic UGC, right? I'm in the thrifting reselling niche." [sighs] That's a tough one, isn't it? Because when people search an app store, they're looking for a solution to a problem.

52:43Mhm. Right. With my app, it's like Chicago bus times. Yep. Right. That's what we're looking for. With this, it's Yeah, it's definitely more about I would go with like Reddit as a start. Bring something new to the space. There will be subreddits there that are part of that whole community and by give introducing yourself in a nice way and showing what the app can do and how it could actually save them time, save them money, save them effort. That that would

53:15be my go-to. Yeah, I love it. I'm sure there's a thrifting community on Reddit. What I would also say is, you know, Poshmark is there, Tread Up. So, there are apps out there and I would just study them, Gian, because I know people do search for like old clothes and one client that we had, he said it's a great idea, John, but one client we did have, I was like, "Oh, there's nobody searching for this." They were ranking, John, for like all these keywords that have five search traffic and they were they're doing about, you know, three to five grand a month. And so it's not like huge amounts, but they

53:49had 90 keywords that had all search traffic of five that they were number number one for. And it would be like buy old clothes, you know, it would just be these random keywords that are like so tiny, maybe like one or two searches a month, like a month, right? But they so it'd be a quantity game, right? All kind comes together as like lots and lots of downloads if you have

54:12all these number one keyword rankings. Yeah. And kind of like what you said right here with your search queries like it's like you know this is a quantity game right like that's it. Yeah it's a quantity game. So don't be afraid to niche down as well. You know if like basic keywords like thrifting doesn't work. Think about what are what what's the problem people are trying are trying to solve and then search for that. And you might find this in the autocomplete there might be keywords you might not have thought of that you can then target

54:43as well. There you go. There you go. John giving away free advice right here. John, how are you on time? I want to respect your time. I know it's a little bit late for you. Don't worry, it's all good. Okay, my kids are My kids are at a birthday party just now, so I'm I've got free time. [laughter]

54:59All right, beautiful. All right, John. Well, let's go into the app audit. And I like to start off every app audit with some dad jokes. [music]

55:12All right, John. Now, do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? I'll go first. Okay. So, how do celebrities stay cool? How do celebrities stay cool? How John? They got many fans. I like it. I like it. All right. John. John. I was assaulted by a man with a block of

55:36cheese. How dary. [laughter] There you go. a little pun nature. Put S if you thought my joke was better and then put J if you thought John's joke was better and then you know H is not here to pick a winner but we'll figure out something just for I was going to say it's a curse word but

55:59please vote. How about [laughter] that? All right John let's get into the app audit. And if you want your app audit in a future live stream just go to appmasters.com audit appmasters.comit. All right, we got the first app right here, John, that I will pull up. It is from Dan. It is called Talkable and it is to help with speech therapy. So, John Dan wants advice on actionable tips to enhance app growth in terms of both number of downloads as well as revenue and profit. It is a paid upfront app, [clears throat]

56:30but any advice for him job? Well, first of all, let's go through it one by one. Yeah, I love the app icon. I think it's really nice. I think having like a a mascot as your icon is a great move. Okay. It humanizes the app makes people more comfortable and familiar with it. Really great. The first screenshot, the elements are there, but they're not quite working for me. Okay. First of

57:00all, the there's not enough contrast. You got a kind of teal kind of greenish blue background with quite thin writing on top. If you're seeing it on a phone screen, it's almost invisible. So, here's what here's my thoughts on this one. I love the low wreath. Always have a low wreath with the five stars, but let's give reduce the text. Let's even get down to maybe three or four words and make it make it bolder. And the same with the the the testimonials. Again, great move. I've used it myself to create effect, but let's see if we can reduce that to maybe 10 words max and make it bolder, bigger, try to get

57:44catch people's attention, you know. Yeah, I love it. I love it. And I think, you know, kind of like what you said earlier, John, with the the benefits and the value and kind of like what you did on the onboarding, you know, you didn't talk about there's a lot of features specific 10 weeks with the speech therapist, new videos each week, learn baby sign language, but it's almost like I want to feel like I'm not alone. I want to feel like my baby's okay. I want to feel like, you know, almost like this is not I can help my baby, right? And that I'm not the only person with

58:17dealing with this. So I think community would be interesting but you know like kind of like what you said lead with more valuebased benefit oriented screenshots versus just like weekly updates and D. It's like no I mean you kind of said it best right here. See when your bus is or train is coming.

