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This Budgeting App Makes $400K a Month

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App Masters10:37Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

YNAB (You Need A Budget) earns over $400,000 a month from only about 30,000 downloads because it built a brand and community before it built the app. Anyone with an audience outside the app store can copy this by sending that audience into an app.

Key takeaways

  • A small number of downloads can bring large revenue. 0:00
    • YNAB makes over $400,000 a month from about 30,000 monthly downloads.
    • Other apps outside finance show the same pattern: tens of thousands of downloads and hundreds of thousands in revenue.
  • The brand drives the downloads, not generic keywords. 3:56
    • YNAB ranks number one for its own brand name but only in the top 10 for the word "budget".
    • It runs no ads, so its website community likely sends people to the store.
  • Brand trust lets the app ask for payment up front. 6:55
    • There is no free tier, only a one-month trial, which is longer than the trials App Masters usually sees work.
    • Users arrive as warm leads who already know the brand, so they stay on.
  • The brand paid off slowly, after years in the store. 2:01
    • The app launched in 2015 but did not rank in finance until late December 2021.
    • The takeoff may have come with version 3.0, though the cause is a guess.
  • The app itself is simple and flexible, and it speaks mostly to people who already know the brand. 7:28
    • Expenses can be set weekly or monthly, with non-monthly goals such as a $6,000 vacation fund, and bank accounts can be linked.
    • The store page leans on customer testimonials, so paid traffic from people new to the brand would need more budgeting-app messaging.

Once you've built a great community, you don't need many downloads to drive this much revenue.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 A brand built outside the store lifts a finance app up the charts

A brand and audience built before the app can put a finance app among the top grossing apps.

  • The app shows up high in the top grossing finance chart. 1:04
    • QuickBooks and MileageIQ sit in the same chart, along with a few other budgeting apps.
    • This chart is a good place to look for app ideas.
    • The chart is data.ai top charts, filtered to the finance category only.
    • This app stood out because the brand came before the app.
  • A blog and a book came before the software. 3:00
    • The author started by writing a blog, then built the software.
    • The companion book was already familiar to the presenter, who listened to it as an audiobook.
    • The presenter loved the book, so seeing the app in the charts made it a strong pick.
    • The brand's website is called phenomenal, both as a site and as a tool.

3:20 People search the brand name in the store

A brand with real demand can turn its community into store searches and downloads.

  • A strong brand is often under-used in the app store. 4:06
    • Morning Brew has a great brand but no app.
    • App store optimization data shows that brand keyword has a lot of traffic.
    • Keywords were checked in data.ai, formerly App Annie.
    • The check was only meant to give a sense of which keywords rank well.
  • An app lets an influencer grow revenue and reach new users. 4:46
    • Apps outside finance show similar numbers.
    • Any creator with a community can treat an app as a second channel.
    • The same pattern appears in other categories, not just finance.
    • The next step is a closer look at the app itself.

5:19 A similar app and a frictionless start

Budgeting apps in this category earn a lot per download, and a trusted brand lets the app move users from sign-in to trial quickly.

  • The app ranked just above YNAB shows the same pattern of high revenue per download. 5:19
    • It has also been in the store since 2015.
    • Its download-to-revenue ratio looks promising.
    • It is unclear how much of its revenue is old, but a good share is probably new.
    • The category may simply pay well per download.
  • Signing in is easy, and then the trial screen appears. 6:40
    • Sign in with Apple skips account creation.
    • Other clients run 14-day trials and still keep users, because people already know and trust their brand.
    • Even so, a one-month trial may not suit every app.

7:42 Inside the app and the lesson for creators

Setup starts with estimates, not bank links, and the real lesson is that a community can be turned into an app business.

  • New users estimate their expenses first and connect bank accounts afterward. 7:49
    • Sample entries were rent at $1,000, groceries at $500 a month, and home maintenance at $250.
    • Groceries can be set to weekly, at about $100 a week.
    • Other budgeting apps force a monthly view, which feels too far ahead for some people.
    • A banner then asks users to add their accounts and compare real money with the estimates.
  • Influencers moving into mobile can copy this community-first approach. 9:36
    • The app is both a good product and the result of a built community.
    • The same approach works for anyone with an audience outside the app store.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, teardown host. A teardown of YNAB, a budgeting app that grosses over $400,000 a month from about 30,000 monthly downloads because it was built on an existing brand and community. It shows how creators and community owners can use an app to turn a loyal audience into high revenue per download.

