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Early Stage Growth Strategies

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The bottom line

A bootstrapped app can grow organically by owning a tiny niche keyword first and building slowly from there. Rooted hit number one for panic attacks and 95% organic growth, so a founder with no budget can win through patient, repeated work.

Key takeaways

  • Start in a small niche keyword where the searchers need you most. 2:43
    • Rooted went after "panic attack" instead of "anxiety", which has far more searches and far more competing apps.
    • The app became number one for panic attacks and held it. For anxiety it flips between number two and three 23:28.
  • Launch one core feature and add more only after users prove they want it. 9:57
    • The first version was just the red panic attack button. The founder waited about a year, gathering reviews and feedback, before adding general anxiety features.
    • Saving money on features leaves more for marketing.
  • Press works when a small story is tied to a world event and sent again and again. 4:31
    • Examples are World Mental Health Day on October 10th and athletes speaking openly about panic attacks. Local press comes first, then wider outlets.
    • Only about 10 to 20 percent of pitches get a reply. Healthline listed Rooted among the best anxiety apps beside Calm and Headspace, and that logo became lasting social proof.
  • Helpful, genuine engagement on social media draws followers and influencers. 15:52
    • Real replies to a creator's video work better than a generic "check out Rooted" comment.
    • Influencers with 20,000 to 100,000 followers who lived with panic attacks wrote about the app without being paid.
  • Organic growth takes long solo hours before the work can be handed off. 19:13
    • At first the founder did PR, social, App Store optimization and support alone, spending a couple of hours every day liking and commenting.
    • Rooted is now 95% organic 22:32. It has contractors for social media, support, admin and development, but no employees.

I did feel like I needed to stand out in a smaller Niche first, especially because there's now obviously more and more apps for anxiety.

Ania Wysocka

Chapter summaries

0:00 Learning marketing from scratch

With no marketing background, the founder adapted web search skills to the App Store and aimed at searchers with the sharpest need.

  • Blog-taught search skills became App Store optimization. 1:56
    • In 2018 little existed on app marketing, so she bent SEO advice to fit the App Store.
    • The early days were mostly guesswork and optimization.
    • She found her first app marketing course only later, from Darius of Reflectly.
    • Rooted grew out of her own anxiety and panic attacks.
  • Low search volume still brings the users who need the tool most. 3:01
    • Few apps competed for panic attacks then, so ranking was realistic.
    • Those searchers badly needed a tool.
    • Young's parallel: be first for "deep breathing", earn downloads and revenue, then climb toward bigger terms.
    • Mental health is talked about more now, but the volume was tiny back then.

3:42 Early press on a bootstrap

Press coverage pays off slowly and only through repeated, personal follow-up.

  • A tiny startup can begin with local journalists. 3:49
    • She listed writers who covered mental health and pitched them first.
    • Local press likes backing the tech community, and later outlets like a small bootstrapped app that helps people.
    • The Cosmopolitan, Women's Health and Bustle logos on the site came from organic press releases.
    • Press days give only a small download bump.
  • Pitches need follow-ups and patience. 6:08
    • Young's "exclusive to" subject line and a third, emoji-filled email finally got a TechCrunch reply.
    • She sent releases several times, because press is a long-term channel.
    • Healthline's high domain authority gives Rooted an indirect search benefit over time.
    • Paid routes exist, but bootstrapping made organic her only option.

7:36 Bootstrap lessons

A tight budget pushed her to do more herself and to learn from users.

  • An unaffordable agency quote pushed her to design the app herself. 8:27
    • She split the work into what to outsource and what she could do.
    • She worked harder than needed, but calls it a learning curve, not a regret.
    • She handled wireframing, design, UI and UX.
    • She is still a non-technical founder, learning development as she goes.
  • A bootstrapped app mainly needs to stay alive while its category grows. 9:06
    • Young argues features are good enough and extra development cost should go to marketing.
    • A vibrant community already exists.
    • His case: the trend is growing, so staying around long enough brings good results.
    • Nobody knows yet whether the extra features are needed.
  • Her own needs shaped the product, so fit came easily. 16:40
    • She collected feedback through reviews and social media, openly saying she was just starting.
    • Her audience turned out to match her own profile.
    • When feedback overwhelmed her, she began saying "we" to sound bigger.
    • The biggest group was women aged 24 to 35, reached organically.

