Case Study: Shadow Work Journal

So this is actually the first app that we built with the studio. The studio uh was created a year ago. Me and Ev. Uh Ev

is also in the community. He writes all the code. I do the design and then we

the code. I do the design and then we look for keywords together. And this is the first product actually the second product but the first one uh was really just like an MVP trial. So there's a

keyword that uh we spotted called shadow work journal. This shadow work became

work journal. This shadow work became popular because of a physical journal that was published on Amazon. It kind of went viral on Amazon and then everybody started searching for it everywhere. So

you can see it had no traction. And then

here in July 23 it just skyrocketed went to 21 which is decent enough and then really went up to to 33 and it's been kind of up and down since then. Now it's

stabilized but this is was the original trajectory. So we saw this trend and we

trajectory. So we saw this trend and we thought this would be a fun field to go into. Um, in the past I was the chief

into. Um, in the past I was the chief marketing officer of Ad Reflectly, the first AI journaling app. We had 20 million users. I was very familiar with

million users. I was very familiar with the journaling space. So, I thought why not go in there as an experiment. Um, this was, like I said,

experiment. Um, this was, like I said, this was an early app. So, the design is not very good and it wasn't it's not like a good product overall, but it got traction, got installs, and and it

worked. So, this is this is the type of

worked. So, this is this is the type of trend that I'm looking for in the trending keyword. This what I like to

trending keyword. This what I like to see. And this is the keyword rank. Uh so

see. And this is the keyword rank. Uh so

we launched the app here you can see on 3rd of February 2024. Uh we launched the app and again

2024. Uh we launched the app and again there was no competition. There was

keyword volume. So we had no ads, no marketing and immediately we went up to rank number 11, number three like yeah right away. This is the type of trend

right away. This is the type of trend that we like to see. This is often what we experience with new products.

Uh is there a question? Hey, sorry. Hey.

Uh, so after you um you've identified a a keyword in the trending section, right? How do you essentially keep

right? How do you essentially keep tracking that uh keyword when it goes out of that uh uh user interface of like these are the popping up like keywords, right? You want to like understand, hey,

right? You want to like understand, hey, this is is this is that is that an actual trend with this keyword? Can I

actually work on this idea? you know,

you give it like a one week or two weeks and then you want to like make sure it's actually popping off before you start working on the idea, right? Yeah, very

good question. So, um there there's there's two approaches. If I see a keyword that has popped up and it checks all of the criteria like it's not a

brand name, uh it's a specific like generic term like shadow work journal is a generic term. It's a type of therapeutic method shadow work.

um if it checks all the criteria and we have like high confidence, we'll go and start building right away because it's a very low investment of time from our

side. Like now it takes 3 to 5 days to

side. Like now it takes 3 to 5 days to build a new app and so we will just experiment with a lot of stuff. Um, if

I'm not 100% certain, like if you see a huge spake spike on day one, it goes from like volume of five to 30 40 50 in one day. Often times is because

one day. Often times is because something went viral on Tik Tok and then eventually it'll come down to next to nothing. Um, actually I can show you

nothing. Um, actually I can show you there's another keyword. We launched

another app um called spoken gospel and this is kind of what happened. It went viral because I think Mark Wberg talked about it or

somebody mentioned this um let me put this in spoken gospel. Yeah,

gospel. Yeah, this flatlined. Yeah, if I just go back

this flatlined. Yeah, if I just go back far enough actually a bit further and now I don't remember exact.

It was sometimes last year. Yeah. So

this is exactly what I'm talking about.

Like I was watching the keywords and I saw this go from five to 50 in one day and this is still early on. This was in March 24. So we started this company

March 24. So we started this company in end of February 24 and this entire method we just started like I just started thinking about building apps this way. So I was still fairly new and

this way. So I was still fairly new and I saw this and immediately we're like all right let's go. So we built the app in a couple days. Uh we did get ranking.

were number one. But as you can see, this is what happened. And there's a few more spikes here and there. Uh but

basically essentially came down to zero.

Now the app doesn't make almost any money. It makes like I don't know 50 to

money. It makes like I don't know 50 to 100 bucks a month. Um basically we're still sorry. Um do you do you try to when you

sorry. Um do you do you try to when you look at keywords like this, do you try to do more research like uh to understand like okay why is this popular? Who spoken about this? This is

popular? Who spoken about this? This is

some Tik Tok trend. I'm not too much on Tik Tok. I should I know I should get

Tik Tok. I should I know I should get get on Tik Tok. I'm allergic to Tik Tok, but you get on it. But so how do you understand where this came from and how much time do you give it before you

start working on the actual app? Yeah,

very good question. So

um absolutely like do research and and it it doesn't take much time like it takes an hour or a few hours to dig in to find out why something is popular. Um

if it's like a one day something like this you'll probably and see it was like at 50 for a couple of days. Um so you will see um if something is like super vital like this for a few days you'll be

able to find like trace the origin and you can go on Tik Tok and YouTube and Google trends and you can kind of do detective work to figure out what is happening. There's a lot of keywords

happening. There's a lot of keywords where I have no idea what the word means and we do research and then I find out like okay this is some kind of a trend or or brand or or something like that.

