My Apps Make $4.5M/Year With $0 Marketing — Transcript

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1. 0:00My Shopify app, Kaching Bundles, is
2. 0:02currently making me $4.5 million a year,
3. 0:05and we spend almost zero dollars on
4. 0:07marketing. How does this guy make over
5. 0:09$4 million a year without spending
6. 0:11thousands of dollars on marketing? Well,
7. 0:13the answer is something you probably
8. 0:14wouldn't expect. All of our growth is
9. 0:16coming either from or Eric started his
10. 0:21journey as a designer making just $2 an
11. 0:23hour. Then he stumbled onto an
12. 0:25opportunity that would change his life
13. 0:27forever. I think there's still a lot of
14. 0:29opportunity building in platforms and
15. 0:31I'm personally researching. I spent over
16. 0:34an hour talking to Aricos about all his
17. 0:36different Shopify apps and how anybody
18. 0:38can start building these things from
19. 0:40scratch. And good news, he shared
20. 0:42everything, including how to find
21. 0:44platform specific ideas to build, how to
22. 0:46run an async team with 90% margin, and
23. 0:50the unique marketing strategy that
24. 0:52helped him grow to $4.5 million a year
25. 0:54in just two years. All right, let's get
26. 0:57into it. I'm Pat Walls and this is
27. 0:59Starter
28. 1:02Story. Welcome, Ericos. Welcome to the
29. 1:05channel. Tell me about who you are and
30. 1:07what business that you built. Hi, guys.
31. 1:09So, my name is Ericas. I'm from
32. 1:11Lithuania, originally currently living
33. 1:13in Paris. And I'm a designer turned
34. 1:16entrepreneur building Shopify apps
35. 1:18together with my co-founder. And we're
36. 1:21currently at 4.5 million annual
37. 1:23recurring revenue. What's really cool
38. 1:26about our business is that we're 90%
39. 1:28profitable. Okay. If you could give me a
40. 1:31little bit of a breakdown of apps that
41. 1:34you built. So, currently we have uh five
42. 1:38apps in total. Our first app in the
43. 1:40discount category was Kaching Bundles
44. 1:43and we scaled it to around 400k monthly
45. 1:46recurring revenue currently. Uh then we
46. 1:48launched Kaching post purchase upsell.
47. 1:51After that, we launched Kaching pop-up
48. 1:53upsell and right now few weeks ago we
49. 1:55launched Kaching uh card drawer upsell.
50. 1:58All of these apps are in the discount
51. 2:00category serving customers that want to
52. 2:03increase their average order value
53. 2:04within Shopify. Since our launch in 2022
54. 2:08August, we already made more than 400
55. 2:10million in additional revenue for all of
56. 2:13the merchants that are using our apps.
57. 2:15That's awesome. In building these
58. 2:16businesses, what have you learned? What
59. 2:18is the big opportunity on building apps
60. 2:21on platforms? The thing I noticed about
61. 2:23the app developers is that there's like
62. 2:26solo developers, indie hackers, and I
63. 2:29thought that they lack great user
64. 2:32experience. All of their apps are kind
65. 2:34of technical and a bit complex for for
66. 2:37regular users. And the other type of
67. 2:39apps was VCbacked or like huge
68. 2:42corporations. The user experience were
69. 2:44uh was great. But the problem about them
70. 2:47was that they actually move pretty slow.
71. 2:50If if there's a feature lacking, it
72. 2:52would take probably months or or maybe
73. 2:54even a year to launch something new. So
74. 2:56that's how I kind of knew that there is
75. 2:59an opportunity for me to be in that
76. 3:01ecosystem and to try to beat all of
77. 3:04those solid developers. I wasn't sure
78. 3:06that I will be able to compete with high
79. 3:09bigger companies backed up by VCs and so
80. 3:11on. like a year or two years after doing
81. 3:14Shopify apps, I realized that it's
82. 3:16possible to compete with them as well.
