I found a successful app, made it 1% different, and now make $12K/month (STOPPR)

Found Quittr (a quit-habit app by three teenage founders) through a YouTube podcast where they said it made $200K/month after month 3. Kept its proven principles (onboarding, subscription setup) but moved it to a different niche: quitting sugar cravings, for Gen Z women (13-25), focused on France where nobody was doing it. Pricing: weekly, monthly and yearly plans, the yearly with a trial. Recommended playbook: find a very successful app, check whether it targets a specific niche and region, confirm its monthly revenue in Sensor Tower, then pick a new niche so you are not taking the original's customers.

Downloaded Quittr and screenshotted each screen to see how users move from screen 1 to 2 to 3, then prompted Cursor per screen: 'Please make the same screen with the same visual elements, with the same color, with the same image.' Made an exact copy of the onboarding because it was so good, then changed colors and niche content. Playbook version: download all of an app's screenshots in one click from sites like Mobbin or screensdesign, import the JPEGs into Figma with a plugin (about 80% of screens come out near perfect), connect Figma MCP to Cursor (cuts his 1-month MVP to about 2 weeks), and use Firebase if a backend/auth is needed.

Searched Google Trends for keywords like 'stop sugar' and saw a steady rise over 5 years. Then searched the same keywords on TikTok and Instagram and found many women influencers talking about quitting sugar. Keyword research plus content research was the validation; no pre-selling or waitlist.

Worked mainly with French influencers, since no one in France was helping women cut processed sugar. Used TopYappers, a tool that scrapes TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to find influencer profiles that have worked with other apps before, took their emails, and loaded them into lemlist for outreach. Deal terms not shared.

Started Meta ads and TikTok Spark Ads about a week before recording. Uses Spark Ads to add views to a video that is already going viral. Spend on Spark Ads about $100/month.