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

Transcript217 lines
0:00

Coming up. I'm going to show you a really cool budgeting app that is making over $400,000 with just 30,000 downloads a month. Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P young founder of Appmasters.com. Dot com the place you go when you want action packed content related to helping you grow your app downloads. And more importantly, those revenues. And today, I really like to highlight different types of apps to show you guys the different opportunities that still exist in the app store and see which apps that are the top grossing, what are they doing?

0:37

Right. And what can we learn from. And today I found a great app that actually has a companion book. It's a piece of software with a book as well. And I read the book. So I was already familiar with this particular brand, but to see them in the top grossing charts under the finance category, I was like, whoa, let me dig into this app a little bit more. So let's take a look at this particular budgeting app. Here's the data.ai.

1:06

Top charts. So I have all the apps and I filtered off just finance for now. And here's what we're going to take a look. So if you're looking for app ideas, this is the best place to take a look and you want to see which apps are the top grossing. So we see QuickBooks, you know, mileage IQ, and then here's the app that I really want to focus on. There's a couple of different budgeting apps up here. But I wanted to focus on these guys, why nap, or you need a budget because they've done a great job of building that brand before actually going and building the app.

1:39

So if you're an influencer or you have a community outside of the app store, I think this is a great model that you can use to deploy your. App right. And get your customers in to the app store. Now let's take a look at it a little bit more. So I wanted to see within censor tower. Now I'm going into sensor tower and we'll go fast. But the release date was actually 2015, which is surprising, right. It was like, well, okay.

2:07

But I have to believe that it was just sort of like a free and it maybe was a janky piece of software. I don't know. These are just my assumptions because here's what I found with data. That it didn't really start ranking under the finance category until late December, 2021. So maybe they had a huge update and then they were able to really start monetizing it wasn't until version 3.0. That really started to take off.

2:34

Right. So I wasn't sure what was happening in the backend. But it was interesting to me that it was in the app stores for a long time. And it really didn't start picking up until 2021. Right. So for six years it was just kind of in there maybe making some money, maybe not, but then in 2021, something clicked for them and now it's really, really working well for them. Again, I also picked this up because they got a phenomenal website.

2:58

And tool that you can use. Right? They've got, he started the author started by writing a blog, building a piece of software. You can learn more about him, but I read his book, which is right. This book right here. I read it as an audio book, but I loved the book so much. And so when I saw it as an art form, like, oh man, great candidate for one of these videos too. Next thing I want to do is actually within data AI, and I'm doing competitive analysis on an app.

3:26

I want to look at which keywords are driving downloads for. All right. So within censor tower, I can see if they're advertising anywhere. They look like they're not, and they've got a great community already on their website. And so they're probably leveraging that community to take him to the app stores. Right. And so just as a, just to get a sense of what keywords they might be ranking well for, we can go into data.ai, formerly app.

3:54

And why nap. Okay. So it looks like why NAB budgeting. They're doing okay. You need a budget, you need to budget. And so, but this goes to the point of, I built a great brand and it's been. Under leveraged within the app stores. There are a handful of brands that I know of morning brew that comes to my head that don't have an app, but have a great brand. And within ASO, I can see that keyword has a lot of traffic. Right.

4:19

And so why NAB, they built a big brand that people are actually searching for within the app stores. They ranked number one for it. They don't rank that well for let's just say budget they're in the top 10. But they don't rank that well for it. And so it's really brand driven. That's driving the downloads and the revenues, and you can see by these numbers that once you've built a great community, that you don't need much downloads to drive this much revenue.

4:46

So if you are an influencer out there or you built up this great community, think of the app as a great way for you to not only grow your revenues, but also attract new users. And I seen a couple of different apps, not in the finance space, but in other categories where you see similar numbers like this 30,000 downloads, so tens of thousand downloads, but hundreds of thousands of revenue. Now let's take a peak. I don't know what we're going to find, but let's take a peak at how every dollar is doing right here.

