How to make money with mobile apps (just copy me)

What if I told you that success has

nothing to do with coding? Well, what

I'm going to share with you today is the

difference between apps that make

millions and apps that die with zero

downloads. Don't believe me? Well,

here's proof. Meet Steven, a founder who

took his mobile app from 0 to $40,000 MR

and then sold it for a life-changing

amount. Steven's not a famous

influencer. He's an actual founder in

the arena who discovered a playbook that

changed his life forever. You might

remember him from his last starter story

video. Well, that video got a million

views and I asked him if he wanted to

come back on the channel. I said, "Dude,

why don't you come on again, but this

time share the full story. Not the

surface level stuff, but the actual

spreadsheets, the exact viral videos,

and everything that took you from zero

to exit." He said yes. And that's what

you're about to see right now. His

10-minute viral validation method.

exactly how to go from 0 to 50 million

views for free from your apartment and

his simple strategy to turn $1 into $2

in scale using paid ads. If you don't

want to end up on page 500 of the app

store, well, get out your pen and paper

and enjoy the million-doll app playbook

by Starter Story. Welcome back to the

channel, Stephen. If you can remind the

viewers of what you built and what we're

going to be talking about today.

Thank you, man. It's a pleasure to be

back on the channel. I'm Steven. I have

built, scaled, and exited multiple

mobile apps for millions of dollars in

revenue. Last time I was on the channel,

I talked about how I built Puff Count,

my quit vaping app, scaled it to $44,000

in monthly recurring revenue before

exiting the company and selling it to a

larger mobile app studio in Europe. And

today, we're going to be talking about

the most important part of building

mobile apps, which is marketing.

Nice. Big reason why I wanted to bring

you back on the channel is you were

going to come on and talk about your

three-phase marketing framework. First,

before we dive in and get really into

the nitty-gritty details, can you give

me like the high level of what we're

going to go over today?

Yeah, 100%. Like I said, every mobile

app that you build should be approached

from a marketing first standpoint

because as long as you can market your

product, you will make money. And if

your product is not marketable, you

could have the best product in the

world, but if no one knows about it,

you're never going to make any money.

It's never going to be a successful

business. Marketing should always come

first. To do that, first we do market

research. we understand what's going

viral in our niche, what content is

working in our niche and that we can

also use that to validate the product in

general. Once we have the product

validated and we start building it, then

we can go into the market research and

start to identify what type of content

formats we want to recreate. This is

exactly what I did for PuffCount. This

is the entire reason that I was

successful with PuffCount is because I

did market research in the quit vaping

niche on Tik Tok and I simply took

inspiration from those videos. I posted

them organically and then scaled the

winners with paid ads. So, we have

market research, post volume,

organically, scale the winners with paid

ads. That is the three-step framework in

a nutshell.

Cool. All right. Well, let's dive into

phase one, which is market research. I'd

love if you gave me the step-by-step

playbook if you were starting over today

and you are someone who's looking for

the idea. I always like to start

thinking of ideas and validating ideas

by solving a problem for a large number

of people, right? Vaping was a problem

that I experienced in my daily life.

When I was in college, all my friends

got addicted to vaping. I got swept up

in the habit. So, you know, I knew it

was a painful problem. And I also saw

vaping going mega viral on TikTok. It's

controversial. It's viral. And I was

solving a problem for people. Those

three points together will make a killer

product.

Cool. If you were starting over today

and everything you've learned with the

apps that you've built, how do you

approach this phase to know that you're

building the right thing?

Here's what we're going to do. We're

going to pull out our phones. We're

going to go to Tik Tok and type in any

keywords related to our niche. And then

what you can do, tap the three dots in

the top right and then you can filter by

most liked videos of all time. This is

your market research. We'll take Puff

Count, my previous app, as an example.