11:48 Paid ads, partner outreach and simple design

Early growth relied on cheap, human tactics and a self-explanatory design, while paid ads stayed unproven.

  • Paid ads did not work the first time, but a retry is worth it. 12:46
    • One paid strategy was tried and judged a miss.
    • Peers now report success with paid.
    • Better tracking tools now show what each campaign actually does.
    • The retry is planned, not yet done.
  • Being the first to comment wins an influencer's attention. 13:05
    • Christine, who built a planner app, traded social media work for development, over six months to a year.
    • Push notifications told her when each influencer posted.
    • She lives in Australia, so she woke at 2 a.m. US time to comment first.
    • Her pitch was that the app makes planning content easier.
  • A calm, self-explanatory design means users rarely need help. 14:02
    • The colors are calm and speak to the core demographic, which includes the founder.
    • Menu titles name the action the user takes.
    • Someone in a heightened state must see where to go at once.
    • User feedback shows few questions, because everything is laid out.

15:35 Choosing platforms

Useful content on the platform where the audience lives builds a following, and that platform shifts over time.

  • Instagram worked first because posts carried real help. 16:35
    • In 2018 and 2019 the audience was on Instagram, and helpful posts earned more shares and likes.
    • Occasional testimonials remind followers whose page it is.
    • Instagram beat Facebook in her tracking.
    • She never gave Twitter a real try.
  • TikTok rewards personal content over templates. 17:52
    • Templated posts performed worse there.
    • A TikTok creator now follows trends and makes fun videos.
    • She wants more creators on it.
    • A client with a moms' app sees success from TikTok ads.
    • Her small regret is not joining sooner.

19:13 From solo founder to small team

The founder kept product first, funded the build with savings, and let go of tasks one by one.

  • Themed days now bring focus. 19:13
    • Product day is Tuesday and business development day is Wednesday, with monetization and experiment days too.
    • She plans the year ahead, including which feature and Apple technology goes out each month.
    • She still reads user feedback and emails users herself.
    • Users often don't know it is her.
  • The first developer was paid from all her savings. 21:11
    • She could not code and could not afford an agency.
    • A local university student quoted his hourly rate.
    • She knew him from a co-op he had done.
    • Today there are two junior developers on features and two full-stack developers keeping the app running.
  • App Store ranking lets social media build the brand elsewhere. 22:18
    • App Store optimization is her best channel.
    • Social media is long-term and rarely drives instant downloads.
    • One viral TikTok took a client's app to number one in Lifestyle.
    • Social gives another way to bring people back to the app.

23:37 Monetization without losing the mission

Rooted was freemium from day one, and most of it stays free because cost kept its founder from getting help.

  • Paid features are limited to less essential extras. 24:04
    • Counseling was expensive for the founder, so she feels a tug of war about charging.
    • Ideas for paid extras are dark mode and daily motivation.
    • Understanding lessons are free. Short-term lessons on easing anxiety come next, then the long-term ones.
    • Ania was monetizing from the start and is still learning to do it more effectively.

25:28 App audit: strong on Android, flat on iOS

A DVD catalog app needs a searchable keyword and country-tested screenshots, because iOS and Android differ in market share and search demand.

  • Android's larger market share explains part of the gap. 26:16
    • Most apps see more downloads and engagement on Android.
    • The niche is shrinking, since few people still watch DVDs.
    • Keyword checks for "DVD tracker" and "movie catalog" show almost no search volume.
    • Parts of the world still have a DVD market, and those users may lean Android.
  • A broader, generic keyword such as "movie diary" is the better target. 28:36
    • Steve Young looks for a keyword with a search score of at least 30.
    • It is a branded term, but generic enough to reach the right viewer.
    • "My movie collection inventory" is too boring to pull people in.
  • Screenshots should be tested, and they perform differently by country. 29:09
    • iOS lets you test on your own product page.
    • Calm screenshots do well in the U.S. Colorful, crowded ones do much better in Brazil.
    • Different screenshots also win on Android.

30:41 Paywalls: go hard in a niche

The narrower the audience, the better a hard paywall with few screens before it tends to convert.