So yes, we do research unless it's something where it's very clear. So for

example, one of our top performers is chair yoga for seniors. This is a trend that was rising and there was literally zero competition for I mean there's a

lot of yoga apps and a lot of chair yoga, but there was like no chair yoga for seniors. That specific term was

for seniors. That specific term was trending at like 35 search volume. So

that didn't require any research because obviously this is yeah cherry yoga for seniors. It's a gen generic trend kind

seniors. It's a gen generic trend kind of ticks off all the perfect boxes. I

did do like a brief research just to see if there's anything specific. But as

long as it's a generic term I feel very comfortable with that. We did the app in a couple days and immediately got ranking and we're still now like now much bigger apps came like all the big

yoga apps they have like specific custom product pages and they rank for that.

So, we ranked down in like number 15, but we still do like one, two, three, thousand a month in in revenue from that app. It took a week to build and we do

app. It took a week to build and we do no marketing, no ads. So, this

method there is kind of a glass ceiling to how much revenue you can make because we're only doing organic and that's by choice. You could now come and say,

choice. You could now come and say, "Okay, I want to do ads." So, you can start doing ads. can do search ads or you can do Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, all these other ads and you can scale a lot more. We we have made the conscious

lot more. We we have made the conscious decision of we don't want to do ads because to do ads properly is a full-time job. I mean I that's what I

full-time job. I mean I that's what I did for years. I ran all the marketing for reflectly. I would spend $10,000 a

for reflectly. I would spend $10,000 a day and I was the only person in the marketing department and so I single-handedly ran all the campaigns on Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram. So I just know how much effort it takes. It's a

full-time job to really dive deep into the analysis of data and and understand what's happening and I just don't want to do it because I don't enjoy it. So,

you could scale more with ads, but we're choosing not to. Um, we are doing an experiment now and I'm going to share the results with you guys. We just

signed a contract with a publishing company where they're going to run ads for some of our apps. They put up all the capital, all the creatives, they do all the work and they take 50% of the

revenue that the app made extra. So, we

keep all the organic revenue and then we get half of this top revenue which wouldn't exist without them. So, I'm

happy to share that. Uh, we started the contract this week with three apps. I'll

let you guys know by next week what's like the year results and they're also giving us feedback what to work on.

Actually, one of the apps we're going to work on is Spoken Gospel. So they have some ideas about onboarding, what to change. We're going to make the changes

change. We're going to make the changes and then they're going to run the ads.

They're going to pay for everything and then we share top-up revenue. Again, I

have no downside, no time. I don't have to hire anybody and it's easy way. So

that's a very long way to answer your question. Do we do research? Yes.

question. Do we do research? Yes.

Understood. Sorry, just one more question while we're on this. Yeah. Uh

so uh how do you utilize uh this keyword essentially? So, I'm assuming obviously

essentially? So, I'm assuming obviously naturally you you're going to want to put this in the name itself, right? Do

you have your actual app name and then a colon and then use space spoken gospel or shadow work? Uh, do you also like repeat it again in the keywords and

subtitles to like maximize it in the ASO? Yeah, very good question. So the

ASO? Yeah, very good question. So the

beauty of this method is that if you follow the method, you don't have to do any ASO like all of the all the metadata and all the keywords like none of that

really matters compared to this. So all

we did for spoken gospel, we just put the word spoken gospel in the title and then we have a subtitle and description, all of the other stuff and screenshots, but I spent max five minutes on all of that

other stuff. The most important thing is

other stuff. The most important thing is the keyword the the the main keyword and the the earlier in the title the keyword is the higher weight the algorithm gives

it. So let's say you have four words in

it. So let's say you have four words in the title the fourth word the last word will have the lowest importance by the algorithm and the first word is the most

important. So if I have a keyword like

important. So if I have a keyword like spoken gospel I'll say spoken gospel dot dot something else. or if I have chair yoga for seniors. Well, that's a full title, but we're I don't know like we

have another app uh we just launched last week called acne safe to scan um u like skincare products to see if they're

safe for acne. Um and I call it acne safe dot dot and then something else.