You type in quit vaping on Tik Tok and

then you go to videos and you can see

that these videos, some of these videos

have gone insanely viral. We have 1.3

million likes here. We have 3.7 million

likes here, right? So, this is our

market research. Let's click into one

here and let's see if we can find some

similarities between this content and

some of the content that I created here

in this video. They're dropping their

vapes in a glass of water. And if we go

to the Puff Count profile, you can see

that we were doing that. That was one of

our bread and butter. 33,000 views. It's

me dunking a vape into a glass of water.

This is not my original idea. I was not

the first person on TikTok to put a vape

in a glass of water. But I did the

market research. I understood that that

content was resonating with my ideal

target audience. And I used that concept

and created my own videos. And then my

next part of the process, it's very

high-tech here. So this is my market

research strategy. I take exactly what I

found on Tik Tok and I put them all into

a spreadsheet.

That was great. So once you identify

that this is a problem we're solving,

I'd love if you could actually walk me

through documenting in that spreadsheet

on a specific Tik Tok video. So let's go

through this process together. Again,

step one is going on Tik Tok, typing in

your keywords, and finding viral videos.

So we'll take this one for example that

got 3.7 million organic likes, right?

So, what we'll do is we will copy and

paste this URL into your spreadsheet

here. And then what we really want to do

is we want to understand why this video

went viral. And every viral video has

three key points. The hook, the story

line, and the call to action. So, let's

go ahead and watch this video today.

So, I just quit vaping like an hour ago.

I made the decision.

Okay. So, she starts off holding her

phone. There's a little bit of action, a

little bit of movement going. And she

starts off by saying, "I just decided to

quit vaping an hour ago." So, we're

going to write that as the hook.

And I think it's always nice to take

note of the way she shot the video as

well. So, holding camera, walking, then

sets camera down. These small little

details in the video are actually very

important. You want to replicate and

take inspiration from these as close as

possible. Right? There's a reason she

started this video while walking and

then set it down in front of her, right?

and it it was part of the hook and this

video went viral. So, we're going to use

that. And as you can see, she sits down

in front of six glasses of water. So, we

could even add that onto the hook,

right? And then sets camera down in

front of six glasses of water. We want

to take note of all of this stuff. And

now she's going to get into her story.

So, let's continue watching.

I have been vaping for 7 years. And this

is very symbolic because I have seven

vapes.

Okay. She's talking about how she's been

vaping for seven years. And she has

seven different types of vapes. She has

her emergency vape, her walking vape,

her car vape, her work vape. And

obviously, she's exaggerating here. This

girl is so good at making content. Like,

every every single shot and every single

talking point was clearly calculated

here.

And I've been wanting to quit for three

or four of those.

So, she is talking about her quitting

journey. Talking about her quitting

journey and history vaping while

dropping the vapes into glasses of

water.

irritable, unmotivated. All I did was

lay in bed and cry.

She's also talking about the pain points

here. She's talking about how all she

would do is lay in bed, vape, cry,

cough, and feel terrible. This video is

2 minutes long. I don't think your Tik

Toks need to be 2 minutes long. But if

you can make them that long, great.

I did do this 15 minutes ago. I didn't

want to wait for it to deliver, so I got

the audio book.

Here is the call to action. Most

importantly, she got an audio book.

Okay. The Easy Way to Quit Vaping by

Alan Carr. There it is. the call to

action of the video. So, in her call to

action or solution, she talks about uh

chewing gum, uh eating mints, and the

audio book by some author. Now, we know

that this video in reality was an ad

because she is pitching this audio book

by Alan Carr, she said, right? So, we

know that she was promoting this book in

her video and she crushed it. The call

to action at the end of the video really

quickly, really subtly, makes it feel

super organic, doesn't feel salesy at

all. And those are the best ads. So

again, you know, we could sit here for

hours and we could analyze these videos.

And this is what you should do. Before I

posted a single video on the Puff Count

Tik Tok, I scrolled for 7 days straight.