  • Hard paywalls with no free content can convert best for niche audiences. 31:13
    • Young suggests testing it, since the niche is so narrow.
    • paywallscreens.com shows many designs, searchable by category.
    • One of his apps converted about 18% on a hard paywall and fell to 6% with a free tier, so it went back to hard.
    • A butt workout app also saw the hard paywall win.
  • Fewer screens before the paywall means fewer drop-offs. 32:12
    • Rooted replaced separate intro screens with one optional slider.
    • Users who want to learn more can flip through it. Others go straight to sign-up.

33:00 The mascot is a monster to befriend

Rooted's monster looks ridiculous on purpose, so anxiety feels like something to befriend.

  • The avatar mirrors the cognitive behavioral therapy idea of befriending anxiety. 33:05
    • The founder drew it on a bad anxiety day, and the original icon looked annoyed.
    • He needs a dentist and has a cute belly, so he isn't scary.
    • Teal is her favorite color.

In the growth library

Ania Wysocka (Anya), hosted by Steve P. Young, Founder of Rootd, an anxiety and panic attack app, with the host of App Masters. A bootstrapped, non-technical founder explains how she grew Rootd through niche ASO, repeated PR, genuine social engagement and a one-feature MVP. The result is a mostly organic app (95% organic) that ranks number one for panic attacks in the App Store and earned multiple Apple features.

Lessons that draw on this:

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

Transcript944 lines
0:00

foreign

0:16

ER the founder of rooted to be loved by Apple getting so many app of the day features Anya welcome to the virtual boot camp how are you I'm good thank you and that was an awesome video that was pretty great you know I had to show this I know I I'm well but I was like how does it feel seeing your photo up there when you see the App Store tell me how that really feels sorry I can't hear you right now I think I'm what about now okay yes okay I was just saying like how does it feel like this must be like I imagine this must feel amazing and be like look baby you know dear yeah so because I started rooted from personal experience with anxiety and panic attacks it is weird for me to see my face like publicly but I've gotten way better about it over the years and um I was just stoked when this came out because they didn't let me know so it was a total surprise and I just started getting messages from my friends in the

1:23

states and that's how I found out so yeah pretty stoked uh you know it's one of the best organic ways to grow right is being featured by the App Store so I'm very happy about it that's awesome congratulations and it is a success story like I've been hounding on you come on I'm like oh let's come on then we're gonna do a future live stream but let's talk about the early days of the app when you were just getting going you know you had a mission it was a great Mission you want to help people with anxiety like what do you where did you start when it came to marketing getting those initial downloads yeah so at first I really had no idea what I was doing pretty much everything I Learned was from blogs and there wasn't so much about app marketing specifically back then this was like 2018 there's a ton on you know search engine optimization and then it was like okay how do I take that and try to work

2:14

it towards App Store optimization and it wasn't I don't think I even found my first app marketing course until Darius Maura came up with one there is from reflectly which you and I spoke about uh that Mutual connection there he's so awesome and he kind of I was just so happy to find something for app and so yeah a lot of the early days was a lot of guesswork it was a lot of focus on App Store optimization it uh one thing in particular was going after the keyword panic attack versus anxiety obviously anxiety is a much more popular search but I did feel like I needed to stand out in a smaller Niche first especially because there's now obviously more and more apps for anxiety and so that was a particular strategy for early growth I'm so glad that you did that because then my Approach too it's like hey you know let everybody go after meditation let everybody go after this but like the example I use is like deep breathing all

3:12

right it's not a lot of a search volume but Heck if I could be number one for that start generating those downloads start generating those revenues then you know I'll slowly work my way up like why work where everybody's trying to you know everybody's trying to be meditation versus nobody's trying to go after panic attack as an example too especially back then like now mental health is more talked about but back then yeah it was very very small search volume the people who were searching for it really desperately needed a solution and a tool and that's where rooted came in what else did you do I did a lot of early PR and this is something that maybe sounds a bit funny for a startup as small as rooted but basically I would list different journalists that wrote about mental health or that might have some interest in covering an article like writing an article about rooted and I think when you're really

