App Masters
An app marketing and growth consultancy run by Steve P. Young, which also hosts a podcast.
App Masters, Steve Young's ASO and app marketing consultancy, buys under-monetized apps and grows them with ASO and Apple Ads. One client app hit number one in a week, made $1,600 in its first month, and is now near $20K MRR. The lesson: target low-volume keywords (about 30 searches), name the app after them, and study odd apps ranking high with few reviews.
- Bought under-monetized appAbout $1,000 a month
- Revenue doubledAbout $2,000 a month
- First paywall launchedNo features added
- Fully hard paywall$60 yearly, $8,000–$10,000 a month
- Close button addedRevenue fell by half
From Steve Young, App Masters
What was said about App Masters
1The hard paywall on the app Steve bought
A hard paywall and a higher price multiplied a bought app's revenue. An app making $1,000 to $2,000 a month reached $8,000 to $10,000 after Steve added onboarding, a hard paywall and a $60 yearly price in place of a $3 one-time purchase. Downloads held at 100 to 150 a day and no features were added.
Start-trial rate went from 6% to 13% while trial-to-paid stayed flat. Between June and August the only change was a close button (the X) that Apple forced onto the paywall, and revenue fell by half. Steve was against a hard paywall at the time and launched it only because that was how the app was coded.
Most people buy on day zero, so the paywall belongs in onboarding. RevenueCat's State of Subscription report says nearly all trial starts happen on day zero, and users who don't try at once rarely try later. Every first open should reach a paywall view.
Steve sees a hard paywall as the fit for paid traffic, for apps with downloads but no sales (it tests product market fit at once) and for new launches, especially in health and fitness where the big apps already use one.
Hide the close button only from users who came from paid ads. A "how did you hear about us" screen sorts users by source: App Store search and brand searches get the X, while Instagram, Meta, Facebook and TikTok users get none. A Superwall test of a hard paywall for Meta users had a much better start-trial rate.
The cost of a hard paywall is one-star reviews, and this split keeps that damage to paid traffic. Steve suggests a hard paywall for all Meta paid traffic.
Grant free credits after the X, then ask for a review. An AI app that gave eight free generations but hid them now tells users about them after they dismiss the paywall, with a "claim now" button, then asks for a review. Its rating rose from 4.5 to 4.7 in a month and reviews doubled, from about 300 to 600.
The claim button does nothing, since the credits are already given. Steve lists timing options for review asks: before the paywall (aggressive), after the trial starts, or later.
2The paywall placement, offer and wording tests
Putting the paywall before sign-up nearly doubled who saw it. In a fitness app, about 60% of users dropped off at a hard sign-up screen before the paywall. Flipping the order raised paywall views from 40% to 94%, trial activations by 190% and sales by 52%.
Ask for sign-in after the trial starts, as Calm does. Returns from extra paywall views start to fade at about eight views.
Screens before the paywall that answer doubts lift trial starts. A three-screen flow after onboarding (social proof, a video, then a trial timeline promising 7 days free and a reminder two days before it ends) raised trial activations 56% on one of Steve's apps. The same flow did not work on a client app.
Steve first saw it on Resumes, then at Blinkist, whose 2021 trial timeline raised conversions 23%. A resume-style version failed on another app, so what each screen says has to be tested. Telling users when the trial ends also cuts "I forgot to cancel" refunds.
Moving the trial to a 3-day weekly plan tripled sales. For an app with downloads and trial starts but weak conversion, prices stayed at $50 a year or $6.99 a week, and the trial moved from the 7-day yearly plan to a 3-day weekly plan. Sales tripled on similar downloads.
Steve's rule of thumb: 7 days usually works best on yearly, 3 days on weekly, monthly plans have poor LTV, and 30-day trials usually fail. Some clients report a 14-day trial shown on exit beat a discount, but that is anecdotal.
A cheap plan beside the main one makes the main plan look cheap. A paywall showing $10 a year next to $1.99 a month sold well; cleaning it up to show only the yearly plan made sales tank.
Two or three plans work and three usually converts best. Monthly is usually weaker than expected, and whether weekly or yearly fits depends on the category.
Breaking the yearly price into weekly or monthly terms lifted conversions 38%. Steve wanted the $60 to look cheap, so the paywall showed every price as its per-month or per-week equivalent, doing the math for the user. Conversions rose 38% against no breakdown.
Say Continue, not Subscribe, on the paywall button. Replacing "subscribe" with "continue" or "get started" raised conversions 30% for a client. Across client tests, Continue beat Start free trial on iOS, while Start free trial won on Android.
"Nobody wants to subscribe."
Writing "No payment now" under the button added another 30%. For an app with a free trial, adding those words directly under the call to action raised conversions 30% for one client, with no design change.
A similar copy test found adding the word "free" to a feature lifted conversions 11%, like "buy a burger, get free fries".
Unlock wording beat a flat "get everything" on a lifetime plan. "Unlock lifetime insights" got the most trial activations; "Get all features" lost, since it sounds like a handout rather than a reward.
Naming the lifetime plan signals a one-time payment, which makes the price feel lower.
Longer paywalls sell because people read when they have to pay. Plans above the fold, then benefits, testimonials, a free versus paid comparison and the plans again, with a floating call to action. One app went from $200 to $1,000 on 15 downloads a day; another saw sales rise 50%.
The A/B test kept the same plans and changed only length. The small case shows paywall work can start as soon as an app gets some downloads. Selling the outcome (before and after photos, storage freed) beats listing features.
Video makes the value obvious faster than graphics. One developer's soft paywall converted 2.5% with graphics, 4.7% with a real person and 6.8% with a video of the features.
A client who copied Cal AI's flow found the simple paywall with a video beat the longer version, which had two extra screens he didn't know about.
A reverse trial rescued freemium users who closed the paywall. In John's bus and train times app, users who skip the trial still get a free week of pro, with an "ends in 5 days" notice that leads to a discount. Their conversion rose from 0.4% to 4.5%, against an Apple average of 2 to 3% install to paid.
Two screens push users to use pro features in the free week. Other second offers: a $1.99 first month then $60 a year (20 to 30% pick it and they renew, though Steve's numbers are weak so far), and Flow's 30% discount right after the trial starts, shown without data.
Two odd options on the source question raised one client's ARPU 30%. Adding "on TV" and "from a lawyer" to the "how did you hear about us" screen, a tip from a podcast guest for an older audience, lifted ARPU 30%.
The options add credibility even with no TV ads running.
3Pulling a tentacle: building apps from keywords
Build around a keyword a big app has expanded into but can't defend. Calm grew from meditation into sleep stories, soundscapes, focus music and green noise, and does not even rank first for "meditation". Each of those side topics is a tentacle a small app can take through organic search.
Steve's case: apps launched before 2020 earn about 69% of subscription revenue and 2025+ apps just 3% (RevenueCat), and vibe coding flooded iOS with new apps in 2026, so ideas "from your dome" tend to fail.
Start in high revenue-per-install categories, then niche down to painkillers. Steve stays in health and fitness, education or business. Health and fitness breaks even near $3 per install at day 14 and close to $4 by day 60.
Meditation is a vitamin; green noise or migraine tracking is narrower, and a painkiller like migraine tracking supports a hard paywall. Migraine Buddy makes about $50,000 to $70,000 a month despite a weak onboarding and paywall.
Mine a high-earning app's keywords for traffic near 30 and weak competition. Find a big app (at least $300,000 a month) in AppMagic, confirm a revenue-to-downloads ratio of 3 to 1 or better in Sensor Tower, then list its keywords in ASO Mobile. Endel earns about $500,000 to $600,000 a month on about 100,000 downloads; "brown noise" scores 35 with difficulty 2.5.
Collect six to 10 keywords as plans A, B and C; a score of 20 or lower is weak. Steve says he doesn't know what the volume number means in daily searches, but two keywords near 30 at number one gave an app 100 to 150 downloads a day.
Check the actual App Store results, since tools overstate competition. A keyword is open if the top apps with it in their title have few ratings; the first brown noise app has 645 ratings. For one client no result had the keyword in its title, and the app hit number one at launch.
