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Watch This Before Building Your App (Build a Profitable MVP)

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App Masters10:35Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

A first app earns money from day one when it does one thing well, charges at onboarding, and puts its effort into distribution. Building is cheap now, so the budget belongs in growth.

Key takeaways

  • AI made building easy, but getting downloads is still hard. 0:51
    • Developers keep arriving with a polished app that has never been in the market and has no distribution.
  • One premium feature that solves one problem is enough to earn. 1:10
    • Migraine Buddy only tracks migraines and makes about $55,000 a month. A Fire TV remote app ranks number two for its keyword and makes $80,000.
    • The small example is Paraphrase AI, with over $27,000 in lifetime sales and about $3,000 a month.
  • The paywall belongs inside the onboarding flow. 4:26
    • 60 to 80% of buyers purchase during onboarding, before they use the app.
    • The Universal TV Remote app shows a paywall on its first screen and makes over $375,000.
  • Distribution channels drive revenue more than features do. 6:16
    • Some apps make half a million a year from App Store optimization and Apple Ads alone.
    • Organic social media and free Reddit marketing are other options, and one or two channels are enough to start.
  • The budget should go to growth, not to building the app. 9:35
    • Some clients spent $30,000 to $40,000 on an app, while a comparable one was built in about a weekend and now earns.
    • Capping the build budget leaves money for marketing and aims first at a minimum viable revenue.

Stop thinking about what new features you want to build and start thinking about what distribution channels you need to learn and execute and test on.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Start with one premium feature

A first app should solve one problem well, because every big brand began as a tiny product.

  • Every big brand started small and narrow. 1:34
    • Facebook began only as a social network for Harvard.
    • Uber began as one black car in San Francisco.
    • Facebook had no status updates and probably no photo sharing at first.
    • The founder of Uber was the driver.
  • A first build should aim at minimum viable revenue. 3:37
    • Most founders arrive with a fully built product they believe is amazing.
    • The better approach is to decide what to build within a limited budget.
    • The problem should be one many people pay for, or at least a small group.
    • The builder, not the founder alone, decides what goes into the first version.

4:26 Put the paywall in onboarding

Since most buyers pay before using the app, the paywall belongs on the first screens.

  • A paywall on the very first screen can be the whole app experience. 4:56
    • The Universal TV Remote comes from the same publisher as the Fire TV app.
    • Opening it shows one page, the paywall, and nothing else.
    • First-time founders may not know this, though it is common knowledge among app insiders.
    • The revenue figure for this app comes from Appfigures.

5:18 Distribution beats features

A plain single-purpose app can sell for years, and what sets it apart is how it reaches buyers, not what it can do.

  • A remote-control app wins by doing only one job across many brands. 5:20
    • It supports Google, Roku, LG, Samsung and Fire TV.
    • Nothing else is added to it.
    • App Magic puts its sales at about $200,000 a month.
    • The speaker's reaction: kudos to the team behind it.
  • Some developers split one idea into many apps, one for each brand. 5:38
    • They publish separate remotes for LG, Samsung, Roku and Sony.
    • Each app targets people searching for one brand.
    • A developer profile then shows remote controls for many brands.
    • The speaker has seen these accounts first-hand and does not name them.

7:56 Test channels, not features, and cap the build

The next move is to test a distribution channel, and to build the right app early so the budget is left for growth.

  • Ask which channel to test next, not which feature to build next. 7:56
    • A few channels in the early days can reach profit right away.
    • If you are not expert in any channel, study one.
    • The speaker sticks to ASO and Apple Ads because those are the channels he knows best.
    • Organic social media is for those who are expert in it.
  • Get the paywall, onboarding and ASO right from the start. 9:49
    • Changing them after the app is built is a lot of work.
    • A constrained build budget leaves more for marketing.
    • The aim is a first minimum viable revenue, then building on top of it.
    • The speaker calls spending it all on development a backwards approach.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app growth and portfolio company. Steve P. Young argues that first-time app founders should build one premium feature, put a paywall in onboarding, and spend their effort on distribution instead of more features. He backs it with niche utility apps making $3K to $200K a month, such as Migraine Buddy and TV remote apps.

Lessons that draw on this:

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

Transcript241 lines
0:00

Coming up, I'm going to share with you the number one mistake that app founders make when creating their first app and the simplest things that you need in your app to build a profitable MVP. Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P. young founder of appmasters.com the place you go when you want actionpacked content related to helping you grow your app downloads and more importantly those revenues and that's what we're going to be talking about today I'm tired of developers coming to me with a perfect app or an amazing app one that hasn't been in the market and having so much difficulty with distribution so I'm creating this video for those who are interested in creating an app Because with AI, it's getting so much easier to create things and harder to get distribution and downloads for them. So, I'm going to break it down.

1:02

Here are the simplest things that you need in your app to be profitable on day one. Let's get started. All right, here we go. Number one, build one premium feature. Too many of you guys are making too many features that nobody uses. All I want you to do, you know why you built this app. So all I want you to do is create one premium feature. Do one thing really, really well. Don't forget Facebook now Meta started out just as a social network for Harvard. No status updates. Like I think I don't even think they had photo sharing, none of this stuff. Uber started out as a black car in San Francisco where the founder was the driver.