4:04

really small you can go to your local press because they're just happy to write about something local they want to promote the tech community so I did a lot of that and then branched out further and further to other types of journalists who might be excited by something that you know is is started out so small and is bootstrap but is actually affecting people do you remember like what type of angle you used to get the attention of the local reporters yeah so it was really important to combine a story about rooted with a world event because I wanted to basically fill the Gap when a journalist has like you know it's World mental health day on October 10th and so you know there's so many mental health stories well what can we talk about that's a bit different today and I wanted to kind of fill in the Gap there uh you know during the pandemic there was a lot of opportunities as athletes were talking about being open about

4:57

experiencing anxiety and panic attacks and so during sports events I would put out press releases related to that and yeah taking like a real world event and combining it with some sort of unique story angle was what I tried to do and and it did work like a lot of those logos that you saw on the website right there that's from those organic press releases those ones there like Cosmopolitan Healthline Women's Health bustle Etc do you see a direct correlation between you know getting on bustle which is huge and healthy and Cosmo and two downloads did you see an impact there's always like a little bump on press release days but I think the real long-term impact comes from being able to use these logos and being able and and there's some certainly some like search engine optimization that just takes longer like for Healthline we're listed as one of the best anxiety apps of that year and then it was alongside

5:51

you know these venture-backed giants like common headspace so that was great to share and kind of work on that social proof with and then over time like Healthline ranks super well their domain Authority is really high so you know over time that there's that indirect benefit as well yeah I love it I love it uh I'm trying to figure this stuff out okay the what's the other thing oh one thing I wanted to share personally was you know one of the angles that we found pretty effective is saying like exclusive to Anya and then that would be the subject line and then you you guys you go on into whatever the pitch is but that tend to to work for us getting a client on TechCrunch and we're like exclusive to Megan and then we followed up she didn't reply now yeah the third emails like what do you think about this story a thumbs up thumbs down see thinking about it and these are all emojis by the way and then D like a poop

6:42

emoji and then she replied to that one she said lolc let's get on a call and I was like finally and then we got an article on technology so a lot of work but a lot of long-term benefits like if you're looking for short-term Solutions maybe not the right Channel yeah so I think that you know that's a great point there that it's a lot of work and some people will come up to me like well I already sent a press release and it didn't work and I'm like but how many times did you send it because I had to send it like several times like it's a long-term strategy and you kind of have to follow up just like cold emails right you're not going to get a response every time maybe 10 20 will respond and then you know you got to keep doing it if if you are bootstrapped if you are staying organic obviously there's other paid ways to gain that momentum but for me there's that was my only option was doing this organically and so I yeah it

7:30

just kept pushing and and repeating things over again yeah right yeah and you are bootstrapped right now yes yes hey one of the things I wanted to ask you as a bootstrap founder was there any key lessons big takeaways that you learned from just building the app like I shouldn't have done this or if I were building app again I would have done this differently how much time do we have oh I mean like so many right hindsights already yeah hindsight is 2020. there's so much I would have done differently technology is changing too though coding creating an app is becoming easier and easier I feel like I did it the hardest way possible but you know I think it's just where I was at that time and again working on that bootstrap budget I had very little fun so I really had to figure out what would work uh that's really what led me to do the wireframing and the design and and the UI and the ux I I did go to an agency I got a quote

8:29

from them and just there's no way I could have afforded that and so I just started breaking down like okay what could I do what do I need to Outsource but like mostly what can I do and yeah I think I just I worked probably harder than than I needed to in some cases and so that's not a regret but definitely a learning curve and then yeah some stuff on the technology side like the development side that you know I learned so much about it now I'm still not a developer I'm a non-technical Founder but I'm learning so much now I'm like oh okay so that's that's why I shouldn't have done it that way um yeah with anything from a features perspective and here's what the reason why I asked too like I was talking to a client of ours and I was like look you know we're building all these features like stop building more features like you know we're on the customs of like real extreme growth because the trend is

9:24

growing but so for me like as a somebody's bootstraps like you just need to stay around long enough because the trend of this particular category of app is growing so if we just stay around long enough we're gonna be there and good things will happen but I was like just stop bringing more features because we don't know if we actually need these features it's a vibrant vibrant Community already the features are good enough like good it's good enough like stop the you know occurring more cost developing more features let's save it for marketing let's get those downloads let's get more people in yeah I think that's a really good point and something I did with rooted was launch the MVP which is the red panic attack button before adding in different features for general anxiety and what that did was it let help me validate the fact that people were enjoying and really needed the panic attack tool in itself so yeah I actually