I saved all the videos to the market

research just like this. And after 7

days of scrolling, analyzing, and

understanding what goes viral in your

niche and why it goes viral in your

niche, you will be so much better at

creating content. Cool. So, we got our

first video research row of our

spreadsheet here. We're going to go

through and spend some days actually

just writing these out. We're not going

to use too much AI. We're going to write

this and really understand the problems

in our niche, content ideas, and that

sort of thing. This is the research

side, which I really, really like.

What's next? How do we go from research

to actually creating content? Okay, now

we're going to get into phase two, which

is the actual creation of this content

and growing your channel. By following

this organic growth framework, I grew

the PuffCount account to 120,000

followers, over 50 million views, and

hundreds of thousands of app store

installs, all for $0. So, when you're

creating this content, there is a proven

framework to follow. And that framework

is hook, problem, solution, or call to

action. Obviously, the hook is the most

important part. You need to capture that

attention in the first 3 seconds. And I

can show an example, one of my most

viral videos. This one got 5 million

views. I'm shaking this glass bowl of

empty vapes. There's so many different

elements of this hook and we did this

intentionally. Number one, there's a

sound hook. We're shaking the glass with

vapes in it. There's some crazy sounds

going on. And then boom, we hop right

into the concept of the video. And then

you want to present the problem or the

story line clearly. So, what are we

doing in this video? We're paying people

to ditch their vapes. Why? Because vapes

are unhealthy. And then, of course, at

the end of the video, we're going to

have a quick 2- second call to action.

The 2-C call to action, simply showing

the product in your video, works so well

because if people miss that, they have

to rewatch your video again and it

creates an engagement loop. People on

Tik Tok do not want to be watching ads.

They want to be entertained. They want

to be educated. They want to be

informed. Your entire app is going to be

a funnel, right? And at the very top of

the funnel, we have your Tik Tok video

or your Tik Tok views. You don't need to

explain every part in your funnel for

your video to be effective. All you have

to do is take the person from your Tik

Tok video to the app store. That's

exactly what all these videos do, right?

There's no there's no explanation of the

product. There's no explaining the

features. So, if you can do that with

your content and present a sly, organic

feeling call to action, you will crush.

Steven is the perfect example of how

someone can turn a simple app idea into

a million-doll business. But that comes

with finding the right idea and knowing

how to validate it. Well, you're in luck

because I've studied thousands of app

ideas, making millions, and spent hours

obsessing over what works, what fails,

and what separates the winners from the

rest. And today, I'm going to share the

entire database of ideas with you for

free. 50 plus validated AI app ideas,

what problem they solve, how much money

they make, and how they grew. All backed

by reallife case studies. This is

basically a gold mine of profitable,

simple AI apps on the internet right

now. So, if you're serious about

building an app that can make money like

Steven, hit the first link in the

description and grab it for free.

Hopefully, this helps you find your next

big idea. All right, let's get back to

Steven. All right. Well, the next

question that I have for you is, you

know, once you start posting stuff,

creating stuff, which is a big learning

curve for a lot of people, especially

putting themselves out on short form

video for the first time. What's the

posting strategy of this? You mentioned

you do videos one time a day. What would

you do if you were starting today? What

do you recommend? Uh is what time to

post, how much to post, and when to know

when to stop. The posting strategy. This

is where I see a lot of people fail,

right? Because in the beginning, it's

going to be slow. In the beginning, it's

going to be hard to get that first viral

pop. But the most important thing is

staying consistent. Whether you're

posting, whether you're getting creators

to post, you need to stay consistent

with it, right? Don't worry about the

time that you post the content. all the

small little details of the content. Do

not be a perfectionist. Your goal here

is volume. Your goal here is knowing

generally what direction your content

should be going. You're just looking for

that first viral video. The way to get

there is by posting volume. Volume

negates luck, right? So, you need to be

posting as much as possible. And when

you get a video that pops off, recreate

that concept. If you look at the most

viral people on Tik Tok, let's forget

about businesses for a second. Let's

think about just creators, influencers.

The most viral people on Tik Tok, on

YouTube, they do the same style of video

over and over and over again. There's a

reason they do that. And we could take a

page out of their playbook and we could

do the same thing for our app. The most

important part is to stay consistent.

