Lotanna Ezeike - He Built a Simple $120k/Yr App, Then Sold It For Multiple 6 Figures!

Noticed the screen-time/focus trend (Opal, One Sec, Screens), downloaded One Sec and saw it just makes you breathe for 3 seconds before opening Instagram yet makes ~$100K/month. Rebuilt the same mechanic for the faith niche he already worked in: block apps and make the user pray to unlock them. It was the only listing for 'Bible focus' at launch.

Worked with an agency running 10-12 TikTok accounts, testing different hooks. Optimized for comments and engagement ('comment farming'). Chose a shock-factor angle that felt like the opposite of religion itself; early comments were 'why would you do this?' before shifting to 'I really needed this app'. Made 20-30 videos on the winning angle. Pick the one emotion you want viewers to feel after each video.

Invest in a nice splash animation (Praycreen's halo coming up) and use it in content. In each video show three things: the splash screen for half a second to a second (branding), the core action (the prayer screen), then the congratulations screen ('you've done your first prayer'). Skip onboarding entirely in the TikTok. Toxic Traits did the same: splash page, screenshot upload, then an example results page.

Chose songs strategically: very Christian songs that the target audience recognizes, so viewers comment things like 'I love this song'.

After TikTok organic, ran Meta ads on Instagram using creatives that had already performed organically. Reasoning: on TikTok you don't control who sees a video, so if a general audience engages, the video itself is strong; putting spend behind it and targeting the exact audience you want should give very low CPIs. One organic video (out of 20-30 on the same angle) was repurposed and ended up taking ~70% of spend.

Install-to-paid conversion was unremarkable (~2.5% as an example), meaning 97.5% of paid installs were being turned away. Because 60% of users were still praying 4 times a day at day 30, they added a free version funded by ads: users watch an interstitial ad before each prayer, about 4 ads per user per day.

BibleBuddy first ran as a WhatsApp bot (a therapist/journal chat that relates your message to a Bible chapter) before becoming an app. The WhatsApp Business API charged about $0.02 per conversation window.

Committed Christians tend to follow a favorite celebrity pastor, so following one is a good signal. Listed the top 20-25 most famous pastors, found their Twitter/X accounts, and targeted their followers with Twitter ads (the option is now called follower look-alike). Guest thinks few other platforms offer this (maybe Facebook for pages).

BibleBuddy monetized with banner ads and did not use interstitial ads; the guest was hesitant to monetize Christianity at all.

After a friend's multilingual ChatGPT copy made ~$500K a month, he committed to wrapping the next AI release fast. When Suno announced AI music, he built Magic Music within 4 days despite Suno having no API, and emailed Suno's founder asking for legitimate access to more songs.

Video captions like 'Looks like a big red flag to me. What do you say, girls?' over a screenshot that doesn't clearly look like a red flag (e.g. 'You demand respect, but you haven't done anything to earn it'), so people argue with each other in the comments. Then the splash page, a screenshot upload, and an example (not real) results page. A second format was talking-head: 'I didn't think twice. I immediately send this text to an AI. Look at the result it gave me', then the scan.

Tweeted about Praycreen (his audience knew he'd sold apps before; the app was easy to explain). Several buyers DMed. Sold to a buyer who had talked to him about BibleBuddy ~1.5-2 years earlier. His rule: since 90%+ of deals fall through, take even the third-highest price if that buyer can close in 4-5 days. Offer a 1-2 month transition/advising period to sweeten the deal. Show 3+ months of consistent revenue.

He never localizes his apps into other languages himself. When selling, he frames the app as 'this content already works and we haven't tried X, Y, Z', giving the buyer clear levers; buyers typically localize first, since everyone competes for the US while other markets are large.

Rather than chasing a million-ARR hit, repeatedly build apps to around $5-10K MRR (or ~$100K ARR), sell them, and use the cash, skills and buyer/investor relationships for bigger swings. Build for cash flow, not legacy, and decide which before you start.

A Viral App Founders member (Sean) dropped an ambitious AI social app idea on the guest's advice and built CarSpotr, a Pokémon-style car photo collecting app, promoting it with only one TikTok account and one Instagram account.