58:35That's it. It's not like you know. Yeah that's it. But one thing as well is that you can get away with using big photographs for one or two of your screenshots without any kind of app UI. I think Apple rejects some kind of screenshots if you got too much going on without any kind of UI or phone phone screens. But if you got like a set of 10 screenshots and maybe number two is a a really nice photograph of people with a little bit of text, but the rest of your screenshot say is app UI, you can get

59:16away with it. So that's a thought as well. Love it. Okay, great feedback. And in terms of growth, anything or Dan? [sighs] Definitely niche down. I can see there's there's lots of different kind of aspects to this app, lots of different use cases. So again, you said it's many times, Steve, but bring localization in. And by that, I mean, if you're targeting the US, then use up all the different localizations that get indexed for US English, like Mexican, Spanish, Vietnamese. If you're not using them already for their own countries, then use them to increase your keywords, your keyword list, and really kind of target down into specific

1:00:08niches, specific branches. Try and grab as many low and mid popularity keyword keywords as you can. Yeah, I love it. One thing that I've seen work with other apps too is this was years ago, John, a guy was like, "Hey, you can make Apple search ads work with paid apps." And a buddy of mine, Marco, did exactly that. And he was able to start scaling. And I think at the time I talked to him is only about $1,000 a month, but he's able to scale it to $10,000 a month. It was a upfront

1:00:39paid app and running Apple search ads. So the more niche you can be, like you said, the more targeted, especially with your 20 to 50 keywords, they're more niche, more targeted, highly relevant. Bidding on that would you already know your numbers, right? If you can get a cost per install lower than 10 bucks in the US, you're winning there. And then so John's Karen's here, John Dan's wife, I joined from Australia early morning here. I learned so much from today's session. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The other thing you can do, Karen and Dan, is what I've seen work pretty well too, and I talked to

1:01:12somebody who, anyways, I won't give away details, but essentially what you can do is do free to download with a hard pay wall and a one time in app. And that's another way of still doing a quote unquote paid app, but letting people download the app, doing what John said, valuebased onboarding, right? and then lock the hard payw wall and a onetime purchase of $10 and sometimes you'll see more revenues making it free with a hard pay wall with

1:01:40a onetime purchase as well. I completely agree. I think um if you make it pay up front then people will be put off straight away. Yeah. But if you get them to download the app and have a really great onboarding experience where you can show the value not just the features but the benefits then having a hard pay wall will

1:01:58probably yield better results. Okay, John, you want to know the score of the dad joke round? All right, here we go. I had to tally it while you were talking [laughter] by a score of six to five. John, congratulations. You beat me in my own game. Not only Not only you are you one of the favorite guests of all time, you you've killed me on my own dad joke round. So,

1:02:28congratulations, John. I owe you a pint. How about that? Look forward to that and maybe a trophy as well. Okay, deal [laughter] my friend. I am going to do that. Next time we see each other, I will bring you a trophy. Dad joke winner [laughter] and favorite guest of the podcast. All right, John, let's go to one more app if you got time. We got Roan's app and this is a blood sugar app and please focus on ASO and the payw wall. So, we got a blood sugar monitor app and

1:02:59ASO wise, I think we kind of nailed it. You I mean, I don't know if there's much more to be said other than just follow that strategy. 20 to 50 keywords run that we kind of gave that advice to Dan and Karen as well, but I don't think that changes much. Anything you want to add here, John, beyond that same