Post every single day. Post based on

your market research. It'll give you a

much better chance of going viral. And

then once you do find a video that pops

off for you, continue to recreate that

video. It will become easier and easier

for you. An important thing too is once

you get that first viral video, the

floor of the amount of views that you

get will increase over time because the

platforms trust you more and there's

more engagement to your videos so they

will be shown more. All it takes is that

first viral video to get you out of that

200 view jail. And also, if you're

posting on one platform, why not post on

all of them? Download the videos, post

them on Tik Tok, post them on Instagram

reels, post them on YouTube shorts, post

them on Twitter. Twitter is so slept on.

Do not sleep on Twitter as a

distribution. As you start to create

more and more content, you're going to

understand some formats don't drive high

intent installs. They don't drive any

conversions for you. There's one example

that comes to mind. Yeah. So, this video

here got 11.6 million views, close to a

million likes, and it drove me close to

no installs. Number one, because I

didn't have a call to action, but number

two, you know, I'm not really talking

about any pain points here. There's not

a lot going on. It was kind of a bad

video in terms of conversions. It was

great for the account and great for

driving views and and followers and

shares and engagement and stuff like

that. But this didn't really drive

installs for me. And I think it's

important to keep track of that. And you

can see here, you know, there's two

videos. These were my two highest

converting videos in terms of installs

and sales on PuffCount. So I pinned

those to the top of my profile. And

you'll see these are very different

styles of video. Again, these follow our

proven framework of hook storyline

solution. I pinned these videos on my

profile because they drove the highest

amount of conversions. Your profile

itself will become its own funnel. So,

everyone who visits my profile now is

going to watch these two pinned videos

for sure because they're the first

videos that show up. And I chose to pin

these videos because they were the

highest converting videos. And what I've

come to find is the highest converting

videos for me personally were public

interviews, simple product demos like

this video. There's trend hijacking as

well. And you can also have the problem

solution narratives like this video

here. All right, so we've gone through

the content creation phase, which is

probably the hardest phase. If you can

get through this and create viral

formats that work, you're pretty much

set. But you can't create content

yourself forever. So, what's the next

step after that to really truly grow,

build something that you can sell like

you did for Puff Cat? Pat, I'm so glad

you asked. So, we finished phase two. We

have this library of organic content and

now we want to scale. There's a couple

different ways to scale. You yourself,

you can go beast mode. You could post

a,000 videos a day, but that's not very

likely. You can hire and outsource

creators, which is easier said than

done. I think everybody's going through

a super distortive process to hire

creators right now. You have to email a

thousand of them. Only one gets back to

you and they give you some outrageous

price. But that is exactly why I built

my next product which is posted. On

posted, what we did was we made

connecting with creators as easy as

possible. So this is the best way to

work with creators. We have this feature

called deals. For example, you create a

project brief. You explain what your

product is. You have some rules for the

content you want. You could choose where

you want the creators to be from. And

then you have your inspiration content

right here. Going back to our market

research, this is where we give the

creators our market research. We tell

the creators what videos are going viral

in our niche, what's working in our

niche, and then creators will actually

submit videos to your deal for free. So,

for example, this creator submitted this

video to my deal and I can watch it for

free. And this is what the creator wants

to be paid. I can approve this piece of

content or I can reject this piece of

content and I can ask for another price

or whatever it is. But you can see all

these creators made videos for my

product for free. And there's all

different types of bids, right? This one

wants $40. This one wants $50. This one

wants 100. So, you can scroll through

these, approve or deny, you only pay for

the ones that you love. And then when

you do choose one and you do pay for

one, you own the video itself and you

own the ad code so that you can scale it

further on paid ads. For example, this

creator right here who has 552,000

followers, she made a post for us for

110 bucks. It got 30,000 views. This

creator here with 2.7 million followers,

110 bucks a video. or this creator right

here who only had 768 followers but made

an amazing piece of content for us that

got 53,000 views. And again, you know,

we own these videos for life. Copy the

ad code and scale further on paid ads

using meta or Tik Tok ads. The first

thing that we need to do is start giving

data into these paid ad platforms cuz

Tik Tok and and Facebook or any paid ad

platform doesn't have enough data on

your app yet. So, you will need an MMP,

a mobile measurement partner to send

these events into the paid ad platforms.