10:15

waited pretty much a whole year in gathering different user reviews and user feedback and then working my way up to adding and more and more features yeah I love it how did you get about how did you go about getting those user feedback App Store reviews uh a lot of engagement on social media so a lot of encouraging people to write in and let me know and being really Frank that like hey I'm just starting this out let me know what you think rather than pretending to be a big company but then it switched and I got really uh overwhelmed by feedback in a sense and so then I started saying we and kind of making rooted sound maybe a bit bigger than it was because um yeah it can get quite personal because it's like my baby right and then people are sharing what they think about it it's a bit vulnerable yeah we got a question from the audience Anya so Lars thank you for your content love you okay love you back Lars thank

11:10

you Casper good to see you all right Ricardo says Anya did you have to make many changes to find product Market fit okay so thankfully not really I designed rooted really for myself and then the demographic that ended up finding rooted was my demographic so it's quite interesting um you know biggest demographic was females 24 to 35 and that happened really organically thankfully yeah so not not really I think it was just it came from such a personal place that I created it in the words and using the visuals that I thought was comforting words that I was hoping would also be encouraging to others as they were to me and thankfully it did resonate with others yeah I wanted to get to that red button that you talked about too I wanted that visual in here I love it how are you feeling yeah so this won't make sense necessarily to people who don't experience panic attacks but for those who do it really

12:10

hits home so these are just some things that you kind of need to remember or be reminded of when you're going through a moment of heightened anxiety love it and I know you worked with influencers too in the early stages yeah so that was largely like social media engagement not always even paid it was people who might have had a big following and then they actually struggled with panic attacks and they were like oh my God thank you so much for creating this I have 20 000 followers or a hundred thousand followers I'm gonna write about it so that was very helpful and then at one point I did do a paid strategy but I don't know I'm gonna reattempt it now because I've been speaking with some people who are saying that they found some success I didn't I didn't think I did anyway so I'm gonna kind of go back now I have better tracking tools I'm better able to like contribute what's actually going on during those campaigns

13:05

yeah one of my favorite interviews not that this is not one of my favorites on you but one of my favorite interviews with is with Christine who did planned that and it was a social media calendar day nap and what she did was you know she wanted to build an app they're like it's this much much like I ain't got that much money so she said I know social media let me do social media get you more sales for an app development company we'll we'll you know barter and so she did that and it took like maybe six months to a year kind of working for free for them while they built her app and then to work with these influencers she turned on the little push notifications every time an influencer posted and she's in Australia so they post at like 2 A.M in the morning in the US time zone she was like waking up being one of the first people to comment and then engaging with them to be like hey this here's what I'm doing I'm gonna

13:48

make it easier for you to plan out your social media content would you be interested it's a great interview and it just shows you like I heard it from you saying like look I was working um like I did the wireframe you know what I mean and I like what you I love The Branding that you have too because it speaks to you like there's a calmness to these color schemes that you get and you're talking to your core demographic which also happens to be you and so you can speak you know I just love the colors and The Branding and the little things I'm obsessed with the little things on you that you put into the app awesome thank you yeah it's definitely meant to be very simple you know when you're in a heightened state of anxiety you open rooted you need to know where to go easily so all of those titles of the menu options they're the action that you're taking right and so it's supposed to be very self-explanatory and

14:39

thankfully you know that is something that we hear a lot in the user feedback is that you know they don't really have questions because it's all right there laid out for them and that's really what I wanted to have and achieved with rooted we had some hiccups earlier so I'm feeling a little bit angry about it all and then three things you like to make difficulties well if you knew the back end it would it's kind of like it wasn't anything it was a user error okay let's just say that okay three have fun conversations when you're working with these influencers was it just like luck I'm trying to distill to like actionable content versus just luck just happened like hey you know you know build a good app and then you know these influencers with 20 to 100K will just come to you and be like oh I love your app so much so webcam actionable like working with these influencers did it help and then

