The Superwall Podcast · 2025-11-25
Phoenix Do - Copy This Strategy, It'll Blow Up Your App
Phoenix Do explains how Copia, a manifesting app built from a viral ChatGPT 'day in your dream life' trend, grew mostly on organic TikTok/Instagram: a deadline-hook affirmation format with a phone-screen demo (10M-view video), studying big info-product creators for formats, paying 50K-250K-follower creators at ~$1 CPM, 40 UGC creators via SideShift, a 'crash out' button slideshow (12-13M views), an Astronomer-CEO meme account, and an onboarding rebuild that took paywall reach from ~50% to 85-90%.
Play the episode10 tactics
Numbers mentioned
| Subject | Metric | Value | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copia | downloads Mostly from organic TikTok | 100K downloads approximate | “How did you get 100k downloads on your app?” |
| Copia | mrr Stated only in the host intro and episode description | USD 25K approximate | “Phoenix has built apps in the manifesting and self-help space, with his latest hitting 25k MRR and 100k downloads.” |
| aggregateTikTok videos of women posting reactions to the ChatGPT 'day in your dream life' prompt | views | 10M–20M viewsper video approximate | “I've saw 10, 20-million-view videos of girls just posting their like reactions to the prompt” |
| Copia | views Chloe's deadline-hook affirmation video with phone-screen demo, Instagram | 10M viewsper video approximate | “Chloe, who I'm working on the app with, she got a video on I think Instagram like herself that did like 10 million views” |
| Copia | views Affirmation video that only name-dropped Copia, without the demo | 6.6M viewsper video | “Here's one that had 6.6 million. Okay, that actually didn't have the hook and demo” |
| Copia | downloads Guest's estimate of downloads lost on the 6.6M-view video by skipping the demo | +-20–-30% estimate | “We've gotten like 20, 30% almost downloads than we could have.” |
| personSarah Purl, manifesting creator who sells courses and books | followers Instagram; also 2.5M on TikTok, built over ~2.5 years of repeating the affirmation format | 1M followers approximate | “she did this for like two and a half years, got a million followers on Instagram, two and a half million followers on TikTok.” |
| personSarah Purl, manifesting creator who sells courses and books | followers TikTok | 2.5M followers approximate | “she did this for like two and a half years, got a million followers on Instagram, two and a half million followers on TikTok.” |
| personSarah Purl, manifesting creator who sells courses and books | count Copies of her affirmations book sold by repeating 'Repeat these affirmations for the next seven days' content | 100K copies approximate | “she sold like a 100,000 copies of her book literally just saying like, "Repeat these affirmations for the next seven days."” |
| benchmarkFollower count of creators to study for monetizable niches and formats | followers | 500K–1M followers approximate | “I would probably aim for that like 500,000-plus follower, probably like a million to look and see like, what products are they selling?” |
| Copia | followers TikTok follower range of the paid creators they targeted | 50K–250K followersper creator approximate | “I would start out going to people in that like 50k like 250k range in terms of TikTok following. I mean, that's what we did.” |
| benchmarkTarget CPM when paying small creators for an early-stage app | cpm | USD 1 goal | “Ideally, you should be aiming for like a $1 like CPM. You can up that as you go along” |
| Copia | conversion rate Install -> paywall view, original 4-screen onboarding | 50–55% approximate | “So I remember when we first started out, our install to paywall rate was like 50, 55%.” |
| Copia | conversion rate Paywall -> trial start; guest calls it a decent standard | 15–20% approximate | “We had about like a 15 to 20% conversion from like paywall to trial, which is like a decent standard.” |
| Copia | conversion rate Install -> paywall after expanding onboarding (up from 50-60%); guest says it doubled conversion | 85–90% approximate | “added in some social proof, onboarding video, a couple questions along the way, and then that got us from 50 to 60% to 85 to 90%.” |
| Copia | count Good UGC creators hired through the SideShift marketplace | 10–20 creators approximate | “So we used platforms like SideShift, a great UGC marketplace to be able to like hire creators like really quickly. That got us about 10, 20 people that were actually really good.” |
| Copia | count Peak number of UGC creators and college ambassadors posting at once | 40 creators approximate | “but when you have 40 creators or when we were at 40 creators, like there's also room to A/B test.” |
| Copia | views Two-slide TikTok slideshow about the 'crash out' button; host reads 13M | 12M viewsper video approximate | “We had one video that got like 12 million views because of that. It was like a slide show.” |
| Copia | downloads From the crash-out slideshow (read by host alongside 13M views) | 10K–15K downloadsper video approximate | “13 million views, 10 to 15k downloads from one, just two slides on TikTok.” |
| Copia | followers Meme account posing as the Astronomer CEO's daughter | 200K followers approximate | “So there's account that got 200,000 followers, I think like 50 million views in like a matter of like a week.” |
| Copia | views Meme account total views in about a week | 50M views/week estimate | “So there's account that got 200,000 followers, I think like 50 million views in like a matter of like a week.” |
| Copia | views Meme account's Copia product-placement video | 5M viewsper video approximate | “That video got like 5 million views and everyone was like, "Yeah, like get the bag.” |
| Copia | downloads From the 5M-view meme-account product placement | a couple thousand estimate | “That video that had 5 million views though only probably drove like a couple thousand downloads.” |
| benchmarkROAS to reach on one paid channel before expanding to others | roas | 2–3 x goal | “you should really try and focus on dominating like one funnel, one niche, try to get that 2, 3x ROAS first.” |