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This Meme Maker App Makes $60K a Month [How to Make Memes]

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The bottom line

Mematic earns over $60,000 a month because it ranks first for the keyword "meme maker" and lets users fall in love with free features before a pro subscription. Simple apps can still win in the App Store this way.

Key takeaways

  • Ranking first for "meme maker" is the base of the app's revenue. 0:21
    • The keyword's traffic score on iOS is 60, against 54 for "meme generator" and 51 for "meme".
    • The top three results get about 60 to 80% of downloads, so the first spot brings steady organic traffic.
  • Rival apps in the same search earn far less than the leader. 1:37
    • The second app makes about $10,000 a month, and the third makes about $30,000 with Instagram ads.
    • The fourth app gets only about 10,000 downloads, and the fifth earns under $5,000 a month.
  • Giving away much of the app and locking a few pro features turns users into subscribers. 6:43
    • Removing the watermark and using some fonts and layouts require the pro plan, and both plans come with a three-day trial.
    • The pricing is not aggressive, and the app still makes over $60,000 a month.
  • Showing social proof earlier would likely lift subscriptions. 3:44
    • The first screenshot could say "number one meme maker, over 10 million downloads", with one background color.
    • One or two onboarding screens with that claim, followed by the pricing page, is a best practice worth testing.
  • The upgrade prompt should sell benefits and appear after the user succeeds. 9:09
    • The pro banner on top looks like a banner ad, so the eye skips it.
    • Most people don't want to "subscribe", so the prompt should name what they unlock.

Think about the benefits here. That's what I would do is add the benefits of subscribing.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 A 2012 meme app that still leads its search

Mematic's lead comes from age, reviews and organic traffic, while the apps below it are weaker and fixable.

  • Mematic has stayed on top for years without leaning on ads. 1:00
    • It launched in 2012 and has kept getting updates.
    • Almost no paid advertising is visible, so its traffic is mostly organic.
    • Its reviews run to the hundreds of thousands, which backs its ranking.
    • Mematic gets about 100,000 downloads, and the page looks mostly organic.
    • Steve picked it over a fresh launch because a simple meme maker earning this much is a surprise.
  • The lower-ranked apps look like turnaround projects. 2:51
    • The fourth app launched in 2016 and has good reviews, so it could be a partner.
    • The fifth launched in 2017, was last updated in September 2020 and has over 10,000 reviews.
    • Steve says a buyer could fix the fifth app's product, since the reviews are mostly real.
    • The second app puts the keyword in its own name, "meme maker, meme creator pro", to go after the same search.

3:37 Fixing the store page and the first open

Mematic could turn more of its traffic into subscribers by showing proof and pricing earlier.

  • The store screenshots should lead with the search keyword and keep a clean look. 3:45
    • The bottom line of the first screenshot can stay "Make your own memes".
    • Steve dislikes the changing background colors and wants one color.
    • The edgy text style may suit a meme audience, so it could stay.
  • The first open should sell Pro, and the pricing page should be longer. 4:43
    • Showing the pricing page during onboarding is a best practice.
    • Locking many features makes the gap between free and Pro easy to see.
    • Steve admits users may just want to start creating, so he would keep it to one or two screens.
    • A longer pricing page with reviews and the download count is worth testing.

6:09 Free tools, a few locks

Most of the editor is free, so a few visible locks can sell the upgrade without clutter.

  • The editor gives away a lot and locks only small things. 7:21
    • Users can mix their own colors, switch to black and white, and change the background.
    • Export shows the remove-watermark prompt again, right when the user wants the result.
    • The font list looks too busy, with many colors competing for the eye.
    • Graying out the pro fonts and adding a small lock would keep it simple.

8:01 What else to lock

Locking the most wanted formats and caption tools would give users more reasons to upgrade.

  • Popular formats and caption tools are better candidates for the pro plan. 9:34
    • The caption tools at the top might be more interesting to lock.
    • One layout is already pro, but a couple more would work better.
    • The advice is to check which format is used most, then lock a couple of those.
    • Steve says he doesn't feel strongly about the caption point.

10:19 What a simple app proves

A simple app with generous free features can still make over $60,000 a month.

  • The App Store still rewards a simple app that ranks well for its keyword. 10:25
    • Without other marketing channels, the ranking has to carry the traffic.
    • Users make many memes for free, fall in love with the app, then subscribe.
    • The app also shows banner ads for the developer's other apps.
    • On the third open, Steve still saw no hard push to upgrade.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, reviewing another company's app. A teardown of Mematic, a meme maker app that earns over $60K a month, showing how a simple app can win through one high-traffic keyword and a generous free tier with a pro upgrade. It also lists specific screenshot, onboarding and paywall changes the app could test to earn even more.