15:33

what's actionable that we can you do on our end going to comment on their profiles looking up you know obviously hashtags in your category on back then it was all about Instagram now I'd say more Tick Tock is more relevant and yeah or I guess again depending on your demographic right but yeah going on Tick Tock these days leaving a comment uh trying to say something helpful and actually give some feedback so it's not a generic comment like check out rooted like definitely not it's more like a response to their video and what they're posting about and then you'll get likes on your comment and then those people come check out your page and start following you and so forth like it's active engagement that's like conscious engagement on social media what's your approach to social media because I know you have a great following on Instagram talk to me about like what worked there what was the

16:30

approach why you wanted to be you know have a foothold on Instagram too yeah so back then I mean in in 2018 2019 Instagram was definitely where I felt that the demographic was and so it was about creating these posts that were really you know not just cute and looked good but actually had something helpful in them for others and I find that when you do that you get more shares and likes and then every now and then I'll throw in like a testimonial for that social proof and I still think those are valuable even though they won't get as much traction they won't be re-shared as much but it's just like reminding users of you know whose page this is even though you might kind of blend into like just an anxiety page in general people might not even know what route it is but they follow you because of the content so there's different posts to kind of just remind people what page they're on and yeah I found I was just kind of

17:28

tracking through Instagram and I found that Instagram worked for me better than Facebook at the time I never really gave Twitter a good try but I also feel like that's because of the demographic yeah whereas now I think we're moving over to tick tock yeah what are you doing on Tick Tock we just had a conversation about Tick Tock about an hour ago well we started out by posting more like maybe less ugc content less personal stuff and more templated stuff and that of course doesn't perform as well on Tick Tock so now I have both the ugc content and different user testimonials we'll post now and then but I also have an awesome tick talker who will basically follow the trends and you know create a fun video out of it so we're playing around with that I kind of want to add a few more people to that so have like multiple people add in some tick tocks and um yeah so yeah we're just yeah still we have one client who's pretty big on

18:36

she's been running like ads on Tick Tock and she needs some really good success it's an app tailored for moms and yeah she speaks highly Tucker as well and so it's working pretty well for her yeah I think I should have jumped on it sooner so that's a small regret I have thank you yeah I love it you know one thing I struggle with personally too Anya is as somebody who's bootstrapped somebody's just you know the founder what do you focus on like what do you do in the early days what did you try to like okay I can only focus on these couple of things what would those things be and now have you grown like what are those things now yeah I think that at first I didn't really have so much I guess okay I guess I would say my main focus was the product that was the first thing but after that I didn't really have the benefit of being able to focus I kind of did a little bit of everything right from the pr to the

19:29

social media to the App Store optimization like it was literally me at first just going around liking people's posts leaving comments and I would do that for like a couple hours every single day and yeah email Business Development customer support that was all me so I think now that we've grown a little bit I have been able to Outsource the social media part I have been able to Outsource a good chunk of the customer support I still like to jump in and actually read feedback from users and and a lot of the time people don't even know but it is still me emailing them and uh yeah I kind of try to separate my days into like having like a product day on Tuesday let's say or you know like a business development day on Wednesday I try to separate my days like that so that I do have a bit more Focus but I'd say right now it's really high level stuff would be like focusing on product thinking of new

20:24

updates uh planning the year ahead making sure that you know when it comes to the app store story submissions or the pr that I kind of have a lot of heads up about what I want to put out in which month like which feature what Apple technology are we incorporating Etc and then I'll have like a business development day and a monetization day experiment day I still do a lot of different things I guess but I I've let go of some I love that I love having those I usually have a call day and that's what today was about but none of the other themes of a particular day either got a question from John Taylor JT when Anya started the app when did you start the app and did you learn how to code or did you just hire a developer so I did not know how to code and I when I went to the agency I couldn't afford them what ended up happening happening is like a student from a university local to me had found out about what I

21:23

wanted to do with rooted I guess I was pretty like vocal about it and I knew him from like a co-op he had done and he basically gave me his hourly rate and I used all my savings I just went all in right I now have a number of contractors still no employees but I have two people helping out with social media I've got one person with customer support I have somebody that helps with like General Administration bookkeeping and uh three to four developers now but again all the contracts so it's not full time got two more Junior developers that focus a lot on the features that I want to implement and then to more full stack developers that kind of work on you know making sure root is actually running nice what's a marketing I want to try to save some for our live stream later but what's a marketing channel that's really working well for you I'd say again like that we're seeing on a zure optimization really really like