83. 3:18Okay, let's go a bit into your backstory
84. 3:20here. What did you do before
85. 3:22entrepreneurship and what got you into
86. 3:24building stuff? Yeah, so right after
87. 3:26finishing my school, I joined a local
88. 3:29web design agency and I started working
89. 3:31for $2 per hour. Since day one, I was
90. 3:35always thinking, how can I 10x my
91. 3:38earnings? And uh I quickly I realized
92. 3:41that if I want to earn more I have to
93. 3:43work like for myself. I I I have to
94. 3:45start freelancing. So that's what I did
95. 3:47in 2016 or 2015 I guess. 3 to 4 years
96. 3:52later while I was still freelancing I
97. 3:54was building products on the side. I had
98. 3:57a client a startup who needed a landing
99. 3:59page. So what I was doing I was just
100. 4:02browsing the internet and looking for
101. 4:04inspiration. And that's how I stumbled
102. 4:07upon Shopify partners page. I bookmarked
103. 4:10it and later on when I looked into it, I
104. 4:13saw uh a section which said that top 25%
105. 4:17Shopify app developers are making almost
106. 4:21300k a year. And in my eyes, it was
107. 4:24like, oh my god, it's it's huge because
108. 4:26what I was making with my freelance work
109. 4:28was was much less. Having all of the
110. 4:30experience in Shopify, I knew how how
111. 4:33those apps were and that's how I
112. 4:35realized that I have to build something
113. 4:37myself in the ecosystem. Cool. Okay. The
114. 4:40Shopify app opportunity. How did you
115. 4:42find this idea? And generally, how do
116. 4:44you think about finding ideas? When I
117. 4:46was thinking of what do I want to build
118. 4:49in the Shopify app marketplace, I I
119. 4:52already had three main criteria. So,
120. 4:54first one was it has to be pretty easy
121. 4:57to build. I have to build it in like
122. 4:59couple of months, no more than that. The
123. 5:02second criteria was pretty broad market.
124. 5:04I wanted to build something that could
125. 5:07be useful for any Shopify store because
126. 5:09it would be a lot easier to market it
127. 5:12and I could use all of my clients that
128. 5:15use Shopify and so on. The first
129. 5:17criteria was I needed low competition.
130. 5:20So that's my main my main setup how how
131. 5:22I differentiate good ideas versus bad
132. 5:26ideas. Nice. So on the topic of uh good
133. 5:29ideas and bad ideas, let's talk about
134. 5:31validation. How do you know when your
135. 5:33idea is validated and what has that
136. 5:36looked like for your apps before? Before
137. 5:38building it, I tried to validate it with
138. 5:41basically talking to users. You know, I
139. 5:44joined various Discord communities of
140. 5:46drop shippers. I joined e-commerce
141. 5:49Facebook groups. I posted various
142. 5:52Facebook posts in in those groups. And
143. 5:54one of the posts where I I had a
144. 5:56screenshot of my not yet published app.
145. 5:59It was just a design and it kind of blew
146. 6:01up. There was more than 100 likes and a
147. 6:05lot of comments asking you know where
148. 6:07can I don't download this app because
149. 6:08they thought that it's already live. So
150. 6:11that was my first validation that this
151. 6:14product is needed and and yeah it it
152. 6:16could be successful. If you can build a
153. 6:19landing page or something to try get uh
154. 6:22get the emails of your customers, that's
155. 6:24great. If you can even charge for it,
156. 6:27maybe make a pre-order or something,
157. 6:29that's that's even better because you
158. 6:30already know that people will pay money
159. 6:32for it. All right, I got to stop you
160. 6:34real quick and zoom out. Ericos built an
161. 6:37insane business, 4 million a year on top
162. 6:39of the Shopify app store without
163. 6:41spending any money on ads. And that's
164. 6:43maybe the secret, building on top of a
165. 6:46marketplace. You don't need a big
166. 6:48audience. You don't need to spend money
167. 6:49on ads. And there's a built-in customer
168. 6:51base just waiting for you to solve their
169. 6:54problems. The only problem with that is
170. 6:56that Shopify's developer ecosystem is,
171. 6:59I'll admit, pretty mature. In other
172. 7:01words, that means there's a good amount
173. 7:02of competition on the platform. So, that
174. 7:04begs the question, what's the next
175. 7:06Shopify? What's the under the radar
176. 7:08marketplace where I think developers
177. 7:10should be building right now? Well, one
178. 7:12place I think is interesting is the
179. 7:14monday.com marketplace. We partnered