Adjust is a great one. Appsfire is a

great one, but we need to feed the paid

ad platforms with enough data, right?

So, your first campaign cannot be a

purchase campaign. You can't optimize

for those users just quite yet because

Tik Tok and Facebook don't really know

who those users are yet. CAC is your

customer acquisition cost. So, with all

of our content and all of our paid ads,

our customer acquisition cost on

PuffCount was anywhere around 20 to $24.

And our lifetime value was anywhere from

$55 to upwards of $70 per conversion.

So, that was profitable math for us. We

knew that if we put $1 into paid ads, it

would get $2, sometimes even more, out

on the other end. So, here you'll see

our paid ads dashboard. We spent a total

of $82,000 on our paid ads before

exiting the business. This is how we

scaled from 3K to $44,000 in monthly

recurring revenue. And you can see here,

look at the cost per click. 3 cents, 18

cents, 21 cents, 15 cents, 35 cents, 9

cents. We got these results almost like

day one of running ads because we had

this library of proven content. We knew

exactly what videos we were going to

upload to the paid ads dashboard because

we had validated it all organically. So,

we were spending smarter. And this is

our four-step scaling process in order

to optimize your paid ads. Everything is

a funnel. Just like our Tik Tok videos,

Tik Tok profile itself is a funnel. So

are paid ads. If you think of everything

as a funnel, it becomes so much easier

because you don't have to go straight

from a view to a sale. That's so hard to

do, right? Think of it in a stepby-step

process. Everything is a funnel. So at

the top of the funnel, we have our views

and then obviously we have our clicks.

So our views on our paid ads and then

people who have clicked our paid ad and

then people who have installed our app

from our paid ad and then people who

have purchased from our paid ad. And

your views are going to be top of funnel

and the sales are going to be at the

absolute bottom of the funnel. And

inherently there's going to be less

people who purchase your product

compared to the amount of people that

view your product. So, when you're

starting on paid ads, it's very

important that you fill up each step of

the funnel first before you start to

optimize for the bottom. So, first we're

going to optimize for views and then

we're going to optimize for clicks on

those ads and then we're going to

optimize for installs and then trials

and then subscriptions. These are all

different events that you can optimize

for in your paid ads. Depending on which

event you target and optimize for, the

cost and the return on that spend will

change a ton. So you fill the ad

platforms with enough data so that

eventually you can start to target your

trials and subscriptions. And as far as

the platform strategy goes with paid

ads, it really depends and it's

different for every app, right? From my

experience with PuffCount, Tik Tok was

much cheaper traffic, but the quality of

the traffic was a little bit lower.

Whereas on Meta, the traffic was more

expensive, but the quality was a bit

higher. Facebook and Tik Tok are really

the only two places that you should

start running paid ads. Ultimately, you

can test both depending on your budget.

I think it's important to lock down one

paid ad platform at first because again,

you need to fill these ad platforms with

as much data as possible for them to be

the most effective. So, if you're

splitting your budget everywhere and

you're spending $5 here and $10 there,

it's not really going to work for you. I

would try to focus on one platform in

the beginning until you lock it down,

you nail it down, you scale your budget,

and then you can shift to another paid

ad platform. For me personally, we

scaled most of our spend on Tik Tok ads.

And that was because all of our content

that we used on our paid ads was made

for Tik Tok. I was in my apartment

making Tik Toks all day. So naturally,

where our content performed the best

when we scaled on paid. And a lot of

people are scared of paid ads and they

don't want to do it. But Facebook and

and Tik Tok are some of the most

profitable companies in the world for a

reason. It's because paid ads work. It's

because companies are using this. It'll

make it so much easier for you to scale.