1:03:15strategy? You wanted to question ASO, but I think that screenshots and icons are part of ASO. Love, right? the all kind of comes together. So yeah, if you get your if you have your ASO strategy right, people see your see your icon, they see your screenshots, but then you got to get them past that and actually downloading the app. And I think your ASO strategy and see the keywords, it looks solid. I think your screenshots look solid as well. Really, really cool. One thing I would say is that in my experience, say this today, people love widgets. So, you got a widget right there on screen

1:03:54number two. How about an AB test where you swap one and two, right? Just run a quick AB test. See if people respond more to having the widget on screen one than back there on screen two. Yeah. Do you call out the widgets or do you just assume? Okay. You just kind of assume people know. I love this. no widgets and they they respond really positively to live

1:04:20activities and to widgets. John, if I can make you more uncomfortable and give you more compliments, I would say I love the way you used it. Get alerts when delays happen and you showed those widgets, whereas this one's like monitor your diabetes directly from your home screen. Like people understand it. I think I would do I would just copy what John has like monitor your diabetes and then just show these widgets. Make it big and bold like I just get it, you know, right away when I see your screenshots, whereas this one feels like like do I really need directly from your

1:04:52home screen? You know what I mean? So, great advice there. Um, one small thought for me. Okay, maybe I'm being too much in the weeds here, but with the app icon, I like it, but I feel like the corners are too sharp. That sounds weird, but the the wavelength it goes up and down, and it's like really sharp corners. And I'm reminded of the ECG app on the Apple Watch, which is kind of got the same the same feel. It's basically like a red wavelength on a white background. But you notice with Apple's interpretation,

1:05:26the corners are rounded. They're curved. So it makes it softer. Mhm. And that could be worth an AB test just by itself, right? This sharp corners more rounded. and see if that is more appealing to prospective users. Love it. Love having designer on. Okay, let's get into the payw wall aspect of things. Let me I know I've got the app.

1:05:51Oh, here it is. Okay, do this. Let's get feedback on the payw wall. Oh, man. If my screen loads other than that, kill some time for me. John, you got another joke or [laughter] Yeah. Okay. This is This is going to be painful, so get ready. Okay. If you see a crime at an Apple store,

1:06:26are you an eyewitness? [laughter] That was painful to see. So, can only imagine how painful it was to listen to. [laughter] I love it. All right. Thank you, John. I've got the app loaded now. [laughter] The Medit. So, all right, everyone. We're going to go through your payw wall track today. Thrive tomorrow. Okay. What to eat today, let AI decide, your trusted source for better health

1:06:56decisions. A lot of benefits, right? Short. Your age. What do you feel about this? cuz I do feel like you need all this information by age, all that stuff. I think if it's going to be personalized later on, then it's definitely worth it. Okay. So, I think after this kind of questionnaire, the onboarding adapts to show you different things depending on what you entered, then it's

1:07:21a really I mean, look at Flow, right? They have a huge onboarding sequence and they tailor questions and depending on your answer the onboarding branches off into different to show different aspects and different benefits. Yep. I would say don't there I don't know why there's a dash between fe and male for female but just combine it. I don't know if I have diabetes, but I'm

1:07:50just exploring. Very important. I know with like health and fitness kind of like flow like these on boardings, the longer sometimes the better. So, how often do you several times a week? I suppose you guys have been Have you AB tested on boarding? Have you been short and long? You know, this is this where you get the real

1:08:14data. So, I'll do all that.