So, we don't really have like a brand name for the app. We just use the keyword and then some other words.

Sometimes a keyword will already be taken by some other app that's like five years old. We did once we have for

years old. We did once we have for example we have a workout app called chair workout for men. There already was something called chair workout for men.

So we called it easy chair workout for men. Um in this case we put a word at

men. Um in this case we put a word at the beginning but it was more to make it human friendly not algorithm friendly.

So none of our apps have any real brand names. We just use the keyword and

names. We just use the keyword and that's all the ASO you have to do. You

put the keyword in title and then literally the rest doesn't matter. I

just I ask CH GPT like this is my app title. Give me a subtitle, description,

title. Give me a subtitle, description, metadata, all the keyword field, promo text and I don't spend more than 5 minutes on that. Understood? So you

don't even say you don't even like try to come up with like a Q like short word like a shadow journal that's like me mental fire or something like that. A

colon shadow journal. You just say shadow journal. Yeah, we just go shadow

shadow journal. Yeah, we just go shadow journal. Done. Um Okay. Okay. Because

journal. Done. Um Okay. Okay. Because

look, the entire point of the game here is we find one keyword and we're going to go the goal is to compete on that one keyword and go number one. And so the other keywords don't really matter because you're not going to rank early

on for anything else. You rank for that one. Once you start to grow and you get

one. Once you start to grow and you get traction, you get installs and then it makes sense to start doing actual ASO.

So, okay, let's look at like what other keywords we're we're we're ranking for.

Can we put that into subtitle? Can we

put it in the description? description

is not indexed by u by the algorithm on on iOS but can we put in a subtitle can you put in keyword field then it makes sense but I I don't do any of this stuff

until later on we got traction so for example we had a the chair yoga for for seniors that was ranking well and we started to rank for another keyword um

sorry I have to close the door I have we started to rank for for another keyword for um like a chair workout and so then we built another app

specifically for that and uh and then yeah that made sense and then it ranked that's what we did. Okay,

appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, no

problem. So then let me show you the rest of the stuff. Yeah, when you see a trend like this, this is a red flag.

When there is like five to 50, that usually means I've seen this since this happened. That was my lesson. I've seen

happened. That was my lesson. I've seen

that many times and when it happens I don't build anything. Usually it'll

always come down to zero. Um so when I see something like this I wait like if I see a trend I just I just mark it. I I

mark the keyword as a favorite in my app tweak account and then once a week or once every couple of days I come back and check the trends and just make sure to to I track some of the previous

keywords that we have looked at. So stay

on top. But most of the times on a huge spike you'll see this. What I much rather see is something like gradually increasing over a couple of weeks and that's when this is like a clear trend.

When we did some of the other ones um that's what we saw. All right. Uh yeah. So this is the

saw. All right. Uh yeah. So this is the keyword rank and you see like the app to be honest it's not very good. It was

built very quickly. Uh it could actually use big updates. Um, and it was one of the first apps I designed and I was a terrible designer a year ago. So, it's

not even very pretty, but it got to rank and it ranks anywhere between two to three constantly. You can see that

three constantly. You can see that that's the position we're three right now for a while. And again, no ads, no nothing. Um, this is the same app,

nothing. Um, this is the same app, Shadowwork Journal. And you can see we

Shadowwork Journal. And you can see we launched March 17th and the number of active subscriptions, people are just coming to subscribe. We had a bit of a

spike here for some reason. I don't know why, but it's working well. These are

the installs. So, we did the app advice campaign where you do the apps gone free. We got 8,000 installs in one day.

free. We got 8,000 installs in one day.

We got hundreds of reviews, five star.

So this really helped us to get really good ratings and reviews because the app was so shitty at the beginning. We had

bad reviews. So we had to update the app, reset the reviews, do the campaign, and now we have good reviews. And then

since then, you can see it gets a couple of hundred installs every day. 100 to

200 um per day, no ads. And this is what the app looks like right now. These screenshots, I would say, are

now. These screenshots, I would say, are are terrible, but they convert well.

They're super messy. Like there's a lot of stuff in there, but we tested a lot of screenshots and these ones convert the best. But it's a journal where you

the best. But it's a journal where you take a quiz, you have some like exercises for journaling, there's some yeah, some stats. All of the content

took like two days to make with AI, there's meditations, there's guided journalist, all this stuff. Essentially,

it's a journal.