A rival with many ratings and the phrase in its title is not worth fighting, such as a sleep sounds app with 205,000 ratings.
Apps ranking high with few reviews point to ignored keywords. Browse a broad term like meditation, spot the app that ranks oddly well (one ranked third with 138 reviews), then pull its keywords in ASO Mobile or App Follow. A client launched on a keyword found this way and made $1,600 in its first 21 days at number one, with about 100 downloads a day.
Sensor Tower and the Meta Ads Library show whether such an app buys traffic. Apple's API changes mean App Follow surfaces these less well now.
Title and subtitle wording does most of the ranking. Green Noise launched as "Green Noise App" with the subtitle "Green Noise for Better Sleep", copied from Apple's autofill, and reached number one; it is still third with almost no attention since.
Its keyword field held only "green, noise, app, com, free". A client outranked Canva on a niche keyword while earning far less, since Canva can't chase narrow terms.
Keyword-first apps earned from launch without ad spend. One of Steve's apps made $550,000 last year, another earns $2,000 to $3,000 a month with no ads, and a client app launched in March 2023 was profitable from day one and reached $12,000 to $15,000 a month organically.
A just-bought app has made over $1 million since March 2024, mostly from search and browse; a client's ASO-only app reached about $125,000 and is near $20K MRR.
Ship simple, fix monetization, and add paid ads only past 10K a month. After winning the keyword, work on paywall, onboarding and pricing, add features around 5K to 10K, and consider ads above 10K. With installs costing about $2 to $5, revenue per install must exceed $2.
Organic can reach about six figures a year; seven figures probably needs paid, which is why Steve spends to scale the $550,000 app while the smaller ones stay organic.
4Buying under-monetized apps
Buy apps with organic downloads but weak monetization, then fix two things. The week after buying, Steve makes a name change to pull more organic downloads and a paywall adjustment. Trial starts double while trial-to-paid stays flat, so revenue sometimes doubles within a couple of months.
He prefers organic apps, calling a paid-driven app a "money eating machine".
A loan can let a cash-flowing app pay for itself. In Steve's example, a $350,000 app earning $10,000 a month, financed by a 10-year loan at about $5,000 a month, leaves about $5,000 a month in profit, like a house with tenants already paying.
The math ignores interest, taxes, fees and revenue decline, and Steve says it may not be right. One $18,000 purchase flopped.
Win on a channel you're uniquely good at, not a copied strategy. With anyone able to build an app, "the better app is the one that has better distribution." Steve's edge is ASO and Apple Ads, which run on keywords rather than creatives and are the easiest channels to learn.
Joseph Choi calls this "founder channel fit". Few founders at $100,000 MRR report Google or TikTok as their main channel.
5The App Store screenshot tests
Sharper captions on a therapy app lifted downloads 30%. The app already ranked first for CBT, so the first caption changed from "Calm anxiety and feel better" to "Calm anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy", led with personalized, interactive, video-guided therapy, and added an Editor's Choice badge.
The look stayed the same; only words changed. Steve found the differentiator by using the app, and asked the owner what users love most: confidential journaling, which became the third screenshot.
Highlighting features on top of a new background lifted downloads 61%. A sporty background beat a plain blue one by 10 to 13%, then feature-highlighting screens with nearly the same titles took the total to 61%. Steve's agency now builds this style into client screenshots.
The case came from Split Metrics and AppScreens. Other tests showed 30% for a variant and 13.8% for a redesign of a client's unattractive originals.
Test the first three screenshots, one change at a time. Only the first three show in search results and Apple ads, so they matter most; faces there tend to help. App Store Connect allows only one product page optimization test or draft at a time.
Results vary: Angry Birds found standard screenshots beat seasonal ones, and video usually helps games but often hurts non-games. Manual uploads often scramble order, which AppScreens avoids.
Leading with a new feature won a small reorder test. On Steve's Paraphrase app, putting Speak first and moving Rewrite in your style to fourth won. The uplift was small.
Small lifts still count: 15% on 10,000 downloads is 1,500 more installs with no keyword changes. Social proof and a human in front are the next tests.
6Getting a funnel ready for Meta ads
Hit funnel conversion targets before spending on Meta. Aim for 5 to 10% install-to-trial (10%+ with a hard paywall), over 30% trial-to-paid and about 2% install-to-paid, with the trial on the highest-LTV plan. 1,000 installs at 7% and 30% give 21 subscribers, about 2.1%.
RevenueCat benchmarks: 2.6% median iOS download-to-paid by day 35 and about 33% median trial-to-paid. "If you got a leaky bucket, you might as well write Meta a big check."
Each install needs at least $3 of lifetime value for Meta. Meta installs are expensive, so check LTV per install around month 11 in RevenueCat, Adapty or Superwall. Apple Ads can work at a lower figure.
$3 is Steve's opinion and a friend argues for more. For one of his apps, month one and month 11 LTV are about the same.
Prove strangers pay through ASO or Apple Ads first. Search traffic is pull traffic and converts better than Meta, which interrupts people, so it is the cheap place to prove the funnel. Expect Meta users to convert worse.
Apps that can't rely on search, like a new social network, must test on Meta directly and pay more.
Verify Meta's events against App Store Connect before launch. Send install, paywall view, start checkout, start trial and subscribe through the Meta SDK. Over the same period Meta showed 276 trial starts against 312 in App Store Connect, close enough to trust.
Installs read a little over 4,000 in Meta against about 3,000 in Apple; trial starts matter more. Install to paywall view should be near 100%.
Optimize for trial starts and budget for 50 a week. Meta delivers whatever you optimize for, and install optimization buys $1 to $2 installs that never pay. A $1,000 test at $2 per install gives 500 installs, 35 trials and 10 to 11 subscribers, about $95 each.
That is below the 50 weekly events Meta needs, so $1,000 only hints at whether a creative works.
7Researching and testing ad creative
Study competitors' longest-running ads, since they're probably working. In the Meta Ads Library or SocialPeta, filter to active ads, sort by impressions and find the oldest start dates. A Cal AI ad running since June 3 was a 9-second hook, demo and App Store badge.
Also study apps sharing your audience: short drama apps skew female in their 30s and 40s, like many health apps. Cal AI puts about 90% of spend on Meta and about 60% in the US.
Break a winning ad into parts and reuse its logic. Cal AI's best ad opens with a six-second 315 lb to defined abs transformation, spends nine seconds on the app, and ends on the App Store page.
Paid ads should show the app, since viewers must see it before starting a trial, even though organic content shouldn't.
Test whole concepts before tweaking details. For a calorie app, compare food tracking, before and after weight loss, and tracking snacks, rather than swapping the food in the hook. Launch three to five concepts in one ad set.
Each ad needs a hook, demo, offer and App Store end card. Custom product pages matched to each ad come in phases two or three.
Run cheap three-day creative tests on your best converting days. One ad set, four creatives, $50 a day, judged on a 30 to 40% hook rate and hold rate. Steve's app converts best Sunday to Tuesday, so that is its window.
Find your days from trial activation rates; games may peak Thursday to Saturday. Ivy from Resto Me spent $20,000 a day with positive ROAS but took a couple of months to see it.
8Cash flow and the 45-day payout delay
Profitable apps run out of cash because stores pay 45+ days late. With a $10,000 budget at $3,000 a week, $1,000 is left by week four; the $9,000 spent returns about $10,800 at 120% ROAS, but that money is still 45 days away.
Steve runs a bought app on one paid channel at $10,000 to $12,000 a month and stays fine on cash at $13,000 to $20,000 of spend.
Advance proceeds only once the channel is proven. Adapty Finance advances 85% of proceeds within 24 hours for about 2.5%, using the Adapty SDK to verify revenue. In the example, the advance is taken at week four once creative and funnel are profitable.
$11,000 of proceeds returns $9,000, and a $5,000 spend at 175% ROAS brings back close to $9,000.
Before You Spend $1 on Meta Ads, Watch This
Steve P. Young argues Meta ads only amplify a funnel that already works, so apps should prove conversion, tracking and LTV of at least $3 per install before spending. He suggests a hard paywall for all Meta paid traffic and testing whole ad concepts before small tweaks.
