CaddieOpen in CaddieDownload for Mac

7 Favorite App Growth Case Studies of 2024 (And What You Can Learn From Them)

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters19:49Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Keyword-driven App Store optimization builds an app's revenue base, and reinvesting that money in ads and promotions scales it further. Measure ads by total App Store downloads, because Meta reports only about half of the installs it drives.

Key takeaways

  • Good keyword work alone can turn a tiny app into a real business. 5:58
    • An app making a few hundred dollars a month made over $90,000 in 2024, almost all from App Store search.
    • A client already at $70,000 a month grew to over $200,000 a month, about $2 million in the year.
  • A free lifetime offer on AppAdvice speeds up the early results. 6:28
    • 106,000 downloads on January 9, 2024 brought 800 new ratings and about $7,000 in the first month.
    • The download velocity gets more keywords indexed, and early users give product feedback.
  • Once revenue exists, reinvest it in paid ads instead of relying only on search. 4:37
    • Meta ads started in August 2023 with under $1,000 of spend, and installs from Facebook and Instagram went from nothing to about 3,000.
    • App Store search downloads rose as ad spend rose, so ads lift organic search too.
  • Meta under-reports its installs, so judge ads in App Store Connect. 4:12
    • Facebook's own attribution showed up to $6.80 per install in December, but the real cost was under $4.
    • Compare search sales before and after the ads start, then add the revenue from the app referrer source.
  • Apple Search Ads scale only through a handful of profitable keywords. 12:01
    • For most clients, about ten keywords or fewer turn a profit, and the job is to build a campaign structure that spends more on them.
    • On $500,000 of spend in 2024, one client's non-branded campaigns became ROI positive at around $5 per install.

Facebook is doing a lot better than you think it is.

Steve P Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Keyword work first, then Meta ads to scale

An indie app can earn from search on day one, then use that income to fund ads that also lift search.

  • Good keywords brought in revenue from launch, without any ad spend. 0:59
    • The app launched in March 2023 and made about $42,000 in its first year, all organic.
    • In 2024 it came close to six figures, at roughly $7,000 a month from search alone.
    • December 2024 reached about $13,000 in sales, the best month so far.
    • The proof is on screen in App Store Connect sales by source type, not in estimates.
  • The app referrer source separates ad installs from organic ones. 2:16
    • App referrer, meaning Facebook and Instagram, was close to zero until the ads began, so those downloads can be credited to the ads.
    • Only that green line is counted in the ROI math. The extra search downloads are left out.
    • To check this yourself, open Downloads by Source Type in App Store Connect, then drill into app referrer.
    • Facebook's own SDK showed a cost per install of about $2.50 on average, so even its reported numbers looked workable.
    • The September spend was $2,500, and the real cost per install that month was well below December's.

5:33 The free lifetime offer growth hack

A temporary free lifetime unlock, listed on AppAdvice, is a low-cost way to get ratings, downloads and proof of demand.

  • The recipe is a ratings prompt, solid ASO, and a lifetime purchase made free for two days. 6:28
    • Create a lifetime non-consumable in-app purchase and set it to free.
    • Tell AppAdvice a couple of days ahead, then return it to full price after two days.
    • This client began in mid-December 2023 at a few hundred dollars a month and was at $7,000 a month by early 2024.
    • Of the 800 new ratings, 200 came from the US and 600 from other countries.
    • Paid marketing was only about $1,000 of Apple Search Ads over the year.
  • It does not always work, but emails from people who missed it show real demand. 8:43
    • People write asking to extend the offer, which means they want the product even though it was free.
    • Not every case study made $7,000 in a month, and the client had to accept the risk of giving away lifetime access.
    • Steve says to ask for ratings, because they are guaranteed as long as you ask.
    • Early users also show how they interact with the product, which helps you find product market fit.

9:08 ASO for a big app

Keyword research pays off at scale too, because a large app in a crowded category still has many unclaimed keywords.

  • A big app found a ton of new keywords in its category. 9:40
    • The client started in mid-February at about $70,000 a month.
    • Steve does not take full credit for the growth, but says it shows what ASO can do.
    • The category stays private out of respect for the client.
    • Many factors moved the numbers, and keyword research was one of them.