180. 7:17with them on this video because they're
181. 7:18putting real energy behind expanding the
182. 7:21marketplace, investing in the platform,
183. 7:23supporting developers, and actively
184. 7:26looking for more builders to help meet
185. 7:28their growing customer demand. Now is
186. 7:30the time to get in early and make your
187. 7:32mark while it's still easier to stand
188. 7:35out. They've got over 245,000 customers
189. 7:38across over 200 industries and 90% of
190. 7:42their enterprise customers use
191. 7:43monday.com apps. enterprise. That's the
192. 7:47big bucks. What's also cool is they have
193. 7:49good APIs, clean docs, solid SDKs, and a
194. 7:53team dedicated to helping you grow and
195. 7:55make money. If this tickles your fancy,
196. 7:57well, with monday.com, we put together
197. 8:00this free download breaking down a bunch
198. 8:02of stats about the opportunity here, who
199. 8:04their users are, and what kind of
200. 8:06problems they really need solved. And
201. 8:09here's a pro tip. take some of that info
202. 8:11and plug it into your favorite LLM and I
203. 8:14bet it will give you some really cool
204. 8:15ideas for what to build. If you want to
205. 8:17download, just click the first link in
206. 8:19the description, fill out the quick
207. 8:21form, and sign up for your developer
208. 8:23account. It's all 100% free to get
209. 8:25started. I'm stoked that we got to
210. 8:27partner with monday.com in this video
211. 8:29because Aeros is an example of what
212. 8:31happens when you build on a marketplace.
213. 8:33All right, let's get back to the
214. 8:35interview. You're a designer, not a
215. 8:36developer. How do you go about actually
216. 8:38building these products? What's your
217. 8:40process to go from zero to one with a
218. 8:42new idea? Yeah. So, when I'm when I'm
219. 8:44designing things, the first thing I look
220. 8:47into is competitors. If there's already
221. 8:51competitors in space, uh that's a good
222. 8:54thing because you can dig into deeper
223. 8:56and and see how they do like see their
224. 8:59user experience. just go through it and
225. 9:02I'm taking notes what I really like
226. 9:04about it and what I dislike about it.
227. 9:07And after that I I have a clear image of
228. 9:10how my app could look like so that I
229. 9:12could fairly say that it's objectively
230. 9:16better than my competitors. And to make
231. 9:19uh my chance for success higher, I have
232. 9:23to find a co-founder. I think finding a
233. 9:26co-founder is is pretty much similar to
234. 9:28doing sales because you have to sell
235. 9:31someone an idea that you can make a
236. 9:34successful business and you just need
237. 9:36their help. That's what I was trying to
238. 9:38do. You know, I went into a local
239. 9:40developer group in Facebook. I made a
240. 9:43huge post. I and I mentioned that, you
241. 9:45know, first of all, I have Shopify
242. 9:47experience. Second, I'm a great designer
243. 9:50with years of experience. So I can
244. 9:52provide a great user experience which
245. 9:54will increase our chance for success.
246. 9:57Third, I have all of those clients
247. 9:59already using Shopify which we can sell
248. 10:01our Shopify app to. And with all of
249. 10:04those things, you know, I think I'm
250. 10:05increasing my chance for for finding a
251. 10:08right fit. And and that's basically h
252. 10:11how I found my co-founder. Let's go to
253. 10:13the next section here. I want to talk
254. 10:14about marketing. Uh, how do you go from
255. 10:17Shopify app to real users and real
256. 10:19paying customers? When you are just a
257. 10:22new app, you have zero users, you have
258. 10:24nothing. You're right at the bottom of
259. 10:26the app store listings. So, I knew that
260. 10:30we need to onboard as many users as we
261. 10:33can manually. So, yeah, I just I just
262. 10:36went to all of the communities. I just
263. 10:38went to all of my clients, all of my
264. 10:40friends that are using Shopify and asked
265. 10:43them to install our app and try it for
266. 10:45themselves. I made the app free and this
267. 10:48way you can get more installs and of
268. 10:51course more installs then convert to to
269. 10:53more reviews and of course it drives
270. 10:55more revenue then and it helps you know
271. 10:57to improve your product further because
272. 11:00you get all of this feedback. Okay, I
273. 11:03want to dive into some of the dirty
274. 11:04details about this reviews thing because
275. 11:06I think that this is it's simple. It
276. 11:08sounds simple, but it's actually genius.
