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my ios apps went from $600/mo to $3000/mo (5 tactics that worked) — Transcript

by Dan Kulkov · 2,625 words · 394 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00in the last three months my iOS apps
0:02went from $600 per month to $2,600 per month
0:05here are five things that changed in this video
0:08I want to share what worked for me
0:09because my portfolio went from nice
0:11a side hustle to something that can
0:13pretty comfortbly
0:14a replicate a monthly income for some people
0:17so the first thing is
0:18I did a lot of experiments with pricing
0:21initially I tried just to have weekly and annually
0:24I tried monthly and annually
0:26but the best thing that worked for me adding um
0:29lifetime plan because
0:30I think people are super tired of subscriptions
0:33and if your tool doesn't have a recurring
0:36it's a local tool you don't have account
0:38you don't need to pay for server
0:39lifetime plan might be something you should give a shot
0:42right now
0:43my current pricing is 5 dollar for a weekly plan
0:4615 dollar for a yearly plan
0:47and 19 dollar for a lifetime plan
0:49so this pricing ladder only make sense
0:51because I want to sell
0:52as many lifetime plans as possible
0:54in the first session
0:55I understand that
0:56in real world
0:57most people will not pay for my app 5 years in a row
1:00retention is different in B2C than B2B
1:02so if I can get all of money on day one
1:04and never think about any cost
1:07I think that's a good deal
1:08obviously the pricing is kind of too low
1:10and I want to make better apps
1:12and improve the existing apps
1:14so I can climb to maybe $49 per lifetime
1:18but right now it is what it is
1:19but adding lifetime plan really pushed everyday sale
1:23two weeks for me
1:24so I definitely recommend experimenting with pricing
1:28I tried
1:28adding per item pricing I tried to add
1:31bigger free trial 7 day
1:34some things I liked in those experiments
1:35some things I don't think quite worked out
1:38but this is something that I definitely
1:40think was the biggest revenue impact on my portfolio
1:44so the next thing is I did a lot of localization
1:46initially when I launched my apps
1:48I didn't even know you can do it
1:50I just had
1:50four screenshots app store metadata
1:52but then I discovered that
1:54doing localization can impact downloads
1:57at least downloads a lot so the thing is if your app
2:00you have an app
2:01let's say calorie Tracker
2:02most people will search for it in English sure
2:04but in many countries people will go and use
2:08their local language to search for this app
2:10and the thing is
2:11if you don't have these keywords in their language
2:15you will have harder time
2:17ranking for them
2:18and it's quite an easy job
2:19you can actually do most of these with cloud skill
2:23so there are multiple layers to it
2:25first you have App Store connect metadata
2:27so things like name
2:28subtitle keywords
2:29promo text description
2:31all of them can be translated
2:32to be in the language of the user
2:35for example in Italian
2:36in French in Mandarin in Japanese
2:39whatever this is the first level of localisation
2:41this is fairly simple thing to do
2:43and Cloud Code can do it even without your intervention
2:48all you need to do is just to make sure to cover as
2:50many localisations
2:52in App store as possible
2:53next step is a little bit harder
2:54next step is screenshots
2:55so with screenshots
2:57the main thing you are looking for is to
3:00localize the text that you have on a screenshot
3:02because again if your full App Store page is in German
3:05but then a person looks in the screenshots
3:07they are in English
3:08this might be just a little bit weird
3:10and I think people
3:11especially when they search and
3:14you see 10 apps you look at the screenshots first
3:16nobody reads promo text or description that much
3:19so having localized screenshots
3:21is definitely a good thing to do again
3:23it's not a hard thing to do
3:24depending on what is your current screenshot situation
3:28here's what I recommend in Figma
3:30you can create images without the text
3:33so only the background plus
3:34iPhone mockup or Apple Watch mockup
3:37and then you create a folder in which AI
3:39will just burn in the text to your screenshots
3:42so in this way
3:44you don't actually need to produce 50 screenshots
3:47AI will do it
3:48everything them themselves and again
3:50it's not that hard AI
3:51is pretty good at
3:52translating headings and just burning them in
3:55you need to probably have one test run
3:57to make sure you like the font
3:59you like the size but overall again
4:01it's pretty simple job and then you can just use
4:05cloud code to submit those screenshots to App Store
4:08to not do it yourself
4:09manual because actually App Store has an amazing API
4:13a lot of things are covered
4:14and yeah if you ask cloud code how can it do it
4:18it will tell you everything
4:19you just use a fast lane skill
4:20I think so it's kind of simple thing to do
4:22and the last level of localisation is app localisation