1:08:26I really like this. I want to test that like that pricing, John, that you said, you know, instead of $34.99, just put 35. I'm going to try that. Yeah. All right. You just do you suggest it for weekly, too? Do you just say like $5 a week? You know what? It's weird. $5 just by no looks a bit weird. Oh, it only seems to work really well for

1:08:46like double digit numbers like 29. Okay. So, what I do with weekly, I set it to $4.99. Okay. $4.99 alongside the 20 like the $29 above it and $89 below it. This this feels good. It feels right. Yeah. I mean, I I kind of like I would just copy John's pay wall. like I I kind of like your pay wall a lot where it's like okay, you know, maybe you just want to try one time, maybe it's a week, I don't know, but I mean it kind of makes sense for yours, but I I don't like the visuals of this pay wall. I think it

1:09:20could be way more improved this. I think definitely introduce some more visuals in there, even like a carousel or a video. I mean, I used a video payw wall for years that worked great. Oh, it's going to pull up your current pay wall right now. because you kind of highlighted it. Let me pull it back. Sad I don't use a video pay anymore because I find that um localization matters more. I didn't want to create like 20 separate videos videos. Yeah. [snorts] Yeah. I really love this like 7-day free trial. You make it big and bold, pay as you go, and then you have lifetime where and you

1:09:57know like you have this at scrolls like some of the features. But yeah, now that you warmed them up, like it's really about overcoming objections and making sure they're seven days free, no payment now, all this stuff. Whereas this pay wall, I feel like it's very textheavy. Like it's just feels like a novel. The benefits are there, the features are there, but it's it's just about presenting it in a way that yeah,

1:10:21people aren't going to read all that. They just Okay. So it's you've [snorts] already done the onboarding, so you've kind of like shown what the benefits are. Now it's just about getting over that last hurdle. And sometimes humanizing it, having a big picture of someone looking healthy. Yes. Right. Can can make all the difference. I like it. you you like you said in our first interview having real photos of humans helped increase that versus graphics and so yeah I love it you can see number one's editor's choice now you're just trying to overcome objections and I don't think you're doing that very well on this pay wall

1:11:02because you know I'll see a text John I'll see get an email like oneliner right and I'll be like okay no problem I'll answer if I see an email like this I'm like uh unread I'll just you know I'll wait later on I I'll save it for later and so that's what I'm kind of feeling when I see this Okay. Well, I'm kind of like uh I'm going to let's just put this X. I don't need to read all of this right now. I'm going to hit the X

1:11:23and move on with my life. I don't know if this this is here, but one thing I notic about kind of health and fitness apps is that a lot of times one of the features that's behind the payw wall is Apple Health integration. Yeah. Like so if you're entering data into this app, if you're on the premium package, it will pass that data along to Apple Health and become part of your your daily stats. So, if you don't have that already, I would definitely add

1:11:48that as a premium feature. Yeah, love it. Hey, John, I know you talked about widgets. Shane asks, "Hey, I'm working on a way to figure out how to prompt a user to install the widget. Any suggestions?" Yeah. So in my app when on the home screen there's like a pro button on the top right hand corner and when people tap on it there's a whole a whole bunch of videos you can watch to show you exactly how to add a widget goes through the whole process of going into the going back to the home screen tapping on the plus button searching for Omegle etc and then how to

1:12:26customize it with different colors and stuff and I think that would work well for you as So having a permanent button that's there all the time to say here's how to add a widget makes a big difference. Yeah. You think video helped as well? Oh yeah, definitely. Much better than say a big long list of instructions because it is like a adding a widget is

1:12:48like a fivestep process. Yeah. So you need to make it as visual and as easy to use as possible. One thing I want to show off, John, was just the Look, I've been sharing John's screenshots on the the web and so you guys are seeing this. Like, whoa, this thing the text is huge. All right, watch this

1:13:07on the phone. You You can see the difference between the two, right? Like, I just love yours. I can read yours so much easier than these tiny little things, this tiny little text right here. And so, you know, while we see this while I'm sharing this on the YouTubes just because, you know, it makes it easier for me, but on the app itself, it it just becomes easier to read. You can see the the stark difference between the two