277. 11:11So, let's go a little bit deeper into
278. 11:13the customer support and review strategy
279. 11:16that really did change your business.
280. 11:18Yeah. So, once we said that it's crucial
281. 11:22for us to get those five-star reviews,
282. 11:24we optimized all of our processes
283. 11:27towards it. So first of all our product
284. 11:30within our product you straight away we
285. 11:32just ask
286. 11:39for then we have all of these uh monthly
287. 11:42emails. So every month we're sending a
288. 11:44monthly email in which we uh show how
289. 11:48much revenue this app brought to you and
290. 11:51in that email we also ask for review. I
291. 11:54think around 95% of our reviews for for
292. 11:57our apps come from customer support. Our
293. 12:00customer support is is topnotch. All of
294. 12:03our customer support agents are really
295. 12:05technical. So they can dig into your
296. 12:08code and and fix things. And yeah, we
297. 12:10provide 24/7 customer support right now.
298. 12:13Nice. And now that you have a team, you
299. 12:16realize still how important this is. And
300. 12:18I realize that you have like a little
301. 12:20bit of a system that where you gamified
302. 12:21reviews. Can you talk more about that?
303. 12:23So, recently I introduced a gamified
304. 12:26bonus system to our customer support
305. 12:28team and right now we're tracking who
306. 12:31gets uh more reviews. We have the
307. 12:34monthly leaderboard and uh we we have
308. 12:37all of these different raffles and
309. 12:39actually my favorite B bonus is uh a
310. 12:42persuader of the month and what we do is
311. 12:44we basically calculate the conversion
312. 12:47rate of how many uh times you ask for a
313. 12:50review and how many reviews you get and
314. 12:53I think it really helps uh those agents
315. 12:56bring more reviews and of course
316. 12:58incentivizes them because they get
317. 13:00bonuses for for each review. Cool. Okay.
318. 13:02Okay. Well, let's dive a little bit into
319. 13:05monetization, pricing, and conversion.
320. 13:07How did you make the first dollar with
321. 13:10cashing apps? And how did you get those
322. 13:12first users? When we got our initial
323. 13:14reviews, when we started ranking for for
324. 13:17specific keywords, uh that's when we
325. 13:20introduced our monetization, we
326. 13:22introduced a subscription model. Uh
327. 13:24later on, we introduced some tiers. So,
328. 13:27like the more you use our product, the
329. 13:29the the higher price you pay. Nice. And
330. 13:32is there a kind of a strategy that you
331. 13:34think about now? Every time you go to
332. 13:36launch a new app, I always launch it for
333. 13:39free because it reduces friction of
334. 13:41installs and as soon as I start getting
335. 13:43organic installs, I grandfather all of
336. 13:46the users that already using uh our app
337. 13:48so that they wouldn't need to pay and I
338. 13:51monetize only the new users. And yeah,
339. 13:54we always uh offer free trial. That that
340. 13:57also helps. And we offer full refunds,
341. 14:00no question asked because I think the
342. 14:03risk of getting onestar review is is is
343. 14:06just is just too big. That that was
344. 14:08awesome. Uh next question is let's talk
345. 14:11about tech stack. Uh what kind of tools
346. 14:13or languages do you use to build and run
347. 14:15this business? Yeah. So languages wise I
348. 14:18I will not tell much because I'm I'm not
349. 14:20technical but uh in our organization we
350. 14:23primarily use Slack for for our
351. 14:26communication. Then for our customer
352. 14:28support we use intercom. Then we use uh
353. 14:31features.vote for gathering feature uh
354. 14:34suggestions. So every user can go to
355. 14:36that board and suggest a feature or just
356. 14:38upvote for other features that they
357. 14:41think that we need to implement. Another
358. 14:42tool that we're using is linear. Uh so
359. 14:45we we use it internally for our task
360. 14:48management. Last but not least, we use
361. 14:50Mantle. You have everything Shopify
362. 14:52related there. You you can set up
363. 14:54affiliate partnerships. Uh you you can
364. 14:57see all of the metrics uh all of the
365. 14:59funnels uh customer management and so
366. 15:02on. Since day one, our uh profitability
367. 15:05was around 90%. expenses wise, we we
368. 15:08always try to stay very very lean and
369. 15:11and I hope we will stay lean in the
370. 15:13future as well. Cool. That's amazing.