Hide the close button only from users who came from paid ads. A "how did you hear about us" screen sorts users by source: App Store search and brand searches get the X, while Instagram, Meta, Facebook and TikTok users get none. A Superwall test of a hard paywall for Meta users had a much better start-trial rate.
The cost of a hard paywall is one-star reviews, and this split keeps that damage to paid traffic. Steve suggests a hard paywall for all Meta paid traffic.
Hit funnel conversion targets before spending on Meta. Aim for 5 to 10% install-to-trial (10%+ with a hard paywall), over 30% trial-to-paid and about 2% install-to-paid, with the trial on the highest-LTV plan. 1,000 installs at 7% and 30% give 21 subscribers, about 2.1%.
RevenueCat benchmarks: 2.6% median iOS download-to-paid by day 35 and about 33% median trial-to-paid. "If you got a leaky bucket, you might as well write Meta a big check."
Each install needs at least $3 of lifetime value for Meta. Meta installs are expensive, so check LTV per install around month 11 in RevenueCat, Adapty or Superwall. Apple Ads can work at a lower figure.
$3 is Steve's opinion and a friend argues for more. For one of his apps, month one and month 11 LTV are about the same.
Prove strangers pay through ASO or Apple Ads first. Search traffic is pull traffic and converts better than Meta, which interrupts people, so it is the cheap place to prove the funnel. Expect Meta users to convert worse.
Apps that can't rely on search, like a new social network, must test on Meta directly and pay more.
Verify Meta's events against App Store Connect before launch. Send install, paywall view, start checkout, start trial and subscribe through the Meta SDK. Over the same period Meta showed 276 trial starts against 312 in App Store Connect, close enough to trust.
Installs read a little over 4,000 in Meta against about 3,000 in Apple; trial starts matter more. Install to paywall view should be near 100%.
Optimize for trial starts and budget for 50 a week. Meta delivers whatever you optimize for, and install optimization buys $1 to $2 installs that never pay. A $1,000 test at $2 per install gives 500 installs, 35 trials and 10 to 11 subscribers, about $95 each.
That is below the 50 weekly events Meta needs, so $1,000 only hints at whether a creative works.
Study competitors' longest-running ads, since they're probably working. In the Meta Ads Library or SocialPeta, filter to active ads, sort by impressions and find the oldest start dates. A Cal AI ad running since June 3 was a 9-second hook, demo and App Store badge.
Also study apps sharing your audience: short drama apps skew female in their 30s and 40s, like many health apps. Cal AI puts about 90% of spend on Meta and about 60% in the US.
Test whole concepts before tweaking details. For a calorie app, compare food tracking, before and after weight loss, and tracking snacks, rather than swapping the food in the hook. Launch three to five concepts in one ad set.
Each ad needs a hook, demo, offer and App Store end card. Custom product pages matched to each ad come in phases two or three.
How to Increase Organic Downloads Without Changing Keywords
Steve's agency now builds feature-highlighting screenshots into client work and sees gains. One client's redesigned screenshots beat ugly originals.
Highlighting features on top of a new background lifted downloads 61%. A sporty background beat a plain blue one by 10 to 13%, then feature-highlighting screens with nearly the same titles took the total to 61%. Steve's agency now builds this style into client screenshots.
The case came from Split Metrics and AppScreens. Other tests showed 30% for a variant and 13.8% for a redesign of a client's unattractive originals.
Test the first three screenshots, one change at a time. Only the first three show in search results and Apple ads, so they matter most; faces there tend to help. App Store Connect allows only one product page optimization test or draft at a time.
Results vary: Angry Birds found standard screenshots beat seasonal ones, and video usually helps games but often hurts non-games. Manual uploads often scramble order, which AppScreens avoids.
Leading with a new feature won a small reorder test. On Steve's Paraphrase app, putting Speak first and moving Rewrite in your style to fourth won. The uplift was small.
Small lifts still count: 15% on 10,000 downloads is 1,500 more installs with no keyword changes. Social proof and a human in front are the next tests.
Do This Before Running ANY Paid Social Media Marketing
Steve runs it and shares that one of his apps converts best Sunday to Tuesday, which sets its creative test window.
Study competitors' longest-running ads, since they're probably working. In the Meta Ads Library or SocialPeta, filter to active ads, sort by impressions and find the oldest start dates. A Cal AI ad running since June 3 was a 9-second hook, demo and App Store badge.
Also study apps sharing your audience: short drama apps skew female in their 30s and 40s, like many health apps. Cal AI puts about 90% of spend on Meta and about 60% in the US.
Break a winning ad into parts and reuse its logic. Cal AI's best ad opens with a six-second 315 lb to defined abs transformation, spends nine seconds on the app, and ends on the App Store page.
Paid ads should show the app, since viewers must see it before starting a trial, even though organic content shouldn't.
Run cheap three-day creative tests on your best converting days. One ad set, four creatives, $50 a day, judged on a 30 to 40% hook rate and hold rate. Steve's app converts best Sunday to Tuesday, so that is its window.
Find your days from trial activation rates; games may peak Thursday to Saturday. Ivy from Resto Me spent $20,000 a day with positive ROAS but took a couple of months to see it.
We’ve Tested 100s of Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts.
Young's team has tested hundreds of paywalls for clients. Tests include a paywall-before-sign-up flip that raised views from 40% to 94% and trial activations by 190%, and a weekly-trial offer that tripled sales.
A hard paywall and a higher price multiplied a bought app's revenue. An app making $1,000 to $2,000 a month reached $8,000 to $10,000 after Steve added onboarding, a hard paywall and a $60 yearly price in place of a $3 one-time purchase. Downloads held at 100 to 150 a day and no features were added.
Start-trial rate went from 6% to 13% while trial-to-paid stayed flat. Between June and August the only change was a close button (the X) that Apple forced onto the paywall, and revenue fell by half. Steve was against a hard paywall at the time and launched it only because that was how the app was coded.
Most people buy on day zero, so the paywall belongs in onboarding. RevenueCat's State of Subscription report says nearly all trial starts happen on day zero, and users who don't try at once rarely try later. Every first open should reach a paywall view.
Steve sees a hard paywall as the fit for paid traffic, for apps with downloads but no sales (it tests product market fit at once) and for new launches, especially in health and fitness where the big apps already use one.
Hide the close button only from users who came from paid ads. A "how did you hear about us" screen sorts users by source: App Store search and brand searches get the X, while Instagram, Meta, Facebook and TikTok users get none. A Superwall test of a hard paywall for Meta users had a much better start-trial rate.
The cost of a hard paywall is one-star reviews, and this split keeps that damage to paid traffic. Steve suggests a hard paywall for all Meta paid traffic.
Putting the paywall before sign-up nearly doubled who saw it. In a fitness app, about 60% of users dropped off at a hard sign-up screen before the paywall. Flipping the order raised paywall views from 40% to 94%, trial activations by 190% and sales by 52%.
Ask for sign-in after the trial starts, as Calm does. Returns from extra paywall views start to fade at about eight views.
Screens before the paywall that answer doubts lift trial starts. A three-screen flow after onboarding (social proof, a video, then a trial timeline promising 7 days free and a reminder two days before it ends) raised trial activations 56% on one of Steve's apps. The same flow did not work on a client app.
Steve first saw it on Resumes, then at Blinkist, whose 2021 trial timeline raised conversions 23%. A resume-style version failed on another app, so what each screen says has to be tested. Telling users when the trial ends also cuts "I forgot to cancel" refunds.
Moving the trial to a 3-day weekly plan tripled sales. For an app with downloads and trial starts but weak conversion, prices stayed at $50 a year or $6.99 a week, and the trial moved from the 7-day yearly plan to a 3-day weekly plan. Sales tripled on similar downloads.
Steve's rule of thumb: 7 days usually works best on yearly, 3 days on weekly, monthly plans have poor LTV, and 30-day trials usually fail. Some clients report a 14-day trial shown on exit beat a discount, but that is anecdotal.
A cheap plan beside the main one makes the main plan look cheap. A paywall showing $10 a year next to $1.99 a month sold well; cleaning it up to show only the yearly plan made sales tank.