1:13:32screenshots. That's Steve. I mean, I always taste my screenshots as you're on the phone in the app store. That's perfect, bro. I love that. I love that. You got me so motivated to try other things. I'm sending this video to my team as well. All right, let's see. Adam says, "Adam, I will I will do that. The the localizations is pretty the way I don't know how you do it, John, but sometimes I do duplicate the whatever is in the US subtitle. I'll duplicate it in the MX title. Like I I'll try to put certain keywords in the MX title to help the localizations. So, it's sort of like

1:14:06constantly blending and figuring out what's working and moving things into the the proper like the priority places like the title and subtitle. How do you like to do it?" Absolutely. So, one thing to remember, I know everybody knows this already, but I'll just reiterate it. Yeah. They say you're using both US English and Mexican English. So, Mexican

1:14:26Spanish. Okay. You can't combine two keywords from either like so they'll be indexed separately. So, let's say you have bus in one and times in the other. Apple will not index that as bus times. So, you got to have bus times in one and something else in the other. But once you know that, what you can do is, and this is something I do, is let's say you have a medium popularity keyword that's kind of it's out there on your

1:14:59your your 100 character keyword list. You want to give it more prominence, but you've already got your title and subtitle in US English. That's already it's already full. take that keyword, put it in your title or subtitle in Mexican, Spanish or Vietnamese, and that gives it much more weight. So now you can start seeing your your ratings, your rankings increase in the US for that

1:15:25keyword. Love it. Yeah, love it. Okay, last question would be any tips for someone with an app with ad revenue only, no subscriptions. You know, I had a my app was ad based for about seven years. So, and those were the good times, right? Because before co before the pandemic, using ADM Mob brought in quite a lot of money, right? We're talking about maybe $10,000

1:15:50a month just from ad revenue. But you know what? Since the pandemic, man, that just crashed. Same number of impressions, but the this the CPM just wasn't there anymore. Depending on your app, there's a whole bunch of different things you can do. If you're just using ADM Mob, you're missing out. There's a whole bunch of different ad networks out there. If you're just using banner ads, you're missing out as well. So, depending on your app, there's a whole thing list of things you can do to increase your revenue. One obviously is to introduce rewarded ads like and video ads to try and increase the CPM. Another fun little

1:16:31thing I've discovered in the last year and Steve's talked about this as well is games because there's there's there are companies out there where you can become a publisher and what happens is you have a you can provide a link in your app that will then show mini games like like snake or what or racing games or whatever and you you you'll get paid for the

1:16:58advertisements that are shown. within that mini game. So, there's loads of more new opportunities to monetize your app if you're relying solely on ads, but you do need the numbers. I'm talking like uh at least 100,000 monthly active users in order to make it worthwhile. Hey, John, I was going to say just add subscriptions. That's all I was going to say. But one thing that I wanted to ask you was I love the reverse trial that you talked about. And so let me kind of share my all the screens just so you

1:17:32guys all remember this reverse trial. Whoops. I don't know what's going on here. But this reverse trial and John says, "Hey, if you ex out of the payw wall, if you say if you hit a trial, they say John says welcome to pro or if you subscribe and then you go through the same flow and then if you exit out of the payw wall like hey join you know get a week on us." Yeah, I I saw this app routinery do this where kind of like you I kind of see this as a reverse trial. They'll lock features up. They'll say watch an ad to unlock,

1:18:01right? What do you think? I mean, from your standpoint, now that you have one part of the data, do you think you do just do the reverse trial 7 days on us versus trying to do something like this? Depends on your costs. So, I have fixed costs, right? I run a whole bunch of servers, like 20 dedicated servers around the world. So more users I have, yeah, I need to add an add an extra server now and again, but the cost is if I give away seven days for free, it doesn't really cost me that much, right? But if you're like if you have like an AI powered app or like an AI

1:18:39rapper, you basically got costs all the time from all those API calls from free users. So you got to be able to monetize that somehow. And if I remember, I think like showing a video ad usually makes around 15 to 20 cents. Yeah. So if you can cover your costs of whatever kind of APIs or systems you're