5:19

The number six app, right above why NAB. So let's take a look at their download revenue number. So 50,200,000, right. And they've been around since 2015 as well. We won't go into deep details with them, but pretty promising signs of the downloads for revenues revenues over, down those. Now we don't know how much of that is old revenue, but I have to assume that it's a good number of new revenue coming in with such a high.

5:48

And this little downloads. So it might be a great category where you're like revenues per download pretty high. Shall we take a look at the app? Let's do it. I'm going to open the app. Now I really love this. I love the fact that he has a brand and what he's really doing is showing a lot of customer testimonials, right? It's like we kept our savings and paid off. Why NAB. If I was brand new to this, and we do know that most people are searching for the brand.

6:15

So they probably know a little bit about the brand itself already. But if I was to audit this and I was attracting people that did not know of the brand, and let's say we're running, paid marketing and things like that, I would want to put a little bit more of the budgeting app in between, but all these customer testimonials point to the fact that it's a budgeting app. Okay. Cause I love this. Try one out for. Now you don't have to sign in, I'm assigning through apple.

6:45

It makes it really easy for you to the terms of services. And then here's what happens. We are hit with a one month trial. So you can't use this budgeting app unless you pay. And Dave gone ahead undead a one month trial. Now I don't know. That this would apply for all apps, right? I think one month we've typically found is a little bit too long, but he's built a brand, right. He understands his users. He built a brand he's built that trust.

7:15

And so I think with a brand that you might already have, you can go a little bit longer trials. And we have seen this with other clients that do a 14 day trial, which again, I think it's. But it works for them because they built up the brand, people know and trust them already. So they're willing to stay on and they come in sort of a warm lead already. That's just something to pay attention to kind of want to highlight that I'm going to go ahead and subscribe, try it out for a month.

7:42

So here's what I get after I've gone ahead and started my trial. As to meet your expenses. Okay. Here, you can start inputting a lot of different numbers in here. And so it uses their philosophy. I'm going to hit next year estimate. Okay. All right. Rent mortgage. Let's just say for convenience sake, I'm in the bay area, right? So, but let's just say for convenience sake, I'm going to just put a thousand dollars is much more than that groceries.

8:10

I'm going to say it's 500. Got a growing family, home maintenance. Let's just put two 50 on here. The occasion, yo really want to spend a good amount of on vacation. Someone put 6,000 here, and this is eventually, so this is pretty cool. We see bills and we can do this by month groceries. We can do every Sunday. So there's weekly. Really cool UI right here. So I'm going to say weekly, probably about a hundred bucks. I love that non monthly.

8:44

So this is eventually just something to have. So I might put this up into like 2000, right. Home maintenance just to have in the bank, 6,000, eventually quality life, so forth. And then you can add more and then you can link up your accounts. I'm not going to do that because we're recording this, but you can automatically link to it and pretty simple. Use, I really love the UI. I love that certain things can be monthly.

9:10

Certain things can be weekly. I've talked with other budgeting apps where, you know, maybe you want to do weekly because monthly is just so far in advance, but you can set these frequencies of the actual expenses. The last thing I want to point out is look at this at the top. It says, add your bank accounts. Now that you've estimated some expenses, let's see how much money you actually have right now. And let's see how much those real expenses are, how much money you're making, and then how much the expenses are.

9:36

I'm not going to do this for the sake of this video, but I really want to highlight this particular app because I think it's a one, a great budgeting app, obviously doing really, really well in the app stores and two, because they've built a great community. That it's something that for those who are watching this, or for those influencers out there, or thinking about transitioning into more of the mobile app space, it's something that you can leverage for yourself.

10:01

All right guys, that's it. And if you want me to take a look at a category of app, let me know. I'm happy to do that for you, but I'm always trying to find you and interesting apps that are crushing it in the app stores. So make sure you hit that subscribe button and make sure you join us every Friday at 9:00 AM Pacific, we go live on YouTube with the guests of mine and break down a strategy. That's really working in the app space.

10:26

Along with taking a look at your apps and giving you suggestions on how to better improve this user experience. All right, till next time, I'll see you on the next video.