9:55 Scaling with ASO and Apple Search Ads

Search keywords can scale an app that already sells, and Apple Search Ads scale only with a structure built around the few keywords that pay.

  • A product that sold by luck grew much further once keyword work was added. 10:38
    • The app reached $70,000 a month with good marketing luck and no ASO knowledge.
    • The source-type chart shows most of its sales still come through the App Store.
    • Keyword rankings were the lever. The client's own social media work added extra demand.
    • The client's identity stays private. Only the numbers and lessons are shared.
  • Apple Search Ads need a campaign structure built to spend more on the winning keywords. 11:38
    • The brand campaign performs best, and the exact match campaign has only a few working keywords.
    • The client said no other agency had made its non-branded campaigns ROI positive.
    • The new structure is taught only in the paid Academy.
    • Older structures shared free on the YouTube channel still work and are still in use.

13:50 Selling an app after a title change

Renaming an app around the right keywords can turn a near-zero app into one worth selling.

  • Flipping the app title to target better keywords took an organic app from almost no income to a five-figure exit. 14:24
    • Extensive ASO research found the right keywords, and the only change was the app name.
    • Two keywords reaching number one made the difference.
    • Paywall fixes do not help if downloads are the problem. The advice is to keep doing keyword research.
    • All of its sales were organic, with no paid promotion.

14:54 Indie App Santa price drops

A paid lifetime price drop on Indie App Santa recovers promotion costs after free offers have built ratings.

  • Indie App Santa works like an App Sumo or Groupon for apps, and it was bought from its founder. 15:00
    • The team was its top customer in 2024, then asked the founder about selling.
    • A developer on the team proposed showing several deals a day instead of one.
    • The interface changed so more deals would not look cluttered.
  • Price the lifetime drop at $9.99 after free offers have built ratings. 16:26
    • $9.99 is the upper limit an Indie App Santa user will pay.
    • One client made $11,000 from a lifetime drop to about $10.
    • Another client went from $4,000 to $7,000 a month.
    • The order is a free lifetime offer on AppAdvice for ratings, then a paid Indie App Santa drop.
    • The paid drop recovers what the promotion costs.

In the growth library

Steve P Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency. Seven app growth case studies from 2024 show how ASO, a free lifetime offer, Apple Search Ads structure and better Meta measurement drive revenue. Results include an app going from a few hundred dollars a month to over $90,000 in a year and a client going from $70,000 to $200,000 a month.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript519 lines
0:00

what is up app Nation happy New Year it is Steve p young founder of app masters.com the app marketing agency that helps you grow your apps faster and more affordable and I got the proof right here to break it all down for you now while I'm sharing the favorite case studies of our 2024 there are key lessons along the way so this isn't a whole like bragging video we're going to break down all the strategies we use to really help our clients grow so really pay attention to each and every single one of these seven case studies all right without further Ado let's get started all right number one is an indie developer that we helped out and we use ASO to build enough revenues that then to scale we're using meta and I'm going to break down why this is important and why meta is Under reporting all the installs that they're generating for you so here's the app we launched it in 2023 it's a great app and we were able to

1:03

generate revenues right away so you finding the right keywords allowed us to generate revenues from day one it launched in March of 2023 you can see the first year roughly the first year 42,000 in revenue and if you don't believe me that's all organic here's the proof you know me I like to always have the little bit of proof now in 2024 we've been able to make it almost six figures now that we had generated a good amount of money so you can you can see about 4,000 coming in pretty much organically we were at around 7,000 organically now now that we had enough of this coming in we wanted to try to scale it even more so here's what we did we've been able to scale it as you can see we took it to 13,000 December last month and again if you don't believe me you can see roughly it's been around 7,000 pretty much all organically right here right now here's the chart in August is when we actually started meta

1:59

so it started climbing a little bit we spent just under $1,000 in August and then September we started to ramp it up a little bit more and here's the data we've been able to generate over 9,000 just from App Store search and about 3,000 from the actual app refer which is Facebook now you can see app prefer was non-existent until we actually started running ads don't believe me again here it is the downloads by source so that was sales by Source this is downloads by source and you can see app refer which will be your Instagram Facebook ads so now when we're looking at the downloads from App refer we can safely say that is from the at because they were pretty much non-existent before we started running at with me so far okay here again some more proof for you guys this is what I want you guys to do and you guys can do this with an app store connect I'm doing downloads by Source type and then I'm doing downloads by app