1:19:02using through the ad, that makes sense. But yeah, I'm with you, Steve. I use ads for just to give cover the costs of free users. We don't want to pay anything. Yeah. Right. But subscriptions are the way to go. If you can find a way to segment your feature list to free and paid, that is the way to do it. I love it. Okay, we got a few more questions. Denise says, "If you're localizing different languages, like you're trying to localize in Mexico,

1:19:38doesn't your app have to be in Spanish?" It helps. I mean, right now my app is localized to 12 different languages. And for those languages, I will make an effort to make sure the title, subtitle, and keyword list are translated and localized to those locations. But for example, I don't my app hasn't translated to V Vietnamese. I don't really have any data for Vietnam just now. So I just use that as a kind

1:20:12of second base for my US keywords. Yeah. But if you are looking to launch in that region, then maybe just give stop using that as an extra place for US keywords and start using it for what for the actual localized keyword list. Yeah, Denise, I I was trying to find the link. I don't have it anymore. I I had I thought I bookmarked it, but there's a link that shows you all the different localizations that the US supports, including Vietnamese, I think, Korean, Portuguese. So, you can start using if you want to in for Mexico, if you want to keep in Spanish, keep in Spanish because you're targeting that market,

1:20:53but there's also Vietnamese. And so, that there's other ways of doing it there, too. Ivan says on Mingo, like, which onboarding changes increase conversions the most? Was it the the value base? Definitely the value based going from features like showing off features and UI to just talking about what you what benefits you what benefits you get in real concrete terms going to save time going to save stress it's going to make your life easier and you'll see this in these screenshots there's a little bit of UI but it's kind like it's very kind like cartoony shows the person and the situation they're in and how the app can help them

1:21:34in that situation. But by taking UI out of it, you've got more space and more freedom to talk about the benefits that app can bring. And I love that there's, you know, I just noticed it right now, John. I didn't notice it the first time because I was so focused on the the the values that you were adding, but there's social

1:21:53proof on every screen. Boom. Boom. Yeah, you got it. And most people just they just tap tap tap. I can see it through analytics. Most just tap tap tap tap tap tap. But even if it's just [snorts] something small pin prick in their in their heads, they can you know Yeah, I see. I see the lower reef. I see the the numbers that it does make a

1:22:16small subliminal difference. Yeah, I love it. John, with the Switcher app, is there a way to see localized screenshots in the results or are localized screenshots only shown if the actual app itself is localized in that language? It's localized to storefront. So for example, if using my own app as example, if I use switcher to go from say US English to German, I would see my

1:22:40localized screenshots for Germany. So it can show you the diff. If you like look at a big app like Uber or Google Maps using Switcher, you can see what they what the changes they make to their screenshots for different local which is really really interesting because they have teams of people who are paid to find the stuff out. They got different cultures, different cultural values, you know, and copy them, you know, they're big guys and they have teams of people doing this stuff. So use that to your advantage. Love, love, love, love. And then John says, "I know H isn't here, but will there be a winner

1:23:19for the Indie App Santa promo?" Yes, you guys all win. How about that? Just email me [laughter] and then all the people voted. So, I'm going to take a screenshot of all the people voted and you guys can get a free Indie App Santa promo on us and then yeah, we we'll work it out there. So, just email me and I'll take a screenshot of all the votes that I have right now. All right. And I'm able to give away all that stuff because

1:23:40of our sponsors. John said it the most. Hey, if you're going to localize screenshots, you're going to AB test screenshots. [clears throat] One of our partners, our more recent partners is appscreens.com. They can easily create it. Funny enough, somebody in our community was like, "Hey, check out appc screens. It's really cool. I've been using it and I use it for one of our clients. Super easy to do. They've got templates to make it super easy and it'll automatically upload to the app stores just the same. So you can pick some of these templates and then modify it for your own app. And then Encore, John said