Two or three plans work and three usually converts best. Monthly is usually weaker than expected, and whether weekly or yearly fits depends on the category.
Say Continue, not Subscribe, on the paywall button. Replacing "subscribe" with "continue" or "get started" raised conversions 30% for a client. Across client tests, Continue beat Start free trial on iOS, while Start free trial won on Android.
"Nobody wants to subscribe."
Unlock wording beat a flat "get everything" on a lifetime plan. "Unlock lifetime insights" got the most trial activations; "Get all features" lost, since it sounds like a handout rather than a reward.
Naming the lifetime plan signals a one-time payment, which makes the price feel lower.
Longer paywalls sell because people read when they have to pay. Plans above the fold, then benefits, testimonials, a free versus paid comparison and the plans again, with a floating call to action. One app went from $200 to $1,000 on 15 downloads a day; another saw sales rise 50%.
The A/B test kept the same plans and changed only length. The small case shows paywall work can start as soon as an app gets some downloads. Selling the outcome (before and after photos, storage freed) beats listing features.
Video makes the value obvious faster than graphics. One developer's soft paywall converted 2.5% with graphics, 4.7% with a real person and 6.8% with a video of the features.
A client who copied Cal AI's flow found the simple paywall with a video beat the longer version, which had two extra screens he didn't know about.
App Ideas That People Are Already Searching For (Steal This Strategy)
Steve builds apps from keyword research, including one that made $550,000 last year and another earning $2,000 to $3,000 a month with no ad spend. A client app launched in March 2023 was profitable from day one and reached $12,000 to $15,000 a month organically.
Build around a keyword a big app has expanded into but can't defend. Calm grew from meditation into sleep stories, soundscapes, focus music and green noise, and does not even rank first for "meditation". Each of those side topics is a tentacle a small app can take through organic search.
Steve's case: apps launched before 2020 earn about 69% of subscription revenue and 2025+ apps just 3% (RevenueCat), and vibe coding flooded iOS with new apps in 2026, so ideas "from your dome" tend to fail.
Start in high revenue-per-install categories, then niche down to painkillers. Steve stays in health and fitness, education or business. Health and fitness breaks even near $3 per install at day 14 and close to $4 by day 60.
Meditation is a vitamin; green noise or migraine tracking is narrower, and a painkiller like migraine tracking supports a hard paywall. Migraine Buddy makes about $50,000 to $70,000 a month despite a weak onboarding and paywall.
Mine a high-earning app's keywords for traffic near 30 and weak competition. Find a big app (at least $300,000 a month) in AppMagic, confirm a revenue-to-downloads ratio of 3 to 1 or better in Sensor Tower, then list its keywords in ASO Mobile. Endel earns about $500,000 to $600,000 a month on about 100,000 downloads; "brown noise" scores 35 with difficulty 2.5.
Collect six to 10 keywords as plans A, B and C; a score of 20 or lower is weak. Steve says he doesn't know what the volume number means in daily searches, but two keywords near 30 at number one gave an app 100 to 150 downloads a day.
Check the actual App Store results, since tools overstate competition. A keyword is open if the top apps with it in their title have few ratings; the first brown noise app has 645 ratings. For one client no result had the keyword in its title, and the app hit number one at launch.
A rival with many ratings and the phrase in its title is not worth fighting, such as a sleep sounds app with 205,000 ratings.
Keyword-first apps earned from launch without ad spend. One of Steve's apps made $550,000 last year, another earns $2,000 to $3,000 a month with no ads, and a client app launched in March 2023 was profitable from day one and reached $12,000 to $15,000 a month organically.
A just-bought app has made over $1 million since March 2024, mostly from search and browse; a client's ASO-only app reached about $125,000 and is near $20K MRR.
Ship simple, fix monetization, and add paid ads only past 10K a month. After winning the keyword, work on paywall, onboarding and pricing, add features around 5K to 10K, and consider ads above 10K. With installs costing about $2 to $5, revenue per install must exceed $2.
Organic can reach about six figures a year; seven figures probably needs paid, which is why Steve spends to scale the $550,000 app while the smaller ones stay organic.
How to Create App Store Screenshots That Get More Downloads
Run by Steve P. Young, it presents a no-fluff screenshot method that lifted a client's downloads by 30% without changing a single keyword.
Sharper captions on a therapy app lifted downloads 30%. The app already ranked first for CBT, so the first caption changed from "Calm anxiety and feel better" to "Calm anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy", led with personalized, interactive, video-guided therapy, and added an Editor's Choice badge.
The look stayed the same; only words changed. Steve found the differentiator by using the app, and asked the owner what users love most: confidential journaling, which became the third screenshot.
Test the first three screenshots, one change at a time. Only the first three show in search results and Apple ads, so they matter most; faces there tend to help. App Store Connect allows only one product page optimization test or draft at a time.
Results vary: Angry Birds found standard screenshots beat seasonal ones, and video usually helps games but often hurts non-games. Manual uploads often scramble order, which AppScreens avoids.
Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026
Steve has been in the app space since 2010, started a podcast in 2013 and YouTube in 2015. He buys under-monetized apps and uses ASO and Apple Ads to grow them, and a client app reached number one in a week and made $1,600 in its first month.
A hard paywall and a higher price multiplied a bought app's revenue. An app making $1,000 to $2,000 a month reached $8,000 to $10,000 after Steve added onboarding, a hard paywall and a $60 yearly price in place of a $3 one-time purchase. Downloads held at 100 to 150 a day and no features were added.
Start-trial rate went from 6% to 13% while trial-to-paid stayed flat. Between June and August the only change was a close button (the X) that Apple forced onto the paywall, and revenue fell by half. Steve was against a hard paywall at the time and launched it only because that was how the app was coded.
Start in high revenue-per-install categories, then niche down to painkillers. Steve stays in health and fitness, education or business. Health and fitness breaks even near $3 per install at day 14 and close to $4 by day 60.
Meditation is a vitamin; green noise or migraine tracking is narrower, and a painkiller like migraine tracking supports a hard paywall. Migraine Buddy makes about $50,000 to $70,000 a month despite a weak onboarding and paywall.
Mine a high-earning app's keywords for traffic near 30 and weak competition. Find a big app (at least $300,000 a month) in AppMagic, confirm a revenue-to-downloads ratio of 3 to 1 or better in Sensor Tower, then list its keywords in ASO Mobile. Endel earns about $500,000 to $600,000 a month on about 100,000 downloads; "brown noise" scores 35 with difficulty 2.5.
Collect six to 10 keywords as plans A, B and C; a score of 20 or lower is weak. Steve says he doesn't know what the volume number means in daily searches, but two keywords near 30 at number one gave an app 100 to 150 downloads a day.
Apps ranking high with few reviews point to ignored keywords. Browse a broad term like meditation, spot the app that ranks oddly well (one ranked third with 138 reviews), then pull its keywords in ASO Mobile or App Follow. A client launched on a keyword found this way and made $1,600 in its first 21 days at number one, with about 100 downloads a day.
Sensor Tower and the Meta Ads Library show whether such an app buys traffic. Apple's API changes mean App Follow surfaces these less well now.
Title and subtitle wording does most of the ranking. Green Noise launched as "Green Noise App" with the subtitle "Green Noise for Better Sleep", copied from Apple's autofill, and reached number one; it is still third with almost no attention since.
Its keyword field held only "green, noise, app, com, free". A client outranked Canva on a niche keyword while earning far less, since Canva can't chase narrow terms.
Keyword-first apps earned from launch without ad spend. One of Steve's apps made $550,000 last year, another earns $2,000 to $3,000 a month with no ads, and a client app launched in March 2023 was profitable from day one and reached $12,000 to $15,000 a month organically.
A just-bought app has made over $1 million since March 2024, mostly from search and browse; a client's ASO-only app reached about $125,000 and is near $20K MRR.
Buy apps with organic downloads but weak monetization, then fix two things. The week after buying, Steve makes a name change to pull more organic downloads and a paywall adjustment. Trial starts double while trial-to-paid stays flat, so revenue sometimes doubles within a couple of months.