I'm a solopreneur. I'm bootstrapping

these products. I don't want to waste my

money on paid ads. And you don't have

to. You just need to identify what

content goes viral organically and then

you can spend confidently on paid ads

and feel way more confident that you're

going to get a return on your ad spend.

And paid ads are so great because you

can optimize for certain events in your

videos. And this is really where your

content creation skills and validating

the content organically comes into play

because for our specific paid ad

strategy, we are optimizing for the

people who are most likely to purchase.

So, we're tracking all these events on

Tik Tok ads, on Facebook ads, and we are

telling Facebook and Tik Tok, go find us

more people who are most likely to

purchase our product. With the killer

organic content library that we had,

telling Facebook and Tik Tok to optimize

for certain events inside our app, those

are the two things we needed to crush

with paid ads. We were profitable almost

instantly while running paid ads. And we

were able to scale very quickly because

we had done all the work up front. And

not only that, you can have a call to

action in your videos. my view to

install rate skyrocketed. Obviously,

running paid ads because Tik Tok will

give you a call to action on the video

if you're running paid ads in an organic

piece of content if you're not running

paid ads. You have to rely on someone

going to the app store, searching in

your product. That's a lot more effort.

Although you're spending for this reach,

the reach is much more effective on paid

ads. The campaign structure on your paid

ads is very, very important. Again, we

want to upload our best performing

organic videos and then we simply let

the platforms optimize. Again, when

you're starting, you want to optimize

for the top of funnel. And as you get

more data and more spend into these ad

platforms, you can start to optimize for

the bottom of the funnel. And it's very

important to track everything. And use

analytics tools like Superwall or like

Revenue Cat. You can effectively track

your cost per install, your trial

conversion rate, your subscription rate,

your retention rate, and most

importantly, your lifetime value. The

lifetime value of every customer that

comes into your app because that is your

northstar metric. That is your golden

metric. Because Tik Tok will tell you

how much it costs to acquire those

customers, but you need to understand

what their lifetime value is. You want

to increase the lifetime value of your

customers so you can spend more to

acquire those customers. And if you can

get to a 3:1 CAC to LTV ratio,

congratulations. You've built a money

printing machine. So that's it in a

nutshell. That is our three-step process

that helped us scale PuffCount to

$44,000 in monthly recurring revenue

before exiting the business to a larger

mobile app studio in Europe. That's it.

You start with market research. You give

yourself the best chance to go viral.

You start posting consistently. Hire

creators and start to validate content

organically. And then you take your best

performers and put them on paid ads so

that you can scale. Well, thank you for

sharing your playbook, Stephen. This was

amazing. It's super cool to have someone

who has actually done this. You showed

all your examples from Puff Count. You

didn't hold anything back. This is a

business that changed your life and it's

super cool to see the behind the scenes

of it. So, thank you for sharing. And if

you are watching this right now, we want

to bring Stephen back on the channel for

hopefully a third time. So if you have

any questions for Stephen, put them in

the comments. Hopefully we'll have you

back on for a third time.

Our next video is going to be in person,

Pat.

Oh yeah, we will make sure to do a video

live IRL.

I'll be back for the third one because

I'm going to sell my third company.

Maybe that'll be our next video.

And that's what it takes these days. So

thanks for coming on, Stephen, sharing

all this. You're awesome, man.

Absolutely, Pat. Thank you for having

me bro.

I hope you enjoyed this video and got

some inspiration from Steven's story.

But real quick, I want to remind you the

whole point of these videos is to help

you find an idea and actually build it.

Learning is cool, but action is what

will get you that dream outcome. And

with AI tools getting better and better

every day, it's never been easier to get

started. You can spin up a working app

in just a few hours and start turning

that into a real business. If you're

looking for a proven system or road map

to build with AI, then definitely check

out Starter Story Build. Our programs

will help you find an idea, build it

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fast. Just click the first link in the

description if you want to learn more.

Thanks again for watching. We'll see you

in the next one. Peace.