371. 15:16Let's move on to the next question. More
372. 15:18the lifestyle side of things. Can you
373. 15:19give me what the day in the life looks
374. 15:21like for you, a Shopify app developer
375. 15:24making millions of dollars per year. Uh
376. 15:26what does your typical day look like?
377. 15:28Yeah, so I get up whenever I get up. I I
378. 15:31don't set any alarms. Uh, I check my
379. 15:34emails uh while still in bed. I I scroll
380. 15:37some Twitter like probably everyone else
381. 15:39in the world. When I have my to-do list,
382. 15:42I always try to diff differentiate like
383. 15:45quick wins, something that I can do in
384. 15:47like up to 30 minutes. And all of the
385. 15:50other stuff is is is the harder stuff
386. 15:52that that I focus on later on. I I love
387. 15:55the lifestyle. I I love what I do. And I
388. 15:59don't feel like working. I I feel like
389. 16:01I'm doing something. I'm really
390. 16:03passionate about which which really
391. 16:05helps because I'm you know I'm not
392. 16:07counting time at all. That's awesome.
393. 16:08Last question that we always ask uh all
394. 16:10founders on the starter story channel.
395. 16:12What advice would you give to someone
396. 16:14looking to start their own business and
397. 16:16start their own thing online? So I think
398. 16:19that at start two people are are enough.
399. 16:22You just have a designer who does all
400. 16:25all of the product stuff. you have a
401. 16:26tech guy and and you're good to go
402. 16:29because you will be doing all of the
403. 16:31customer support yourself to know that
404. 16:34uh what your clients are struggling
405. 16:36with. And yeah, once you start getting
406. 16:38more tickets and once you start growing
407. 16:40and and and scaling your product, then
408. 16:43you can start hiring customer support
409. 16:45and then you can start, you know,
410. 16:47scaling scaling your team. And uh yeah,
411. 16:50another ad- advice I I could give is
412. 16:52probably to hang around other people
413. 16:54that are building because uh you know
414. 16:56community is is really is really helping
415. 16:59because you you get to know people you
416. 17:02can learn from their mistakes and uh
417. 17:05yeah maybe you can even you know find a
418. 17:07co-founder in those communities and and
419. 17:09so on. That's it. Thank you uh Ericos
420. 17:13for coming on the channel. Sharing your
421. 17:14business that makes millions 90% profit
422. 17:17margin is amazing and I can't wait to
423. 17:18see you hit 10 million and take it
424. 17:20further. So thanks for coming on. Thanks
425. 17:22for having me. Ericos is the perfect
426. 17:24example about how a designer and a
427. 17:26builder can turn a simple idea into
428. 17:28thousands of dollars. But that came with
429. 17:31knowing the right information. For him
430. 17:33it was about Shopify and finding the
431. 17:35right problem to solve. Well, imagine
432. 17:37there was a place that gave you this.
433. 17:38Problems to solve, blueprints for
434. 17:40building, and the marketing strategies
435. 17:42that turn simple ideas into
436. 17:44million-dollar online businesses. That's
437. 17:46what we have at Starter Story, a library
438. 17:48of over 4,000 case studies and business
439. 17:50idea breakdowns where you can access
440. 17:52this all data backed by real
441. 17:54entrepreneurs. So, if you're serious
442. 17:56about building a profitable side project
443. 17:57like Aricos, head to the link in the
444. 17:59description and we will give you 52
445. 18:01micro SASS ideas for free just like
446. 18:04Aricos so you can get started on your
447. 18:06journey. Much love and I'll see you in
448. 18:08the next one. Peace.