He prefers organic apps, calling a paid-driven app a "money eating machine".
A loan can let a cash-flowing app pay for itself. In Steve's example, a $350,000 app earning $10,000 a month, financed by a 10-year loan at about $5,000 a month, leaves about $5,000 a month in profit, like a house with tenants already paying.
The math ignores interest, taxes, fees and revenue decline, and Steve says it may not be right. One $18,000 purchase flopped.
Win on a channel you're uniquely good at, not a copied strategy. With anyone able to build an app, "the better app is the one that has better distribution." Steve's edge is ASO and Apple Ads, which run on keywords rather than creatives and are the easiest channels to learn.
Joseph Choi calls this "founder channel fit". Few founders at $100,000 MRR report Google or TikTok as their main channel.
Each install needs at least $3 of lifetime value for Meta. Meta installs are expensive, so check LTV per install around month 11 in RevenueCat, Adapty or Superwall. Apple Ads can work at a lower figure.
$3 is Steve's opinion and a friend argues for more. For one of his apps, month one and month 11 LTV are about the same.
The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56%
Young's own apps and client apps supplied the paywall tests: a three-screen flow lifted trial activations 56% on one app but failed on a client app. Source questions with 'on TV' and 'from a lawyer' options lifted one client's ARPU 30%.
A hard paywall and a higher price multiplied a bought app's revenue. An app making $1,000 to $2,000 a month reached $8,000 to $10,000 after Steve added onboarding, a hard paywall and a $60 yearly price in place of a $3 one-time purchase. Downloads held at 100 to 150 a day and no features were added.
Start-trial rate went from 6% to 13% while trial-to-paid stayed flat. Between June and August the only change was a close button (the X) that Apple forced onto the paywall, and revenue fell by half. Steve was against a hard paywall at the time and launched it only because that was how the app was coded.
Most people buy on day zero, so the paywall belongs in onboarding. RevenueCat's State of Subscription report says nearly all trial starts happen on day zero, and users who don't try at once rarely try later. Every first open should reach a paywall view.
Steve sees a hard paywall as the fit for paid traffic, for apps with downloads but no sales (it tests product market fit at once) and for new launches, especially in health and fitness where the big apps already use one.
Hide the close button only from users who came from paid ads. A "how did you hear about us" screen sorts users by source: App Store search and brand searches get the X, while Instagram, Meta, Facebook and TikTok users get none. A Superwall test of a hard paywall for Meta users had a much better start-trial rate.
The cost of a hard paywall is one-star reviews, and this split keeps that damage to paid traffic. Steve suggests a hard paywall for all Meta paid traffic.
Grant free credits after the X, then ask for a review. An AI app that gave eight free generations but hid them now tells users about them after they dismiss the paywall, with a "claim now" button, then asks for a review. Its rating rose from 4.5 to 4.7 in a month and reviews doubled, from about 300 to 600.
The claim button does nothing, since the credits are already given. Steve lists timing options for review asks: before the paywall (aggressive), after the trial starts, or later.
Screens before the paywall that answer doubts lift trial starts. A three-screen flow after onboarding (social proof, a video, then a trial timeline promising 7 days free and a reminder two days before it ends) raised trial activations 56% on one of Steve's apps. The same flow did not work on a client app.
Steve first saw it on Resumes, then at Blinkist, whose 2021 trial timeline raised conversions 23%. A resume-style version failed on another app, so what each screen says has to be tested. Telling users when the trial ends also cuts "I forgot to cancel" refunds.
Moving the trial to a 3-day weekly plan tripled sales. For an app with downloads and trial starts but weak conversion, prices stayed at $50 a year or $6.99 a week, and the trial moved from the 7-day yearly plan to a 3-day weekly plan. Sales tripled on similar downloads.
Steve's rule of thumb: 7 days usually works best on yearly, 3 days on weekly, monthly plans have poor LTV, and 30-day trials usually fail. Some clients report a 14-day trial shown on exit beat a discount, but that is anecdotal.
Breaking the yearly price into weekly or monthly terms lifted conversions 38%. Steve wanted the $60 to look cheap, so the paywall showed every price as its per-month or per-week equivalent, doing the math for the user. Conversions rose 38% against no breakdown.
Say Continue, not Subscribe, on the paywall button. Replacing "subscribe" with "continue" or "get started" raised conversions 30% for a client. Across client tests, Continue beat Start free trial on iOS, while Start free trial won on Android.
"Nobody wants to subscribe."
Writing "No payment now" under the button added another 30%. For an app with a free trial, adding those words directly under the call to action raised conversions 30% for one client, with no design change.
A similar copy test found adding the word "free" to a feature lifted conversions 11%, like "buy a burger, get free fries".
Video makes the value obvious faster than graphics. One developer's soft paywall converted 2.5% with graphics, 4.7% with a real person and 6.8% with a video of the features.
A client who copied Cal AI's flow found the simple paywall with a video beat the longer version, which had two extra screens he didn't know about.
A reverse trial rescued freemium users who closed the paywall. In John's bus and train times app, users who skip the trial still get a free week of pro, with an "ends in 5 days" notice that leads to a discount. Their conversion rose from 0.4% to 4.5%, against an Apple average of 2 to 3% install to paid.
Two screens push users to use pro features in the free week. Other second offers: a $1.99 first month then $60 a year (20 to 30% pick it and they renew, though Steve's numbers are weak so far), and Flow's 30% discount right after the trial starts, shown without data.
Two odd options on the source question raised one client's ARPU 30%. Adding "on TV" and "from a lawyer" to the "how did you hear about us" screen, a tip from a podcast guest for an older audience, lifted ARPU 30%.
The options add credibility even with no TV ads running.
Profitable Apps Going Broke? Here's Why
Cash flow became the main concern as the agency grew. Steve runs a bought, profitable app on one paid channel, spending $10,000 to $12,000 a month, and stays fine on cash at $13,000 to $20,000 of monthly spend.
Profitable apps run out of cash because stores pay 45+ days late. With a $10,000 budget at $3,000 a week, $1,000 is left by week four; the $9,000 spent returns about $10,800 at 120% ROAS, but that money is still 45 days away.
Steve runs a bought app on one paid channel at $10,000 to $12,000 a month and stays fine on cash at $13,000 to $20,000 of spend.
Advance proceeds only once the channel is proven. Adapty Finance advances 85% of proceeds within 24 hours for about 2.5%, using the Adapty SDK to verify revenue. In the example, the advance is taken at week four once creative and funnel are profitable.
$11,000 of proceeds returns $9,000, and a $5,000 spend at 175% ROAS brings back close to $9,000.
Copy Our $85,000/Month Apple Ads Strategy
Runs Apple Ads and ASO for its own and client apps, which have reached up to $5 million MRR on one or two channels. Its Max Conversion plus SCAG setup runs a client at about $85,000 a month and another at about $12,000 a month.
7 Ad Monetization Hacks Top Apps Use Right Now
Steve ran welcome bonus campaigns for clients, where a 2,000-coin bonus doubled by watching a video raised both downloads and ad revenue.
Why Most Apps Are Failing in 2026: 7 Mistakes Killing Your App Success
Steve reviews designs in under 5 minutes and starts distribution with ASO or Apple Ads. His community offers deals on over 500 SaaS products through Join Secret, such as 12 months of ElevenLabs.
3 Critical Mistakes Killing Your App Engagement
Steve credits much of his agency's success to importing web marketing ideas like long paywalls and CRO into apps, and says he was among the first to talk about CRO in the app space around 2019.
App Monetization Tactics No One Is Talking About
Steve's team A/B tested the three-screen trial reminder flow and found it beat every other monetization test they ran. He also draws on selling a paid kids app, where raising the price from 99 cents to $1.99 earned more money.
Web-to-App Strategy: How Brands Lose Millions Without Deep Linking (Fix Your App Conversions)
It has seen better results when user info is requested only as checkout begins, and it frames web-to-app handoff as one of the simplest levers for installs and in-app conversion.