2:57

refer because we wanted to dig deeper into app prefer okay now you can see again Facebook and Instagram non-existent until August when we first started running ads here are the numbers you got to pay attention to so here's the spend so far now here's what Facebook tells you is the installs we're only using the Facebook SDK you can see the cost per install according to Facebook and its attribution is around 250 and in December it went as high as $6.80 but if you look at the actual installs by App Store connect from App refer mind you you will see that it brought in a bunch more downloads and so the actual cost per install is under $4 yes in December maybe because of the holidays it got a little bit more expensive but with just a $3,000 spend in September we did $2,500 spend we were generating cost per installs as low as $24 so as a percentage of App Store connect installs from Facebook installs

4:10

you can see that Facebook is only reporting about 50 to 60% of the actual installs that they're driving so Facebook is doing a lot better than you think it is now here's the other thing I really want you to pay attention to this downloads by Source type what you can see this blue line with App Store search is going up as you spend money so as Indies I feel like ASO is a great source don't be too reliant on it once you have some revenues you can reinvest those revenues to even scale your app further and if you see a chart like this where downloads are starting to go up because of the ads you can see that we're not even counting these downloads by the way we're not counting these downloads we're only counting these downloads right here this green line when I'm doing those calculations but you can see the added benefit of running social media ads and so as you can see as the sales go up let

5:10

me go back to our sales number sales by Source type as these sales numbers go up you want to really analyze the difference between App Store search before Facebook and after Facebook and then calculate the revenues coming from Facebook app prefer to really have a more comprehensive look at how well your ads are actually performing number two this is the growth hack I've shared this plenty of times but I still love it it's still my favorite growth hack and I'm going to share this with you guys again so we took an app that was making just a few hundred a month they started working with us mid December of 2023 in 2024 990,000 so we took an app that was making just a few hundred dollar a month and in the beginning of 2024 we took it at $7,000 in all of 2024 we're able to generate over $90,000 for this app and if you don't believe me that's all through organic here it is all the sales are coming from

6:11

App Store search we've then invested some money in some apple search ad so we are spending but it's just about a TH or so it's not even that much so primarily through organic ASO we've been able to really help this client and it is the growth act and I will link it up into this card right here so you can see let me break down this growth hack you need the ratings prompt early on you want to do the right ASO follow our advice I know I don't share everything I really break down the entire process in our Academy but go through the ASO process here you want to make your lifetime offer for free create a lifetime non-consumable inapp purchase we're going to make it for free and we're going to tell appadvice.com about it then two days later you're going to make it back to full price that's exactly what we did here's what we did for this app here's the app advice this is the wrong date this is just a screenshot you

7:01

do I got some questions you do have to reach out to Jennifer ATA advice that's not her right email but Jennifer from App advice find her email I'm not going to do all the work for you guys find her email address you have to let her know a couple of days before you want to run the promo you'll find the info if you look for it for this client we did 106,000 downloads by making his lifetime offer for free so I told him are you willing to take this risk create a lifetime offer for me and we're going to make it free he said all right let's do it so we did it we did the ASO we did the ratings prompt he created a lifetime offer for me and then we made it free on app advice here's what happened did 106,000 downloads January 9th 2024 800 new ratings 200 the US 600 worldwide made $7,000 within the first month of the app advice C that's a beauty now do I have every case study where we did the same exact thing and we made $7,000 a

7:53

month no but this is the way it can happen we didn't spend any money on paid marketing it just worked cuz the ASO I found the right keywords we're able to implement the right keywords and as a reminder we made over $990,000 and he did not pay us anything close now if you don't make the $77,000 cuz it doesn't always work out that beautifully here the other benefits to running the lifetime offer for free you will get more App Store rate guaranteed long as you ask for it for early on you will kick in your ASO you will have more keywords being index just naturally because of the download velocity that comes you will get users that will give you feedback on the product you can start seeing how they use and interact with your product and lastly I even get emails from people saying I missed out on the offer can you please extend it I'm so sorry and that's what you want like people who really want your product