1:24:14it, look, there's ways to win back. So if you're relying on just ad strategies, think about adding Encore because there's a way for people to get premium access by not even watching ads, but taking advantage of other offers like a Hulu or Netflix or whatever offers that Encore Kit has. We've started implementing it in our app, the the app Santa app that we have as well. And lastly, App Slier. They are an MMP and they they've been one of our partners since 2025, but they've got some amazing product releases. If you're an indie, you probably don't need it yet, but as you start to scale and start thinking

1:24:50about omni channels, which is just having multiple ad channels, you're going to want an MMP like apps flyier. So, go check out all that. John, anything I missed before I finally let you go? These guys want to keep you here forever, John. They [clears throat] won't let you go. So much to so much to go over, Steve. I mean, this space is evolving all the time. It's getting more exciting every year

1:25:12and there's so many opportunities there. It's it's great space to be in. And I would say as a kind of solo founder, this is this is it for me. You know, I take my kids to school, I drop them off, I come back, do some work during the day. And you know what? I'm there for

1:25:32them when they get home. And that makes all the difference. I'm not some office in a city far away. I don't have to spend two hours on a commute. If you put the work in, you can do this and live this kind of indie developer lifestyle. I highly recommend it. I do think as well as I've gotten older, John, I think it's more about freedom than money. like long as you have enough, you know, it's more really about hanging hanging out with the kids. And my kids are getting older now. And, you know, it does go by fast. And so, it it's really cool that I got to spend

1:26:05most of most of their like conscious life. They've known me as dad as the entrepreneur. And so, I'm pretty proud of that. Congratulations, my friend. And thank you so much for putting all this together. Okay. No problem at all. Always happy to be on here. Yeah. Well, you got to come back and we got to keep inviting you because these type of presentations, man, I love and you know what I love about this, John, is just like we we got the success, we got the zero to one, zero to 20,000, 0 to 30,000. Now, it's like, hey, now that you're stuck, what do you do next? And I

1:26:38just love the way that you thought about it and you started going, look, I got to do something different. I can't do the same things I did that got me to this point. and you started really leaning into that threeprong process. Distribution, localization, and retention. Super simple. Bookmark this. Watch it again. It's going to be one of my favorite ones. Again, John, that's two of the top favorites right here. And H is here somewhere. John, so the Oh, the one person give us a plug. So, Mamingo is the app. So, if you want to look at your bus times, train times, go check out the app. What countries does it support,

1:27:14John? all of North America, all of Europe, um bits of South America, all of Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea. That's awesome. All right, go download the app, go subscribe. That's a way you can thank John. Subscribe and then give him a review as well. Positive review. John, thank you so much for coming on doing this, my

1:27:35friend. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate. What do you think? We we'll have you back every three months, every year. What are you thinking? do my best, man, because you come up with some new ideas every time. [laughter] So, let's try it. Well, I will reach out to you because I would love to do a deep dive on the ASA and the the AI stuff that you've been

1:27:55working on. Yeah, we'll do that. Do it live again, John, or you want to do a dedicated video? Oh, I love the live streams. Let's do that. All right, let's do that. All right. All right, H. You got You heard it. I think he's somewhere in this ether. All right, we'll have John back in a month or two just to break down the exact strategies from an ASA perspective and the AI the AI one's going to be very very interesting. All right, guys, that is it. John, anything else? Give us the

1:28:21parting words. You take us out, bro. Parting words. Dig deep. Sometimes Sometimes things fail. Sometimes it's hard, but it's always worth it. No better way to say it than that. All right, guys. Next week we got another great episode. We've got Highly, I think that's how you say it. H I L Y. It's one of the very popular dating apps. We got a product leader from that to really break down some of the experiments that they've been running. So, just like John said, a lot of experiments and a lot of experiments that failed, but you'll get the winner. So, join us every Friday, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, and I'll see you next

1:28:55time. Have a great weekend.