4:25here's the thing obviously
4:27you want to convert
4:28user in the app store to download app
4:30but then they open app
4:31and if they were under impression
4:33that your app is localized in German
4:34but they open app and it's not localized in German
4:37you might have some confusion here and
4:39for most people in for example
4:40European countries it might be OK but if you have
4:44maybe older audience um
4:45and also
4:46some people that are not that fluent in English
4:48maybe the app is really complicated in English
4:50you need to localize the app too
4:52this is a harder step
4:53since there are way more work here
4:56even if your app is not that
4:58text heavy again
4:59let's think about Calorie Tracker
5:00you obviously have buttons
5:02you have today's calorie
5:03today's protein today's fats still
5:06that's a lot of strings to translate here
5:09I definitely recommend to
5:10slow down and not to localize to all languages possible
5:13because this will be just a harder job to do
5:16I had 27 languages
5:18I think 27 or 28 right now uh
5:20that I translate each app to again
5:23I have already skills that I just use
5:25I just tell Cloud Code
5:26it's time to localize our app
5:27if I add some features I say finish localization
5:30so it finds the strings that are not translated
5:33my main tip here is to definitely
5:36make sure every string is translated
5:39because on the first run AI will miss some strings
5:42because they're not as obvious
5:43they're not just text strings
5:44they're maybe uh
5:45something that is
5:46compound from multiple things
5:47so just take a look and I definitely recommend doing it
5:50from my experience even countries Germany
5:53friends actually have a lot of people who will
5:56prioritize their native language above English
5:58at the rates that are surprising to me right
6:01and when I added
6:02a convenient way to communicate to me via email
6:06a lot of people from Germany and France
6:07what surprised me just write in their native language
6:09they don't even think that
6:11I might not be able to understand it
6:13so definitely give it a try
6:15localisation is great it will not
6:1710 x your revenue probably because
6:19for example
6:20if you add let's say Italian localisation
6:24this doesn't mean that all of these people will convert
6:27it just doesn't work this way
6:28this is just a conversion optimisation thing
6:31it's might make the app more fit for some people
6:35but still it's just a nice thing to do
6:37and a good app submission technique
6:38and the most important that for many regions
6:42if in your niche
6:43you can become No. 1 as an app because again
6:46in app store in US
6:48you have millions of calorie trackers
6:50but if you for example
6:52build an app and it's localized in let's say
6:54Slovakian
6:55you will have just more chances being in the top
6:58even if you don't have a lot of reviews
7:00and it works kind of for a lot of niches
7:02so I definitely recommend doing it
7:03the third thing that worked
7:04for me really well is apple ads
7:07so the thing with apple ads is
7:09they are really easy to start
7:11they are easy to maintain
7:13and I love them
7:13compared to Facebook or Google or TikTok
7:15they are really simple and the first campaign
7:17you can even do completely yourself
7:19from the Apple Store account
7:22and it will take you maybe
7:2310 minutes to understand what settings
7:25to set up I read a really good guide and I will
7:28leave it in the description
7:30it's really well
7:31you can again give it to cloud and it will summarize
7:33and actually
7:33apple ads have a very nice API slash MCP thing
7:38and it takes a little bit time to set it up
7:41because you need a second account
7:42but again
7:43Cloud Code can do just everything first campaign
7:46I did it myself every campaign after every change
7:49I just give feedback to Cloud Code
7:50it analyzes metrics
7:52it says let's pause this campaign
7:53this a few tips from my experience first
7:56the most important tip is
7:57only spend money on apps
8:00that can convert on a good level
8:02so for example
8:03if you have a super vitamin app and
8:05you see that you don't have a funnel right now
8:07you see that people download it and they don't convert
8:10this is not a good sign to buy more
8:13installs because they will not just convert
8:14and I tried on multiple apps
8:16I have one high performing app
8:18because it's a painkiller
8:19it's made for people who don't have
8:22who need that app
8:23they're not a want
8:24it's a need for them and it performs really well
8:27so the app impacts a lot
8:30some apps will not work in apple ads
8:32because they are vitamins second
8:34test a lot of girls because it's a very
8:38easy thing to just go and buy apple ads for
8:41United States but the bid there might be crazy
8:46and you will just not have the unit economy to
8:49you know
8:49pull it off because it's so expensive to get an install
8:52and the competition is insane
8:53for me what worked really well
8:55a lot of European countries
8:57the best one is Germany and like Netherlands