How to Sell Your App or SaaS Business: Exits, Acquisitions & App Marketing Secrets
Steve P. Young's podcast audience led to the agency, and he left his job six months after launching in 2013. It now has 30+ people worldwide, builds apps with a sale in mind, and is starting an app portfolio team because clients' real needs were paywall, onboarding and product fixes.
App Marketing 101: How to Grow in a Crowded App Market
Steve P. Young's team has used a short lifetime free launch for over 10 years, bought IndieAppSanta to keep it going, and is testing new features on social media before building them for an app that already earns.
App Store Optimization: The Proven ASO Framework for 2026
Steve Pang has worked in apps since 2010 and calls ASO one of his best growth channels. App Masters uses English in both the US and Spanish Mexico localizations on its own apps and has done so for years.
Watch This Before Building Your App (Build a Profitable MVP)
Its team built a revenue-generating app in about a weekend, while some clients had spent $30,000 to $40,000 on apps that did not earn. It relies on ASO and Apple Ads, and has seen apps make half a million a year from them alone.
The Most Important Element of App Store Optimization (ASO Keyword Research)
Its agency is targeting several overlooked keywords for a client, which Steve will not name. Cal AI indexes far more keywords than Steve's own apps.
Black Hat App Growth Strategies You Don’t Know (But Your Competitors Might Be Using)
Young started making apps in 2011, earning $500 to $1,000 a month, left his job six months after starting a podcast in 2013, and now leads a team of 30. He shares tactics so developers can spot what rivals run.
100K Downloads TWICE & $4K Revenue in 2 Months (Indie App Growth Case Study)
Offers new plans that bundle a promo with ASO help for developers who cannot yet afford agency pricing. Young reviews ASO findings and keywords with clients.
How to 3X Your App Store Ratings
Steve's company bought the Indie App Santa network in 2024. A client's utilities app saw ratings rise 5x and ratings per download rise 3.3x after moving the rating prompt to trial activation.
How to Create AI UGC Ads That Convert in 15 Minutes
Its best performing ads have always come from competitor research. The team built videos of Steve P. Young from his photo as custom AI actors.
App Marketing On A Budget: My Proven $0 To $10k Strategy (2025)
Steve Young runs it and bought Indie App Santa in late 2024, so it can run the full lifetime free growth hack, including ASO and paywall work. He has worked with apps making $200,000 to $300,000 a month that were still unprofitable.
5 Free ASO Keyword Research Tools That Help Apps Print Cash
Steve P. Young does ASO for clients, including a larger app whose side feature showed keyword demand. That feature was spun off into a niche AI app that grew from about $100 to $80,000 in nine months.
7 Counterintuitive App Growth Strategies That Actually Work | Steve P. Young at MAU 2025
Its tests with clients show the paywall belongs in onboarding, since 60 to 80% of buyers buy before using the app. Tests of plans, trials, discounts and close buttons moved revenue by 30% to 3x.
The Greatest App Growth Hack in the World 🚀
Steve Young's agency has worked with thousands of apps, and his podcast has run since 2013. He ran the lifetime offer hack, ASO and a paywall update for an AI note-taking app, taking it from a few hundred dollars a month to $90,000 in a year.
How to A/B Test App Icons on iOS
Its hosts walk through how to A/B test iOS app icons with Apple's native tools, from Xcode setup to App Store Connect. Steve's rule is to change one parameter at a time in any A/B test.
App Store Optimization Guide That Will DOMINATE 2025!
Steve's agency kickstarts apps by focusing on about 10 keywords with a search score near 30, and within those two at a time. He says that score is enough for an indie six-figure business.
7 Favorite App Growth Case Studies of 2024 (And What You Can Learn From Them)
Steve P Young's agency used keyword research to grow clients, including one from $70,000 to over $200,000 a month. It was Indie App Santa's top customer in 2024, then bought the platform, and it keeps its newest Apple Search Ads structure inside its paid Academy.
How to Get Your First Subscribers: Advice for Indie Developers
Steve P. Young ran an ASO plus free lifetime offer campaign for an AI transcription app. It went from about $100 a month to 106,000 downloads, 800 new ratings and $7,000 in its first month, then $10,000 a month in August 2024, all organic.
Get MASSIVE Results with These 9 Simple Tiny A/B Testing Hacks!
Its agency has run hundreds of quick paywall A/B tests for big clients, including the onboarding paywall, discount, plan and photo tests discussed here.
My Secret App Monetization Strategies
Its Academy community member Masud shared the win-back idea for cancelled trials and saw good results. Steve says something is better than nothing for recovering cancelled trials.
5 Features You MUST HAVE In Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) 💡
Steve's client data showed that moving the paywall before sign-up lifted paywall views from 40% to 94%, trial activations by 190% and sales by 52%. He advises collecting email only if the app needs it.
The 5 Biggest Mistakes First-Time App Founders Make
Steve's team bought an app earning $1,000-2,000 a month and grew it to $8,000-10,000 by changing only pricing and the paywall. They also launched a test MVP with an ugly paywall and plain screenshots, and advise cycling product fixes with marketing.
Breaking the Money Taboo: Real Talk on App Store Revenue
Its clients have gone from $1,000 to roughly $8,000-$10,000 a month by fixing onboarding, paywall and pricing, with trial-to-paid near 35%. One case study grew from $250 to $1,000 a month on just 15 downloads a day.
Advanced App Store Optimization Strategies for 2024
Steve Young's ASO method targets niche keywords big brands ignore. A client making about $80,000 a month reached 11 new number one keywords, 120 in the top 10 and 262 in the top 30 after he started in mid September.
All Your ASO Questions Answered
Its founder says ASO is hard but not dead, especially as a lone channel. Clients saw ratings rise from about 50 to close to 400 a month after moving the review prompt after the paywall, and a hard paywall beat a soft one.
Try These A/B Tests to Increase Your Subscriptions (APS SF 2023)
Steve Young's data-first view is that onboarding and the paywall are the first places to A/B test. His own app moved from a hard to a soft paywall test only after reaching a six figure business.
Push Notifications: Best Practices and Revenue Boosting Strategies
Steve P. Young shares push notification practices, including asking for opt-in during onboarding and following up fast with offers. He admits he used to recommend the pre-screen and was wrong after William's test.
Boost Your App Subscription Revenue: Proven Strategies and Optimization Tips
Steve's team uses a long paywall template with a floating button. Their sleep sounds app ranks number one for keywords like green noise and brown noise, with a hard paywall and no X. Adding one X cut sales in half, and nearly everyone buys the yearly plan with few refunds.
Apple Search Ads 2023 Workshop
Steve runs client Apple Search Ads accounts here, often replacing arbitrary five to seven dollar bids with a CPA-based bid spreadsheet. His clients are mostly startups that need results rather than branding budgets.
Proven App Monetization Strategies Backed by Data
Steve Young's clients saw paywall tests lift revenue without extra downloads: a 50% conversion gain from showing the paywall before sign-up, and 52% more sales after reworking onboarding. He also bought an app that went hard paywall and grew from a couple thousand dollars a month to $10,000.
Uncovering the Secrets of Your Competitor's App Store Optimization Strategy!
Steve works with several big companies that use competitor ranking views to report against rivals. One of his apps ranks number one for "breathing" and "breathing exercises", earns 100+ downloads a day, and scaled from $1,000 to $10,000.
7 Proven Ways to Increase App Revenue
Steve Young's team works on ASO, Apple Search Ads and Google Ads, and has gathered paywall case studies since 2019. One developer who followed its YouTube channel went from $250 to $1,000 a month with 15 downloads a day.
App Store Connect: iOS Conversion Analysis
Builds this conversion spreadsheet for clients at the start of an engagement. It has case studies of apps that grew revenue with just 15 downloads a day.
The Simplest Apple Search Ads Advanced Campaign to Manage and Scale
Steve built this simple Search Match campaign after separate exact, broad and Search Match campaigns got no impressions for a client. It now scales Apple Search Ads for that client, and one keyword found after about a month was added as exact match.
App Store Optimization in 2022: Key Google Play Changes
A client saw about a 30% drop in downloads after moving from a 50 to a 30 character title. Another client's paid app gained 100% more Google Play search downloads after optimizing its YouTube preview video, with other gains of 15 to 20%, though on small numbers.
