Steve Young - Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026

Couldn't outrank an app for a keyword wanted for a client, downloaded it and saw it was undermonetized: #1 for two keywords with ~28 and ~34 search volume, 100-150 downloads/day, one-time $2-3 price, no onboarding paywall. Benchmarked price on a similar client app doing ~$1M ARR at $60/year. Bought it (2022), added onboarding and a paywall (mid-May), went fully hard paywall with a trial at $60/year in June. No new features and no extra downloads.

Same app, same downloads: compared the paywall with a close (X) button against a hard paywall with no X. Watch trial-to-paid: if it holds while trial starts double, the hard paywall wins. Recommended at launch to force a product-market-fit test; exit-intent offers can mimic a soft paywall.

Found a keyword (two variants, one word and two words, each ~30 search volume) that no competitor used in its title, based on an owned app ranking #1 for similar-volume keywords at 100-150 downloads/day. Asked a client with a new app idea to name the app exactly that keyword. Launched with no free trial.

Start from categories with high revenue per install and 'painkiller' niches (green noise, migraine tracker vs meditation). Search a broad term and look for an app ranking high with few ratings (e.g. #3 with 138 reviews); put it into ASO Mobile to list every keyword it indexes for. Target keywords with search volume ~30+ where few top apps have the keyword in their title and the #2-#3 apps have only ~100+ reviews, ignoring tool difficulty scores. Check Sensor Tower/Meta Ad Library to confirm the outlier isn't driven by ads. Find the keyword first, then build the app.

Title: 'Green Noise App'. Subtitle: 'Green Noise for Better Sleep', the App Store autofill suggestion for 'green noise'. Keyword field: 'green,noise,app,free'. Aimed at every autofill variant of the main term (green noise free, free green noise, green noise for better sleep). Done quickly at launch without deeper optimization.

For a newly bought ~$500K/year app already #1 for its main keyword, exported keyword data and filtered by the main term: 24 variants with search volume >= 24 (analogy: green noise -> blue noise, purple noise). Keep adding them to the title/subtitle instead of diluting into unrelated terms (like 'Migraine Buddy: Track Headache' adding chronic pain, triggers). Cut Apple Ads from ~$10K to ~$5K/month to shift effort to ASO. Next: test Meta aimed at an older audience.

Rather than paying cash, take a loan for the purchase price. Illustration: an app making $10K/month profit bought for $350K on a 10-year loan with ~$5K/month payments leaves ~$5K/month profit; price is earned back in ~3 years with 7 more years of loan term. Only buy apps with organic distribution built in, so profit doesn't depend on continued ad spend. Used for Indie App Santa (2024) even though they had the cash.

Criteria: distribution (preferably organic, not paid) already built in, plus room to grow via monetization or new channels. Recent ~$500K/year buy: more keywords to target and no Meta yet for an older audience. Avoid apps that depend on paid ads ('a money-eating machine').

App making ~$3K/month, all organic. Tried Meta ads and also tried a hard paywall to lift revenue per install.

Registration before the paywall. Pixel standard events: CompleteRegistration at sign-up, ViewContent mapped to paywall view, InitiateCheckout, then Purchase (no trial). Campaign still optimizes for purchase. Borrowed from e-commerce.

Use the 'Where did you hear about us?' onboarding answer (also a backup to the MMP) or the Superwall + Apphud attribution integration. App Store search or friend referral -> soft paywall with X to avoid one-star reviews; Instagram/Facebook -> hard paywall. Steve's extension: use other onboarding answers (e.g. professional vs personal use) to pick hard vs soft paywall or a higher price.

Launched with a soft paywall and no trial, which converted because the niche was narrow; then switched to a hard paywall (no X) with a trial. Speaker says trials usually beat no trial in his apps.

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.

Client app first targeted a niche keyword Canva couldn't focus on, then moved up to bigger keywords.

Find viral videos with SpyTok, build a TestFlight with only the feature that looks good on camera, hand it to a creator to film (two phones: one recording, one showing the app). If videos go viral while the app isn't live yet, demand is validated.