8:52

and yes they're getting it for free but we can get a lot of things for free and if we miss out these are products we really want so now you know if you have product Market fit and that's why I love this campaign I don't like to overthink it it just it will get you the benefits and it'll help you fine product Market fit all right number three ASO for a big app so I showed you ASO from the very beginning first two case studies here's ASO for a big app so here's one of our clients and they started working with us in about mid-February and they were making already pretty good money so they were making about $70,000 a month through this app right but a few months working with us we're able to grow it to over for $200,000 a month by the way so took it from 70,000 to $200,000 now there are a lot of things that happen I won't take the full credit for doing this but this shows you the potential of ASO if you do

9:44

the keyword research when they started working with us we found a ton of keywords in this particular market and category somebody asked me what this category is I won't tell you right I respect my client's privacy and I'm not sharing anything I'm just only sharing the insights that we've learned and the real numbers behind it but I'm not sharing you anything about the client nor will I tell anybody else about this particular client so what we're able to do is find those keywords help them get rankings they're doing a lot on their end from social media aspect too it helped drive more extensive and I know I share a lot of case studies with you guys about taking a nap from Z to $90,000 which I love by the way but I love these case studies too we took an app making $70,000 already and we scaled it up to 200,000 and all of last year they made two round $2 million all of last great case study love working with

10:34

these guys so kudos to them for building a great great but that's what it shows you you think you can just build a great product yeah great product with a little bit of good marketing luck got you to 70,000 they didn't know anything about ASO and a lot of their sales are through ASO and we with a little bit of expertise from our end we're able to scale it even further and if you don't believe me that most of it's through ASO here's the blue line again from Source type it is through App Store now here's the Apple search ads case study that I really want to highlight because I love working with this client so I've taken out everything for you guys so you can see the level of spend that we did in all of 2024 because again everybody thinks we do small numbers and we want to show these big numbers off to you guys so all of last year we spent $500,000 all of last year okay here's what we've been able to accomplish the

11:21

cost per install was around $5 but the reason I'm highlighting this is they told us no other agency they've worked with some of our competitors has been able to positively get their non-branded campaigns Roi positive and we were the only one and how do we do this got this new campaign structure that guess what it's only in the ATMs Academy because I don't want this campaign structure known by everybody we built this new campaign structure that's working pretty well so the exact one the brand campaign is doing the best we have an exact match campaign where only a few keywords are working and that's been true for a lot of our clients when you're working on ASA Apple searet you're only going to have a handful of keywords that are profitable that's it that's what I've seen with a lot of our clients Lally comes down to about 10 or under keywords that are actually profitable now your job and what this new campaign structure

12:18

does is okay let's take these keywords and how do we put a new campaign structure in place that gets us to actually spend so the scale and be Roi positive well again that's in our Academy or you're going to have to work with us but it is a great campaign structure now that doesn't mean I'm not giving away a lot of stuff I give away a lot of the campaign structures on our YouTube channel I'll link that up right now it still works we still use it today but there's a new campaign structure that we really like too on top of the ones I've already shared for free for you guys so go check that free stuff out if you don't believe me I want to take a minute here for those who are interested in our Academy it's a great Academy it's something that I want to really really push this year and you have me you have a private slack Channel with over a 100 people amazing amazing app Founders in there you get video courses a lot of

13:09

them the video courses I'm trying to refresh but they are a little bit older but even the old content one of the members in our Academy he's been able to grow his app to $20,000 a month I think he started at maybe four or five and using our PR strategy that's in the course yes an old PR course he used the exact what I talked about in that exact course and he's been able to get pressed brought in massive amounts of downloads and now he's at $220,000 a month so these are the type of people in our community and you will get knowledge with me we have monthly coaching sessions as well in there and so if you're interested just go to ATMs academy.com ATMs academy.com let's get into we actually exited one of our apps too I thought it was Flamel and why I'm covering this is I'm happy to share the numbers we took an app making going from like really zero to a five figure exit how did we do it here's the numbers just

14:07

so you guys have the data before I ended up selling it we're only making about $111,000 $122,000 in sales but we did it all organically now as you can see it was barely making any money it was through extensive ASO research if you've been following our Channel I show you exactly how we do it we found the right keyword we did what we did to the app we changed the title that's it we just changed the title the app name so to speak and completely flipped it and we've exited for a five figure exit really good example that if you're been stuck and doing nothing like you have the right pay wall you follow the channel and you're like hey Steve I looked at your pay walls I have the right pay wall I'm just not getting downloads keep doing keyword research it was just really two keywords that we were able to get to number one that made the dramatic differ here's some proof If you don't believe me that here's the as