Um, right. So that's the story of shadow work journal and the lesson there being like this is the type of trend you want to see something that's organically going

up. Uh this is a beautiful trend in in

up. Uh this is a beautiful trend in in this case if I see something like this either I'll do the research and we decide to build it quickly or I mark it and I watch it here. It'll be good to like market it and you see that it goes

down and then it goes up and now it's kind of stabilized. It's not a huge traffic, but even with, you know, like 16 now, I wouldn't build something at this point. I wouldn't invest the time

this point. I wouldn't invest the time to build a new app if the traffic is 161 17. Like I'd like to see something in

17. Like I'd like to see something in like 30 plus is really, really good. But

even with this, you see 16, 17, 15, we get 100 to 200 installs a day. So even

that's pretty neat.

Um, this could make more money if we just did more optimization and more work on it. But we wanted to build on other

on it. But we wanted to build on other products. Any questions about this

products. Any questions about this before we move on? We have 9 minutes left um in this call. So, I just want to make sure we utilize the time to do the keyword hunt. I have the new keywords

keyword hunt. I have the new keywords open here. But before we jump in, any

open here. But before we jump in, any questions on this? Yeah, I have a question. Uh, so have you ever built

question. Uh, so have you ever built several apps for one uh keyword cluster?

Yeah, good question. So we did it. Yes.

With our chair yoga or chair workout. I

know chair I think the chair yoga we did two of them. Uh the first one like got ranking and then went down a little bit then we built a second one and then it

became even better. Um but yeah we've only done two apps for one keyword and it is something I wonder about something

I'm I'm actively asking myself. I don't

know what's the right answer here. I

think because I think we could rank for some of the other key for some of the keywords with with new apps. I'm not

sure. What is your experience on this?

I have never tried with this but uh search engine optimization I work a lot with this. Okay. Yeah. So I mean the

with this. Okay. Yeah. So I mean the short answer is we tried it once and it worked that the second app was even better than the first one in terms of ranking and

revenue. Um but we haven't tried it

revenue. Um but we haven't tried it since then. Yeah, I think if if

since then. Yeah, I think if if something works well, like my first instinct would be let's put more energy and effort into this product so we can scale it and become number one because

the the difference between ranking number one and number three is much much bigger than ranking three and four for example or being you know five and six.

Like for some of like some of our fitness apps, if we rank number one compared to number three, we have three times higher revenue on those days. So

it makes a huge difference. So then I would rather Yeah, I would rather if I have a high ranking keyword, I would rather go all in on that app, update it, make sure it's really good, continue

building on the product, and then if I tried everything and then it doesn't work, then I would build another one. I

can share my experience with co. So we

sometimes uh create several pages for one uh cluster and uh check which page uh works better in this um keyword and

then uh spare efforts to uh push the most promising one and other just uh leave without any additional efforts. So

that's an idea and uh in this case like usually we have different uh accounts and different websites for this but uh is it possible to create the same um app

with little bit different design from one account or it should be different accounts.

Um I think if you have somewhat of a different approach like at least make like yeah the design should be different uh and some changes in the name. Apple

does have some restrictions about they don't want to just replicate apps. They

do have a rule for this. Um so they might you might get a problem with getting approved but if you like our our two yoga apps were the same concept just yeah different designs actually. So now

I remember why we did it. We we had one yoga app was doing well but I after a month I really hated the app. I hated

the design that I did because I I've improved as a designer and I look back and I hated it. And so I wanted to we sat down like let's improve this app, let's update it, let's you know change everything and then Ever my co-founder

he's like why don't we just build a new thing like if you want to rebuild the whole thing. That's a good question. So

whole thing. That's a good question. So

what to do better to improve the old one or to create another if for example you got some bad reviews for example from first one which was not great but was the first yeah I mean with the reviews

you can always reset the reviews like that's easy. If you have a few bad

that's easy. If you have a few bad reviews, you submit a new version, you can reset and start from zero. That's

not a big problem. But yeah, it's the it's I don't have a good answer for this. We did it once where we thought I

this. We did it once where we thought I want to rebuild the entire thing and we built a new app instead. And it worked well. Um I

well. Um I think and look, to be honest, I've only been doing this approach for a little over 12 months, 13 months now. Uh 14

months, I guess. Um, we got to over a thousand paying subscribers with just and we haven't been doing it full-time.

So, this is like this has been part-time on the side, just a few weeks of work and it got really good results. I think

the ultimate goal here is to continue following this method until you hit a whale. Like, you become number one on a

whale. Like, you become number one on a really good keyword. You're early on, you get the ranking, and then I would like go all in on this one product, one app, and then maybe you can build a big

company around there if you want. If if

that's yeah that again that's a lifestyle decision. I think that's

lifestyle decision. I think that's that's the method. We haven't hit like a huge results like all of our apps make some money. They all rank. They all get

some money. They all rank. They all get installs. So it's all like it's a very

installs. So it's all like it's a very comfortable lifestyle business. But I

think the the real objective is like you know find something that can do like 100k a month. And I've seen those cases um as I've been watching the app store.