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

Transcript284 lines
0:00

What is up app nation. It is Steve P. Young founder of Appmasters.com. And in this video, I want to show you a meme generator app that is making over $60,000 a month. We're going to analyze what they're doing, right. And what they could be doing better. Now let's go here is the app. It is called meme, Matic memetic. Now they do rank number one for me maker. All right. Just keep that in mind. And I'm going to go through all the different apps that rank in the top five for that particular term mean maker because of me maker, meme, generator.

0:35

I'm going to show you guys this real quick. You can see that me maker has a 60. Traffic score corn on iOS and then meme generator. Has it a little bit more, a little bit less 54. So just know that that's the case. And then meme is 51. So me maker is the big keyword that they're ranking number one for right here. And we're going to take a look at the revenue numbers of all top five. All right. Me maker right here. This is the app.

0:58

We're going to take a look at at $60,000. They're not doing much from an ads perspective right here, from what we can see. But again, they're probably driving a lot of organic traffic because they're number one for me maker. And they've been around since 2012. Now I know you guys want to see me audit some apps or look at some apps that are just recently launched, but. I thought this was interesting. All right. It's a meme maker.

1:24

App ends just making $60,000 a month. Come on. That's interesting to me. Okay. So they did, they've been launched for quite some time. They've been updating the app and they got thousands, hundreds of thousand reviews. So they've been around for quite some time. All right. Now let's take a look at the revenue numbers of the number two app. This is me maker, meme, creator, pro. So really going after that keyword right here, it's making $10,000 a month.

1:46

About 40 K rev downloads of February, 2021. And they mean, medic has about a hundred grand. Looks like it's mostly organic, but just FYI. They might be running some ads too and search search ads and stuff like that. But this is about 40,000 a month. And from some stats out there from ASO tools, we know that the top three results get around 60 to 80% of the down. All right. So let's take a look at number three. This one's getting a bit more.

2:14

Now they are using some advertising. They're running ads on Instagram, and you can see they're making three times as much as the second one. So the second one's making 10,000, this one's making 30,000 and running ads to that would probably do a lot better job of monetizing their users. And number one is making 60,000. All right. Number four. Not as impressive as the top three, as you can see huge drop-off terms of downloads too.

2:42

We've got 60,000, we had 40,000, we had a hundred thousand number four, only 10,000. Right. They are ranked number four for me maker. All right. And they're not doing that well, so they have a lot of good reviews. They've been launched in 2016. So. Be a good candidate to potentially work together and increase those revenues. Right. And number five, again, not really solid results. I don't really like this icon either, but.

3:09

They've got less than 5,000, less than 5,000 in revenues, 10,000 plus reviews. I'm going assume mostly real. They've been launched in 2017, but they could probably less updated September, 2020. They could probably do a better job of fixing the app, given the number of reviews. I mean, if I were in the market of buying an, now this would be an app I would look at because a lot of great reviews so far, and then probably you can fix the product.

3:33

So it might be an interesting video for later on. Now, before we take a look at the app, I want to make some suggestions to this aggregator. Now you're already doing really well. So take it with a grain of salt, but Theodore, if you're watching this, here's what I would recommend you say, this is the most popular meme maker app with over 10 million downloads. I would put that as a number one screenshot, right? The number one meme maker app, because you're getting a lot of traffic from the keyword meme maker.

3:58

So you want to put me maker here and then you say over 10 million downloads. Right here at the very bottom. Make your own memes. Everything else sounds, looks good. I don't like the colors in the background. You know what I mean? Like I think just stick to one color in my opinion, keep it clean, keep it nice. And then, yeah, I don't like how it changes, but then maybe even think about the text that you're using, but maybe it is core your audience.

4:22

I mean, sex seems like mean techs, so maybe that's okay. But definitely add some social proof. Put mean maker number one, meme maker. That's your number one keyword. And over time with over $10 million. So I would definitely add that into this. Okay. Now let's take a look at your app. Theodore. Here's the app I want, I opened it and. What I would personally show is this pro now I would actually try to, this is the first open, right?

4:50

I would try to show like, Hey, number one, moneymaker app with 10 million downloads, easily create all the font styles and then show them this pricing page. I think you can do a lot better in terms of revenue numbers, if you did that route, but. At the same time, like you probably just want to get the user in and start creating stuff. But I personally would try to have a, a drunken download with a couple of screens, not too many, right?

5:14

Just one or two screens that says, Hey, it's the number one maker app with over 10 million downloads. Here's what you can do within the app. And then would you want to pay? So that's one of the best practices is show that pricing Bay during the onboarding process. It looks like a lot of these are free. So I like how you've locked up a lot of these too. So that's cool. I can see the difference between pro and free. And I really like the upgrade is so front and center that you can buy three day trial.