14:54

the next one is indiab Santa so shout out to you franois for building such a great business business already we acquired IND theab Santa from FIS who first built the business if you guys aren't familiar with it it is like appsone free the app advice campaign I've talked about the best analogy that people tend to get is it's an app Sumo or Groupon for app knowing that we've used app device for so long and we started using we became the number one customer for Indie app Santa in 2024 I reach out to FR like hey would have you ever thought about selling this business he's like yeah I'm interested we worked out deal he's an amazing dude the deal was Flawless thank you franois for making it so easy and so fun to work with now here's what it looked like before this was in the app Santa you can see a lot of the apps and this would be covered but if you tap on it you could see the icon and all that stuff here's

15:43

what we've changed it to and why I wanted to cover this was this wasn't my idea this was my team's idea so shout out to you verage who's our developer and he's like hey I have an idea one thing that I wanted to do was because I knew app advice had a lot of deals a day and Indi appsa only had one deal a day I knew that we could do multiple deals a day but I also didn't want to look cluttered it was very hard to make it work so we changed the uiux a bit and we're adding more stuff but the growth of Indi appsa has been phenomenal and the results that people are seeing has been phenomenal as well and so what I would recommend to you guys is if you rewind and you do the growth hack with the Apper device with Indi appsa the next best thing to do is to do a lifetime price drop like this Pinko guy did but do it for $9.99 that I found is the upper limit of an indie apppp Santa user so we've been able to generate

16:37

$11,000 for one of our clients doing a lifetime price drop to about $10 and another client of ours we took it from $4,000 a month to $7,000 a month using an indie app Santa price drop so you use app advice to do the lifetime free to get all those ratings in there now you have pretty decent ratings you come to indiaia Santa Indie appsa is a paid platform then we go because now you're trying to make money app advice was free so you use Indi appsa to do a lifetime price drop so that you can recover some of the payment that you'd have to pay us in the appsa for the promotion right that's the best way of do it lastly and I'll end it it's getting a little bit long we did a team Retreat yeah there are people that I've been working with since 2013 when I first started the podcast merge and lock who helped me out in the early early days of the podcast we're still working together verage met him in 2012 unfortunately he couldn't

17:31

make it for reasons but I got to finally meet the team and so I wanted to show you guys a picture of how big our team is so we got over close to 25 people now in the team not everybody was able to make it out but it was so good to see everybody in person we got to go snorkeling we got to work together every night we work together for a couple hours just to make sure everything was running smoothly and it was such a great time and I love doing it it's been something we've been planning for a year and to finally make it happen and to see everyone in person give them a hug and thank them for all their hard work and helping us grow this company in this channel it was phenomenal I'm so glad we got to do it I'm so glad and so grateful to our entire team here we flew out those in India to the Philippines and we did it at a great Resort in the Philippines as well so thank you I'll end it with this thank you to my team

18:22

for everything that you guys have done thank you guys to the audience for watching and I love getting the comments I love getting the emails the tweets all that stuff about some of the results that you've been able to achieve watching our channel so please keep tagging me at Steve Pou Young on all your favorite social media platform as well and I look forward to continuing to grow this team in 2025 and hopefully giving you all the best case studies and all the best strategies to help you grow in 2025 as well all right if you haven't do me a favor I'm going to ask you if you got any value out of my channel you've never done this make make sure you do this obviously one subscribe two if you listen to the podcast go leave me a freaking rating I don't care if it's on Spotify I don't care if it's on Apple podcast go leave me a rating if you email me that rating Steve ats.com I will give you a discount on our Indie

19:14

app Santa campaigns all right I'll give you a 50% discount but you have to email me might even give it away for free I don't know but all right if there's a justification but I'll give you a really good discount if you email me a screenshot of your review for the pod podcast and make sure you subscribe that's my ask for you I want to keep growing the podcast this year so the ratings and reviews I don't there's no app advice for podcast all right this is how I got to do it all right guys that is it I'll stop blabbing on thank you guys for tuning in and I'll see you on the next video