I've seen like you know one person teams building these apps. it early on. I

talked about the case study of the the action figure keyword. Um, and that guy who built an app, he was doing this was

like a trend that went viral on on Sora. Uh, this is a beautiful trend. It

Sora. Uh, this is a beautiful trend. It

went up. He built the app and it was doing 80k a month in revenue. And it's

it's like a three-day product to build.

And it's going down, but it's still, I'd say, meaningful. And then you can and so

say, meaningful. And then you can and so it started with one feature of just you upload a picture and it generates an AI image of you as an action figure in a box. That was the first feature and then

box. That was the first feature and then he got all this traction and then he built all the other tools. So now you can you know do the face swap and all the AI image generation tools and so now it's a big app. It starts to rank for

other keywords and you go on and you can build something meaningful that you can get to six figure a month. Um, so I've seen that and I still beat myself up for not watching the app store cuz here I

was in Bali and I was just drinking coconut water in a jungle and I was not working. So I missed this one. But this

working. So I missed this one. But this

happens like all the time and uh you use only one account of Google developer or you have some network of this. Uh yeah,

so we have most of the stuff in in one account. Um, but it's we're opening up

account. Um, but it's we're opening up new accounts and publishing stuff in new accounts as well. I I think I'm just being careful especially when if something takes off like something

becomes a meaningful app then I would almost separate that one or have some diversification because I have friends here in Lisbon actually one friend of mine who who had a studio they were

doing uh a little bit over a million a month and Apple shut down their account. No

notice. No notification, nothing, just shut down. They sent them one email.

shut down. They sent them one email.

They didn't explain why the account was shut down. Just give like, you know,

shut down. Just give like, you know, this general here are some terms and conditions. You didn't follow some of

conditions. You didn't follow some of this and it's like a 20page document.

And then they get a chance to send one reply and it's all they all they didn't even get the last revenue payout from that day. They got no money from Apple.

that day. They got no money from Apple.

Uh they were using like black hat tactics and they were like, you know, kind of being sneaky, but you just you never know and you can't really fight Apple. If they decide to shut you

fight Apple. If they decide to shut you down, you're done. So they close the whole account with all apps on it on the entire accountation or uh this uh

punishment can be on level of application. Uh when they do like a big

application. Uh when they do like a big account sweep, then it's it's the entire account. Like if you publish an app, you

account. Like if you publish an app, you might get rejected for that one app if you're publishing if you get caught. But

uh but a ban is on the entire account.

And actually, we did get a slap on the wrist from Apple like uh two months ago.

We got this letter of uh notification of manipulation of the app store algorithm cuz I was I was trying out some stuff that you shouldn't be trying out. And

yeah, we got a little warning and they told us like if you do this again, we're going to shut you down. So I'm playing by the rules now. So if for example you want to test something, you just have a

separate account for this like great head tactics, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. If you just around and I would create a new company, new account and and all of that stuff. And it's like a comp company account, not freelancer

account, right? Uh I I

account, right? Uh I I do I think it depends like on that depends on your tax situation and all of that. Like I do company accounts just

that. Like I do company accounts just because of my tax situation and okay it's better that way. I guess if you have a personal account and that gets banned maybe that affects your other accounts that you

hold as a company. I don't know how that works. I don't know. But it's just I

works. I don't know. But it's just I think legally it's easier to do it through company accounts. Also for

liability issues. Um, for this for the shadowwork journal, we actually we did get um um we did get a notice from there

was a there was a publishing company uh that has a book on on on Amazon called Shadowwork Journal and they said us they sent us a uh a letter of like

cease synthesis through Apple. They

tried to like do legal action and Apple told us about it and we just we changed some content inside so it was different than their content and and then it was

fine. So you can create se uh separate

fine. So you can create se uh separate accounts on one company.

Uh no no it it's another company another account another company for account.

Yeah. So I would I mean and it's so cheap like to open a company in the UK or Estonia or the US it's Yeah, that's right. It's like a $100 and it's very

right. It's like a $100 and it's very easy. Um, right. Okay. Uh, we're over

easy. Um, right. Okay. Uh, we're over the the half an hour, but I'll I'll jump into the keywords anyways. It takes a few more minutes. Uh, I just want to

cover that up. Um,

cover that up. Um,