22:32

yeah we're 95 organic that's awesome that's awesome now I have to assume that some people are just finding you on Instagram and getting there at one I have one client with like one I think they just crossed one million they do they're definitely over one million I was trying to think 1.2 or whatever but I have to think that this you know the thing that he said to me I was like hey why did you focus on is like you know beyond the App Store you want more Brands somewhere else right and you want it somewhere else and I was like wow that's a great way of putting it because sometimes I feel like social media it's just so such a long-term shirt you're never going to see that immediate impact you're never going to get that post that just drives all these downloads maybe you are we had a conversation about Tick Tock a tick tock viral video went crazy and then he became number one in under lifestyle but

23:18

at the same time like you then start having another way to reach your audience and bring them back in to the app too yeah for sure I mean once we became number one for panic attacks in the App Store that was huge and then we maintained that and then for anxiety we kind of flip between ranking number two and number three all right you got a lot of questions coming in okay bloofer says did you focus on monetization from this art or did you give away the app for free at first and then realized it could make money then start monetizing so from the start I had some like I had a freemium model so there was some content that was paid I think that to this day I mean I'm gonna share this publicly but yeah most of root is for you right so it's kind of tricky because I did start rooted with the values of providing a resource that I didn't have and one of the reasons why I couldn't find help when I had panic attacks and anxiety was

24:17

a financial barrier right counseling can be really expensive sometimes and I just didn't have access to different tools and tips and resources that I needed so that's something that I really feel at a tug of war about sometimes like I do have the paid tools in the app however you know there's so much for free and I don't really want to take that away so I'm looking at different less essential ways for people to have a subscription so for example you can read all of the understanding lessons to get started and if you really like them if they're benefiting you then you can go into the short term lessons which is how to mitigate anxiety in the short term and then finally the long term things like adding dark mode or things that you know aren't necessary but more convenient like daily motivation stuff like that um so to answer the question yes I was monetizing from the beginning but now I'm learning how to do it more

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effectively yeah I think it's hard for you because this was the mission this is I mean another question that I saw in here was like why did you build the app and it was just like you have this problem right yeah and so that was it yeah it's amazing all right I want to save some live stream in a couple of weeks not too excited about that let's get into our app audit section of the interview and we're gonna take a look at Leafs okay I try to pick ones that that would make the most sense for whoever the guest was but Leaf he's I think he's in Australia like Steve is there a replay because it's a late mate and I'm not gonna join you over there but he has his question is the app is doing great on Android let me pull up the app right now and I'll read the question that he put down in our form the app is doing great on Android it doesn't really get any momentum on iOS what could be the reasons what can I

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do to overcome this no there you go I did look at this app on Android a couple of weeks ago on a live stream and so I gave him some feedback but I'll kick it off to you well I guess the the main thing to know that comes to mind is just that there is such a bigger market share on Android right so I think most apps do they have more downloads and an engagement on Android um yeah so that's the first thing I would consider and secondly I don't know Steve what are you thinking here I mean I mean you said it right like I think it one the feedback I gave it was hey it's a dying like who watches DVDs anymore bro and so I was kind of like that and then secondly I was kind of I also thought like try to figure out the keywords that people like I would tell him like my dad would use this app like he does have a legit DVD catalog still and he would he's so anal about where all his DVDs are and who's borrowing

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them and whatnot that he would use as a in almost a dime you know so DVD collection all right so if that is I would do some extensive keyword research and back to your point about rather than going on after like anxiety going after panic attacks right find a keyword that you can start ranking well for and are really moving up stream versus where most people start Upstream so I'm just doing some keyword research right now for him yeah and that's a great point about the demographic like who still watches DVDs maybe there's more people that have DVDs that are more likely to have an Android phone too [Laughter] just thinking of like you know big parts of the world right where you'll still go and there's like a whole DVD Market but you don't see that in North America as much yeah yeah hey there's a there's that last remaining Blockbuster right it's an organ so maybe Target that I I know I'm not seeing a lot of search volume here

