Indie App Santa

Steve Young bought an app with organic reach, untapped keywords and room for new channels. Indie App Santa was bought in 2024. It made about $500,000 last year, mostly from search and browse, and over $1 million since March 2024.

He chose it because it had more keywords to chase and an older audience suited to Meta. He avoids apps that depend on paid traffic, calling them "a money eating machine" because sales fall when spending stops. Not every purchase worked: another app he bought for $18,000 flopped.

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He financed the purchase with a loan so the app's cash flow paid for it. The purchase was paid back in 3 or 4 months. He could have paid cash but prefers not to use his own money, treating a cash-flowing app like a house with tenants already paying.

His general example: a $350,000 app earning $10,000 a month, funded by a 10-year loan at about $5,000 a month, leaves about $5,000 a month in profit from day one. He says to take the math with a grain of salt, and it ignores interest, taxes, fees and the risk that revenue falls.

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Growth comes from stacking keyword variants first, then adding Meta at $3 per install. He sorted his keyword spreadsheet by the main term the app already ranks number one for and found 24 variations with at least 24 search volume that few apps target. The app earns about $3 revenue per install, his threshold for running Meta, so Meta is planned next to push toward seven figures.

He cut Apple Ads from about $10,000 to $5,000 a month to focus on ASO, since many keywords remain. He wants about $3 revenue per install or a $10 to $15 cost per trial before using Meta, because many apps with big MRR only break even on ad spend.

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