8:59France even United Kingdom is not
9:01because it's still too expensive
9:03so definitely you know
9:05look
9:05the guide gives a lot of good tips how to approach it
9:09and yeah I recommend trying apple ads
9:12it might not work but here is the thing
9:14if all you do is App Store optimization
9:17Apple ads might be a good fit
9:19because for apps that are ranking well OK
9:21you need apple ads
9:23they are already ranking in the top five
9:25top 10
9:25but if you build an app and it's you know 40
9:28it's a good idea to push it with apple ads
9:31get installs get reviews
9:33this will push your App Store optimization too
9:35so yeah definitely recommended
9:37I wanted to do some ads but I'm always um
9:40you ads
9:40TikTok ads
9:41because they take just too much time to maintain
9:44a lot of time of creative
9:45yeah and ads
9:46from my experience also are not that expensive
9:48and it's hard to spend all the money because again
9:52in some countries it's just not that many people search
9:56but you can be the app they click
9:59so that's really good
10:00the fourth thing is really important
10:02I improved a lot of my apps
10:03so I actually built a bunch of new apps in that period
10:07they didn't perform as well
10:08but going back and improving apps
10:10really changed a lot of things for me
10:12and I think it's really important
10:13especially if you're vibe coding apps
10:15it's
10:15it be very tempting to just launch an app and
10:17you know forget about this
10:19but it's really important to go back and think okay
10:22how I make it better
10:23and when you think about how can I make it better
10:25this is multiple level question
10:26how can I make onboarding better
10:27how can I make the you know
10:30session better
10:31how can I improve the retention of my apps
10:33it really helped me to have those
10:35you know don't like something
10:36write an email a lot of people write these emails
10:39and I just ship what people mention
10:41if they don't like UI if they find some logic wrong
10:44I just ship these updates also
10:45I think you know
10:46improve the app
10:47from my kind of now
10:49a few things really is a good idea to focus on
10:53so first is making it easy to start using the app
10:58you know
10:59easy it is to add something to track start
11:02um the session
11:03whatever
11:03trying to make it as easy as possible is really good
11:07second is and this is my experiment right now
11:09I'm trying to add you know
11:11achievements to make it
11:12make the tracking more fun
11:14so yeah you of just want to go back to app
11:17because you have those
11:18you know you want to hit
11:19you can go beyond streaks
11:21streaks is level 1 of you know
11:22so that's also important and yeah
11:24definitely improving
11:25uh UI that you use in on boarding
11:27these are all super important things
11:28so improving apps really help me and you know
11:32for example
11:33I launch them and they didn't perform
11:36then I found a problem that one user said and you know
11:41really change how app performs
11:43because it was actually a major
11:45pain point for everyone
11:46I just didn't understand it and the final one final
11:48just be a little bit patient with it
11:50especially if you kinda
11:52build with app store optimization in your head
11:54you know takes time to uh rank
11:57you just need um
11:58you really rush
11:59the audience to search more for your app
12:02and you know patient about this
12:04and not quitting was really good
12:06because when I launched six months ago
12:08my first app it didn't make as much money
12:11you know want and it like
12:12kind a lot for a long time
12:14like 0 then I was taken up
12:15it was more successful so anyway
12:17just being patient
12:18just not quitting not having you know oh
12:20I need to do something else no
12:22just try to do you know have free time OK
12:25do localisation OK
12:26you can try apple ads campaign on some country
12:29you can improve apps go study on boarding
12:32but just waiting if you have already signals
12:35that the app is making money
12:37you know play long term
12:39because you do absolute optimization
12:40you know patient is really a good tip
12:42and it worked for me for sure um
12:44it me to be more calm and not
12:46you know the situation
12:47because obviously when you build apps and you look at
12:50you know month it's not good
12:51but if you don't quit at some point you will see more
12:54you know
12:54that's
12:55that's a conclusion that I got from this experience
12:57so this is my situation right now
13:00my apps currently I kind of stuck at around 3K and
13:05you know a summer period
13:06so it doesn't really help that much to me
13:08but I'm doing a lot of things to try to scale to 5K
13:11it's not
13:11not net 5K obviously because I have apple ads
13:15but I do only for one app
13:16hopefully I will be able to
13:18I have more painkiller apps
13:20but still I'm very with the progress
13:22and hopefully
13:23I will share more updates about the revenue
13:25in next videos

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