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unfortunately leave for some of the keywords that you want the I'm really not seeing anything if you have a technology like maybe just thinking about like look at this UV tracker movie catalog there's not a lot of search volume so that could be it and maybe there is more search volume on this point about like on Android people are searching for this versus on iOS maybe movie Diary is probably the best one I don't know if it's a branded term that could be the best keyword if I had to pick a keyword I try to find one at least 30 search score to try to rank for but this could be the main keyword so change it from my movie collection inventory it's also boring it's a movie Diary it is a branded term but it's also sounds generic enough that you probably should be going after that particular viewer and then I would probably test out the screenshots I found written now with iOS you can kind of do that on your own

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product page which is awesome um I found that our screenshots on Android different screenshots perform better so that's something to consider I think love it for your iPhone and depending on the country because um this is the U.S so these perform quite well in the U.S but when we go down to like Brazil are much more colorful images and images that yeah they they might they're a bit less soothing calming they're a bit more crowded but for some reason they perform so much better there interesting oh there you go interesting yeah I know my way around the app stores yeah you do it was very impressive well thank you all right well let's get into the app leaf and then we got Hannah waiting as well talk about all right leaf I don't even have any DVDs I can't scan anything all right movie collection maybe they'll come back like you know record players maybe they're just 10 years from now are all going to be

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watching DVDs again yeah yeah I mean you know there's there's so many options and different designs to test out with these types of screens as well so I would if if these aren't performing to your liking or definitely give a lot of other tests to try I like going to paywallscreens.com and seeing different paywalls there and kind of yeah checking up different designs and different I think you can search by category as well awesome yeah I like it like you know we've been talking about longer pay walls performing better and it has look I don't know what you're in you have a end goal and a mission in mind so but I have seen hard pay walls where there's no free content no nothing really convert well one of our apps we get about an 18 version on our paywall and then when we had this little eck dropped down to six percent which isn't too bad but we've moved back to hard pay wall we're not Mission oriented as you

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can see but I would test that because it's such a niche audience that you're targeting I think the more Niche you go the better these hard paywalls perform and another person in a past live stream was like I he had a butt workout app and he you know I could but but he tested hard paywall versus self-paywall we saw that hard pay walls performed better for it so think about that leaf if you want to go that route yeah and you probably want as few screens as possible before you hit this screen so there's a few that you kind of flip through there at the beginning and yeah I oh I did I didn't quite see exactly what it was there but rather than have a separate screen for each I have this optional slider in rooted so if you're still you know wanting to learn sorry go ahead if you're wanting to learn more about rooted before signing up you have the option to flip through it but if you don't then you can also just head

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straight to the sign up page and I find that that performed better there's less people dropping off before signing up oh yeah no trial options too I liked it I like it cool all right we got one more question for you how did you come up with the app Avatar love it Ron how did you come up with Ron yeah so honestly that was just how I felt that day when I was designing this was like when I was deep experiencing anxiety and panic attacks just having a bad day so you'll see it has different moves throughout the app but the original icon was him looking so annoyed and the idea with him is that you eventually with the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy you do want to befriend the anxiety and so that is a bit challenging to picture to be finding something that's so terrifying to you so that's why I made him look a little bit ridiculous you know he's badly in need of a trip to the dentist he's got his

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cute belly you know his different moods and he's not something that's actually scary he's a monster sure but it's a monster that you can befriend so that's how I came up with it and yeah it was just Teal's my favorite color as you could probably guess but just based yeah thank you yeah that's a great color great job on the design it is once again rooted r-o-t-r-o-o how many O's am I saying r-o-o-t-d rooted search for it on your favorite app store and go check it out Anya is there anything else you want to make sure we cover Before We Say Goodbye no I think just you know anybody can reach out to us on social media you can hit us up let us know what you think and yeah happy to have been here and to hang out Steve we Steve and I met like two weeks ago and we've just been hanging out a lot since there I still it was a great night I was like well that was fun I'm glad I went out because I was so tired the day before

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and I was like I wish I could cancel on Louie but I'm so glad that I went out because I got to meet you and I got to be and went on as well but rooted underscore app on Instagram and then it's rooted.io on Tick Tock just getting started on Tick Tock and then your favorite app stores Anya thank you so much thank you so much for coming back and doing this again you're like Stevens but thank you so much for doing both and I'll see you in a couple weeks but and if you want to connect with the you the audience wants to connect with you in any other way do you want to send them anywhere else I think um support rooted.io or team at rooted.io that's a another way get in touch for sure