Simple Formula to Decrease Cost-Per-Acquisition on Apple Search Ads (Part 3/3)
Steve P. Young uses a simple bid formula (target CPA times conversion rate) for clients already running Apple Search Ads, lowering acquisition cost while installs keep growing. One client saw a retargeting campaign work well.
The Best Way to Structure Your Apple Search Ads Campaign (Part 1/3)
Steve P. Young's agency shares conversion averages across several clients to set starting Apple Search Ads bids, and believes Search Ads is necessary to get a new app going.
Reddit Marketing: How We Drove 1,200+ App Signups
Steve's clients' apps are mostly free, so his early app deal posts were removed as in-app purchase offers. A text post offering 30 days free brought over 1,200 users to one client's app.
App Ideas to Make Money - The Proven Method 2022
Its clients built copycat apps with this method in games, entertainment and productivity, earning from about $10K to $200K a month. One 2019 entertainment app made $200,000 from 20,000 downloads in a month, and Steve optimized a client's screenshots using review language.
Avoid These App Launch Mistakes (Part 4) - App Startup Series
Steve's firm uses Firebase internally for analytics. Clients saw a 46% revenue per download gain, and one went from $1 to $17 a day with the same 50 downloads a day.
App Store Optimization in 2021 - Keyword Optimization (Part 5/6)
Its App Masters Academy hosts the keyword scoring spreadsheet as a template, which is not public and is simple to build yourself.
App Store Optimization in 2021 - Keyword Research (Part 3/6)
Steve P. Young's team usually builds 100 to 200 keywords per ASO report, then an assistant pulls data on each one. The process starts with seed keywords and expands through free tools.
App Store Optimization in 2021 - ASO Factors (Part 2/6)
Steve P. Young's firm. One client doubled downloads by changing only the screenshots, and category changes it tested sometimes lifted rankings and download velocity and sometimes did nothing.
Try This If Your Users Are NOT Coming Back to Your App
Steve P. Young lays out a seven-message push drip ending in a 48-hour sale with 30% off the yearly plan, followed by last-chance and countdown pushes. He argues that without retention an app's business fails and that push is the easiest way to bring users back.
5 Beginner App Store Optimization Mistakes
Its agency gives clients a spreadsheet of keyword data showing why each term was chosen, a template that people on Fiverr copy. Steve reviews freelancers' ASO work by checking the Spanish Mexico localization first, and one client's screenshot redesign lifted downloads 91%.
Do This Before You Advertise Your Mobile App
Steve says that in his experience running campaigns for clients, the more granular the targeting, the lower the cost per install.
Attribution for Mobile App Tracking for iOS and Google Play
Steve's firm supplied the real client data from a free promo campaign used to walk through App Store Connect and Google Play reports.
Keyword Research Tools for App Store Optimization
Its standard for client ASO work is a list of about 100 or more keywords before scoring. Using these methods, it tripled downloads for clients.
ASO What's Working Today in 2020 - MGS Presentation
Its clients saw big results from ASO: a flat icon test gave 50% more downloads and screenshot work gave a 91% increase. One client rose from about 80 to 300 downloads a day with a high-traffic title keyword.
Is App Store Optimization (ASO) Dead?
Steve P. Young's agency says keyword optimization alone no longer brings instant growth. Client work shows moving from rank 80 to rank 5 on a generic keyword took one app from about 80 to 300 downloads a day, and icon-only and screenshot-only changes lifted downloads 50% and 91%.
5 Juicy App Marketing Strategies With No Budget
Steve Young used a provocative post and reporter exclusives to win coverage on TechCrunch, Huffington Post and The Next Web, and argues that sweat equity replaces a marketing budget. His first app in 2011 got thousands of downloads that led to nothing.
3 App Store Optimization (ASO) Strategies You Should Be Testing for 2020
Its clients saw a 91% download lift from one social proof screenshot, and Steve P. Young has shared the OneLook brand name trick since 2014. He builds on branded search volume to grow downloads 2X, 3X or even 10X.
🧐 Market Research for an App - Save time and money with this tip
Steve Young advises checking what the top apps in a niche earn with free tools before building, since leaders making hundreds of thousands to millions monthly signal room for a new entrant.
App Store Optimization (ASO) in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Terms
Its founder Steve P. Young maps app store optimization onto SEO: the app name is the title tag, the subtitle the h1, and ratings stand in for backlinks. His agency has seen no sign that iOS descriptions are indexed.
How to A/B Test Screenshots on iOS
Steve P. Young's firm saw a client's impressions stay flat while downloads doubled after only a screenshot change. It advises using Apple Search Ads creative sets as an iOS screenshot test.
How to Increase Organic Downloads Without Changing Keywords
Steve P. Young runs it and shares listing tests on its channel. The academy is running more tests on how star ratings affect keyword rankings.
5 Reasons You Should Soft-Launch Your App
Steve Young teaches app marketing rather than building, since he sees development as the easy part. His course covers affordable remote ways to watch users try an app.
Do Keyword Misspellings Help Grow Downloads for ASO?
Steve P. Young shares a client case where ranking first for a misspelling of a very popular keyword raised downloads 128 percent. He recommends checking traffic and competition before targeting any typo.
App Growth Hacking Strategies - Interview on The App Man Show
Steve grew it from a podcast interviewing app founders into a consultancy where he acts as outside CMO on ASO, Apple features and underpriced campaigns. Its academy holds video courses, though 75 to 80% of the material is already free on YouTube, and it runs the Masters Connect event.
ASO Tool Review: How to Use Mobile Action to Increase Downloads
Its data-driven keyword process doubled or tripled impressions for some clients and raised downloads 20% to 100%. On Google Play one client gained 55% and a larger client about 10%.
App Store Screenshots: How to Write Killer Sales Copy to Increase Downloads
Steve pitched a client with heavy paid acquisition on rewriting screenshot copy from user reviews, arguing a small conversion gain would lower its cost per install.
How Much Impact Will ASO Have?
Steve built a savings calculator after tiring of clients brushing off ASO gains. Typical client lifts run 20% to 100%, one client went from 10 to 50 downloads a day, and a big-name client got about 9%, recouping the fee in month one. He also launched an Academy at $25 a month, rising to $49.
ASO Strategies for Small Apps vs Large Apps
Steve P. Young's agency does ASO work for small and large apps, starting each project with a keyword spreadsheet of traffic and difficulty scores. Some large clients come for help because only 10 to 20 percent of their downloads are organic.
The App Store Optimization Process That Consistently Drives Downloads & Product Views
Its data-driven ASO process builds a pool of 80 to 200 keywords, scores them, and places the best in store fields, reliably raising impressions. Since iOS 11, downloads are mixed, so it pairs updates with a paid campaign burst.
How to Write A Killer App Description
Its agency writes client descriptions by opening with social proof and then using phrases from competitor reviews. It treats the description mainly as a conversion tool rather than a keyword tool, and has used the method for games, health and fitness and other categories.
How to Use Apple Search Ads for Keyword Research (ASO)
Steve P. Young's clients saw 50 to 100 percent download gains from ASO under iOS 10, but one got 5x impressions and only about 6% more downloads under iOS 11. A client who named the app after his target phrase saw downloads rise well.
Talk on Revenue at Founder Institute Sacramento
Steve Young started the podcast in 2013 to learn from founders and left his corporate job about seven months later. Revenue took off in year four, and clients were featured by Apple, reached number two overall and got press coverage.
How Does iOS 11 Affect Apple Features and ASO
Its agency has helped 12 or 13 clients get featured by Apple, and it does not think the iOS 11 redesign makes its Apple-feature method outdated. It plans a dedicated iOS 11 ASO course.
How App Downloads Impact Keyword Rankings for ASO
Steve optimizes the app name and keywords before any search ads or pay-to-free campaign, and a couple of rounds of this probably doubled one client's downloads. A pay-to-free campaign then drove over 70,000 downloads and lifted keywords from 17 to 2, 12 to 7, and 19 to 5.
