How App Masters grows

A/B tested the sign-in button copy 'Sign up with [Apple/Google]' vs 'Continue with [Apple/Google]'.

Across several of the host's utility apps, set plans to $5/week, $20/year and $30 lifetime, copying a prior guest's (Chris) finding that $29.99 is the best lifetime price. Results promised later.

Form a keyword hypothesis: choose 6-10 focus keywords and optimize the title and subtitle for them in both the US English and Spanish (Mexico) localizations. Early after launch, revisit and update metadata almost every two weeks to test the hypothesis. He mentions extra undisclosed 'hacks' reserved for his community.

Target a reporter who just joined the publication (e.g. at TechCrunch). Spend 2-3 minutes on their profile, LinkedIn and X: greet them in their native language via Google Translate, mention a personal detail (e.g. their switch from engineer to reporter), then pitch. Subject line: 'Exclusive to <first name>'. It won't rescue a weak product but gets the email read.

The App Store shows the three most 'helpful' reviews first. Pick a five-star review (ideally one containing the right keywords), then get many friends to long press (formerly 3D Touch) it and tap 'helpful', pushing it into the top three shown on the listing.

Onboarding asks male or female. The paywall shows a single, static testimonial (not a scrolling carousel) from someone of the same gender. The team also A/B tested testimonials vs ratings (rating count/average) in a case study.

Build a good-enough version with standard onboarding and a hard paywall and put it live. No downloads -> stop, don't build features or tune monetization. Downloads -> aim for 5-10% trial starts; if trial-to-paid is below the 30-40% industry average, it's a product problem, not a channel problem, so finish the product.

1) Pick a category with high revenue per install from the RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps report (Health & Fitness, Education, Business). 2) Find a big app that expanded from one core offer into many 'tentacles' (Calm: meditation -> sleep stories, soundscapes, focus, music, green noise). 3) The big app can only rank for its brand and core keyword, so pick one tentacle keyword with search volume (App Masters used green noise) and build a whole product around it. 4) Publish many apps: only about 10-20% will hit, a few become big and the rest stay small.

Before building, check the keyword: if the top apps all have it in their title and huge rating counts (e.g. 'meditation': Calm, Headspace, Insight Timer with ~1M ratings), skip it. Pick keywords where #1 is reachable quickly, build the app, rank #1 to find early product-market fit, then scale with Meta.

Of the extra localizations that the US storefront indexes, only use Spanish (Mexico) for additional US keywords; Arabic, Vietnamese, Korean and others haven't done much better. Brazil (Portuguese) or Vietnamese only if you already have traction there.

App Masters has a couple of developers vibe-code apps with AI, publishes them, pushes ASO to see if there is traction, and treats refund requests as feedback: people were willing to pay, so ask them why it didn't live up to their standards and fix that, instead of building internally. (Guest disagreed: prefers a private TestFlight with friends or a Facebook group to save marketing costs.)

In 2015, App Masters bought App Store reviews that included the keywords the app wanted to rank for. Stopped because Google suspends apps for it and Apple has gotten better at detecting it; Steve now tells people not to do it. Big companies still buy reviews in volume.

To avoid paying for traffic, Steve builds new apps around organic keyword downloads: look at categories where App Masters has seen the highest conversion rates (mental health, health & fitness), build painkillers rather than vitamins, and find keywords few competitors are paying attention to.

App Masters clients A/B test onboarding with and without animation. No details on which animations, which screens or test size.

For ~3 years (2023-2025) scaled an Android-only subscription app with paid media run with App Masters, mainly Google Ads; later added Apple Search Ads and Meta after the iOS launch. Standard D2C formula: paid media, individual user, trial to purchase, subscription, retain.

Use people (a smiling person or couple) in screenshots; Steve does this on his own apps.

On plan tap, open a web checkout outside the app (Safari page, like Flo Period Tracker does) or pop up a Stripe payment link.

A/B testing icons for one of the host's newer apps, prompted by Sign Panda users citing the icon and a prior guest (Chris) stressing icons.