1:55

Every big brand that you know started off as a tiny little company. But you only have to focus on one premium feature. Solve one problem. Hopefully a problem that a lot of people have and a lot of people are willing to pay for. All right. even if it's not a lot of people, a small group of people are willing to pay for. All right, here are some apps that have done really well and I'm going to link up the full breakdown in the YouTube description below, so check it out. But Migraine Buddy, all it does is track your migraines. The app because of the distribution and ranks really well for migraine tracker that people do search for is making approximately $55,000 a month. Close to a sevenf figureure business. Really, really cool. Remote for Fire Stick and Fire TV. Here's another app. They rank number two for Fire TV remote. They're doing 80K.

2:55

That's a seven-figure business by doing one thing really well. Focusing on being a digital remote on your iPhone for Fire TV. All right, here's one of our apps and I'm showing you the whole sales. Okay, those are big numbers. This is the whole sales. So, for the lifetime of this app, this is one of our apps called Paraphrase AI. We've made over 27,000 and we're averaging about $3,000 in sales. Again, doing one thing really, really well that people are willing to pay for. All right, so you got the big examples and you got the small examples.

3:33

This is how you get to profitability really fast. Let me tell you a little secret. Most people come to us with a fully built product that they think is so amazing. And no shade, I'm sure it is. But if you want to work with my team and our app portfolio team to build the what I'm calling MVR, minimum viable revenue, right? We're going to help you. So rather than you telling us what to build, we're going to tell you, hey, we're going to try to build your minimum viable revenue within a limited budget.

4:10

And so I'm opening the doors so that you can work one- on-one with my own app portfolio team. And if you're interested, just use the link in the YouTube description or check out appmasters.com. All right, now let's get into number two. Build a payw wall during the onboarding process. Again, my team will help you do this, but most users buy during the onboarding process. All right, this is common knowledge, but if you're creating your first app, you might not know this. This is common knowledge for those in the app space. 60 to 80% of all the people who buy, they buy during the onboarding process. Yes, before they even use your app. All right, let me give you some examples.

4:56

Here's the same app publisher for the Fire TV app. They have another app, the Universal TV remote app, right? And here's their store listing. You open the app, here's the first page, here's the payw wall. That's it. That's all they have. And the app makes over $375,000 according to app figures by doing a few things really well. Now, obviously, they have to support all these TV brands, Google, Roku, LG, Samsung, Fire TV, and so forth. But all they are is a TV remote. That's it. Distribution matters more than your features. All right, distribution matters the most. In fact, I've seen app developers create one app for LG, one app for Samsung, one app for Roku, one app for Sony, and so forth.

5:47

All right, I've seen their accounts. I won't put them on blast, but I've seen their accounts. They just focus on a specific brand. And when you look at their app developer profile, you'll see remote controls for all these different types of companies and brands. Right. Here's from App Magic. One of our favorite tools to use. The sales for that app is about $200,000 a month. A month, by the way. All right. So, kudos to this craft work, guys.

6:16

All right. Next, and the most important thing instead of your features is distribution. Distribution matters so much. I'm going to break down the simple distribution path that you can use to start generating revenues for your app. Here it is. It's simple. Take a screenshot right now cuz this works. I do it with all my apps. I do it with a lot of client apps. I've seen apps making half a million a year purely relying on ASO and Apple ads. What used to be Apple search ads. That's it. Okay.

6:52

So, just these two alone can get you very very far. just those two alone. Now, other people have said obviously organic social media that's going viral on social media leading to those downloads. I'm not an expert in that, but we have a ton of videos on that if you guys want to check that out. And then other people have done lifetime free Reddit marketing. You don't need any of these three and four. If you're an expert at three organic social media, go ahead and do that. But I'm an expert in one and two, so that's what I'm going to focus on as well. And if you want more case studies of apps that have done really, really well using the distribution first mindset, I've got a video on that and I'll link that into the show notes as well so that you can check it out. But it really breaks down how using just a few of these variables, just a few channels in the early days can get you to profit right away.

7:47

Whether it's just ASO, whether it's just Apple ads, whether it's organic social media, you can do wonders with just that. And so rather than you figuring out what next feature to build, think about what next distribution channel you should test. Okay? If you're not an expert in any one of those things, I would then study that. Stop thinking about what new features you want to build and start thinking about what distribution channels you need to learn and execute and test on. That's what I would be doing. All right. Again, if you want access to our entire app portfolio team, amazing UX UI folks, amazing developers, we have a couple of developers on our team, a couple of UIUX developers, and we're going to help you decide what features to build along with the go-to market strategy. We're going to open this up to a few select people just to beta test this. If you're interested, use that link in the YouTube

8:47

description and schedule a call with us. We'll help you figure it out. But what we're promising you is we're limiting you on the budget. We're not going to quote you. You'll have a limited budget that you can spend with us to get you to your first minimum viable revenue. Right? Let's make that money first, then start building on top of that. I just showed you a few apps. I've got many more in our portfolio that are doing much better than a few of our clients who spent 30 $40,000 on an app and I spent maybe a weekend building this app via my team by the way, but now it's generating revenues. And so for us, it's about testing out different ideas and finding the right app that we can scale using the portfolio approach. But for you, I want you to not spend $30,000 on an app on creating an app. I rather you spent that on possibly trying to grow that app versus creating it. Creating is easy. We're going to help you build the

9:49

right app from the very start versus building your app and then coming to us where we have to change a lot from the payw wall, from the onboarding, from the ASO and so forth. It's just too much work for us. I was like, well, let's just do it from the very jump. Let's just help these app founders from the very beginning in making sure they build the right things the right way from the very start and constrain their budget so they have a bit more budget for the marketing versus spending it all on the development backwards opinion. That's why we're opening it up. All right, check us out atmasters.com and I'll see you on the next video.