ASO Beginner's Guide
Its clients saw downloads rise 50 to 400% from app name and keyword changes alone, and one icon change lifted downloads about 50%. A client's $12 app got over 33,000 downloads in a day from a paid-to-free promotion, and a search boost took another from rank 108 to 1.
The Easiest Way to Drive Downloads & Revenue for a Paid App
Its agency uses the paid-to-free campaign as its simplest download driver for clients. A client's $12 app got about 37,000 downloads and $1,000 from a one-day free run, and the agency has hit hundreds of thousands of downloads a couple of times.
Google Play App Store Optimization (ASO): The Best Tool (Part 1)
The agency tested ASO tools against two unoptimized client apps on Google Play and is doing more Google Play optimizations. It plans to share more stats and a follow-up on post-optimization rankings.
App Marketing Strategies: The Most Effective Campaigns
Has had 12 clients featured by Apple, three on the main home page, and two clients hit 100,000 downloads through paid to free. It has been covered by TechCrunch and VentureBeat yet still ranks PR in the lowest tier for downloads.
How to Check an App's Apple App Store Feature History
Landed twelve Apple features in 16 months, three of them in May alone, using its own pitch angles. It checks the App Store and App Annie to confirm whether a client pitch turned into a feature.
Apple Feature Request Form
Steve Young's team landed 12 Apple features for clients in 16 months, three of them in May 2017. He claims no other app marketing firm has landed as many, and he pitches through the new form only.
The #1 Apple Feature Mistake
Steve P. Young's agency checks design first when clients ask for an Apple feature, since weak icons are the most common mistake. It uses email templates and subject lines that it says almost always get opened.
Best App Store Optimization Tools 2017: Case Study Part 1
Ran the three-tool comparison on real client optimizations. Changing only app names and keywords lifted downloads 50% for a game, 371% for a lifestyle app and 420% for a kids app.
Apple Feature Case Study That Led to 2 More Features
Steve P. Young's company won 11 Apple features in 16 months, including two clients in different categories in one week of May 2017. It never sells a feature alone, only inside a broader package, because a feature is like an expensive lottery ticket.
4 Dirty Little Secrets of App Store Optimization (ASO)
Runs 20 minute prospect calls one day a week, giving away tactics like the Spanish Mexico localization trick. It has run keyword-search download campaigns for clients without penalty so far, at a fraction of competitors' prices, and repurposes content as video, podcast and blog.
7 Tools to Help You Get Featured by Apple
The agency launches two or three apps a month, sometimes five, and gets about 15 to 20 percent featured. Ten clients have been featured so far, with an 11th in the works.
Apple Feature Timeline (and The Exact Email Pitch That Led to an Apple Feature)
Steve Young's process has helped nine clients get featured by Apple. His own pitch cited that he had interviewed over 400 app developers, and one client was featured in March via the generic email address.
How to Soft Launch iOS Games
Young advises indie developers to soft launch for a few weeks in small, cheap countries and gather honest feedback from strangers. He told the Ballified team to avoid Canada and Australia until full launch.
The Greatest Content Marketing Hack
Its podcast cites 20,000 downloads a month across 200 countries, with Skype interviews of 30 to 45 minutes. Past guests, some via PR firms, became agency clients, and the approach built multiple six-figure businesses without hunting for clients.
Why Content Marketing Trumps Ugly Websites
Started as a podcast in May 2013 and grew into an agency through listener demand, with no paid marketing. An app launch began at $500 and now costs about six times that, with a team of three and almost 500 episodes in three years.
Advanced App Store Optimization (ASO) Strategies to Double Your Downloads
Its clients using ASO alone saw downloads rise from 20% on the low end to about 5x on the high end. While others walked away from ASO, it dug in and adopted new tactics like two-tool keyword checks, second localizations and keyword-rich reviews.
September 2016 Report Card: Crushing ASO
ASO lifts client downloads from 20% to 5x by optimizing app names and keywords, and now makes up half of the business. The agency grew to a team of four and is moving into content and PR services, with plans to publish its own apps in 2017.
Live Q&A Call: Subscription Apps, Pricing Models & Pre-Launch Strategies
Young's App Masters offers an ebook on App Store optimization, one on Apple featuring, and a Udemy PR course. He is launching App Masters Academy, a subscription bundling all his courses and interviews.
3 Growth Hacking Strategies to Revive a Dying App
Steve P. Young runs it, and fellow member Rich Wacksteff swapped an icon to test its effect on downloads. Young uses a paid-to-free campaign to get players and feedback, with results from about 5,000 to 40,000 downloads.
Case Study: 14.5K Downloads with a Paid-to-Free Campaign
Steve says he can rerun paid-to-free campaigns and get press whenever he wants. Client results can't be shared, so he used data from his own game portfolio.
How to find low competition keywords for app store optimization
Steve's client apps supplied the keyword rows that compared Sensor Tower and MobileAction data against real US App Store ranks. His rule is to choose relevant keywords first, then low difficulty and high traffic.
Can press releases help with Google Play ASO?
It ran a Google Play press release test with keyword links that lifted rank 10 to 15 spots, while a review-based black hat ASO approach took a keyword to number one. It also started a game publishing company and hosted a six-person in-person mastermind.
5 Growth Hacking Strategies to Increase Your App Downloads
Steve Young's team runs paid-to-free campaigns, ASO and press pitches for clients, and builds non-consumable purchases into new apps for free promotions. Clients with good apps get a ton of downloads from ASO, and he has landed an Apple feature in China for his own app.
My secret cold email strategy
Steve P. Young uses an Instagram-based cold email approach for clients, with replies from Lifehacker, a Product Hunt moderator and an Apple contact. He writes the pitch and the developer sends it, opening with an older photo and then pitching the app.
The Productivity App That Actually Stops Procrastination (Wisey App Review)
Its clients have done well with Apple Health integration, and paid intro offers have worked for most apps it has seen. Steve P. Young used Wisey while closing a major acquisition there.
Grow Your App With These Simple Referral Tricks
Says it has served over 3,000 apps. Its host Steve P. Young built his businesses on content and YouTube.
The Best Alternative to Firebase Dynamic Links
It integrated the Airbridge SDK into its AppSanta app and uses deep links to bring social users in to unlock deals. One of its clients uses deep links in email to promote a lifetime offer and tracks revenue in one dashboard.
This Habit Tracker App Makes $200K a Month
Launched its own app without the 'building your personalized program' screen and is adding it, and will share the results afterward. Its clients have seen conversion lift 9 to 10% from that screen and do well in Germany, China, Japan and South Korea.
How One iOS Developer 2X Sales by Optimizing His Paywall
Steve's $500 one-hour audit named the paywall as the main problem right away. He sent Google Slides with examples, and the developer copied the formula and saw the app's revenue recover.
How to Launch a Successful App as An Indie Developer
It has helped 34 clients get featured by Apple and tells them a feature will not make or break the business.
YouTube Influencer Marketing for App Promotion
Members of its Elite mastermind report continually getting app downloads from old evergreen YouTube videos.
How to Optimize Growth Funnel (Case Study 2X Revenue Growth)
Jordan Bryant's team worked with App Masters to add users, which grew TimeClock over 1,000% and exposed the onboarding leak. The conversion rate for accounts created doubled.
More in Marketing & growth tools
Apple Search Ads
Apple's ad platform for promoting apps in the App Store.
44 sources · 132 tips
Marketing & growth toolsMeta
The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, run by Mark Zuckerberg.
42 sources · 106 tips
Marketing & growth toolsSensor Tower
An app intelligence and ASO platform with keyword rankings, competitor research and download estimates.
42 sources · 90 tips
Marketing & growth toolsMobile Action
An app store optimization and mobile marketing intelligence platform.
28 sources · 81 tips
Marketing & growth toolsHubSpot
A CRM and marketing software platform built for small and medium businesses.
14 sources · 41 tips
Marketing & growth toolsAdMob
Google's mobile ad monetization platform with mediation, open bidding and unified payments for app developers.
10 sources · 47 tips
Marketing & growth toolsAppsFlyer
A mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform for app marketers.
17 sources · 30 tips
Marketing & growth toolsGoogle Ads
Google's advertising platform for search, display and app campaigns.
15 sources · 31 tips