5:40

So they both look like they come with a three-day trial here. Again, I would add some more social proof here. Look, I think a longer pricing page is worth testing here because I do think that you'll get a ton, more people subscribing knowing that they have 10 million, you have 10 million downloads and so forth and you have so many good reviews. So would add a little bit more social proof here again. They're doing well.

6:02

So let's, let's create some things right. When me sound cater mean me. When I hear from people that my strategies do work.

6:29

I'm joking around here, but I do get some of these things when people don't, Hey, Steve, you know, that change that you kind of recommended did actually work. I'm like, well, duh. All right. So that's me saying that I like that there is this pro feature up on top. Cool. Looks like the watermark. If I want to remove it, I have to upgrade to the pro. That's really cool. I like that. These fonts. All right. Some of these are pro.

6:55

I like that now I think you should grayed out right now. It looks a little too busy in my eye with all the fonts. I think just gray out, simple Futura, you know, put a little lock on it, make it pro that type of thing. Right now. There's just so many different colors involved. So, but overall, super good. Looks like I can change all this stuff watermark again. Good. And then color. It looks like. You're okay. Mix your own colors.

7:22

Okay, cool. I like that. Black and white, so super cool. You're giving away a lot of different things. Background will. How do I change that? Oh, got it. Oh, no, I lost it. Okay. I'll go back to original and then, okay. That's cool. So I can screen out that's cool. Export. All right here, remove watermark. You're getting me to subscribe again. So I love that I'm going to hit save Dave. I'm going to hit video added to my done.

8:00

Cool. Now that I'm done, this might be another opportunity for you to show up this pro screen. Again. Now this pro screen appear on top looks more like a banner ad than me subscribing. So think about that. Now, this banner up top. Looks like it's more of a banner ad or this was a banner ad, but then you also have pro features involved. And so, you know, like, I don't know. I think like if you're just trying to get me to upgrade and think about that when I was done exporting right here, you see it now it says remove the watermark upgraded probe.

8:35

I don't know. It just feels like it's, it feels more like a banner ad versus you wanting me to subscribe. So meaning that I, my eye just doesn't capture it at all. Good. But again, after I'm done saving, after I've had some success with the app, I think that's where I would ask for you to. Here. So I guess I can add to my projects, all my projects. Cool. And then I've got some projects here. I can do the pro. So if I were again, it's making $60,000 a month.

9:09

So congratulations, Theodore, what I would do is most people don't want to subscribe to unlock. They don't want to subscribe. So it's like unlock all filters or do much more with your apps. Think about the benefits here. That's what I would do is add the benefits of subscribing. Don't just call out subscribe. Nobody wants to subscribe to any we're thinking. Right? So really talk about the big benefits of the app here.

9:32

But overall, I really liked this. I think maybe even think about locking some of these things up top. These caption things might be more interesting, but you know, I don't feel too strongly about it. I think you're doing a great job in terms of this. What I would also mess around with is see which format is the most popular and think about maybe locking a couple of the different formats right here. I do see on this main screen that.

9:58

The pro you know, one of the layouts is pro, so that's great. But I think a couple seeing a couple of the pros would be more interesting. Let me know otherwise really good job. Okay. So you have banner ads for your other apps. Overall really cool app, really simple app. And I wanted to create these videos because I want to show you the power of the app store sometimes. Yes, you need to rank really well for a certain keyword, right?

10:31

If you're not going to drive other marketing channels to it, but as simple as this, where Theodore is given away a lot of the different features, he's able to still get his users to ultimately subscribe to the app. You make them fall in love with it, by creating a lot of memes and then makes them fall in love with the app. So let me try one more thing before we go. And that's me just jumping back into the app. So he's not even being that aggressive with the pricing.

10:56

I opened the app. This is about the third time I've opened it. He's not being that aggressive with the probe. So really good job. I think it can be a little bit more aggressive with the pricing stuff, but at the same time, you can see that this simple app. Has the power to make over $60,000 a month. All right guys, that's it super short, super simple app. I love it. I've actually looked for an app like this, and that's how I found out about this app.

11:21

And I just checked out since tire to be like, Oh, how much are they making? So really gave job congrats to youth, Theodore for doing a phenomenal job with the app. Guys, I want to end with this. We just launched a service called ASO masters. That gives you unlimited ASO services. If you're interested in signing up or learning more, go check out ASO, masters.com. We're going to give you the keyword optimization. So we're going to ASL for unlimited apps.

11:44

We also have a design team. So you have access to that. If you need a refresh on your app, icon, your screenshots. Theodore, let us know. We'll do that as well. We'll give you guidance on what the words should be on those screenshots. And then our designer will make it look really pretty. And some of the higher plans we'll even help you with your retention and monetization strategy. So one low monthly price, go check it out.

12:05

I'm super excited about the service. It's something that we've been beta testing since the beginning of 2020, and now we officially are ready to launch it to the world. So go check out ASO, masters.com. I'll see you on the next video.