Post up to 150 videos a day to test one hook, then tweak the winners daily

AnWhat we do to understand what is the right thing to build, or what is the right thing to scale, is go into TikTok and locate three things. First one is V: viral. Has this format, has this kind of content, has this pain point, has it gone viral before? What we mean by virality is has it hit over 100,000 views on multiple pieces of similar content from accounts under 5,000 followers?

AnNow, you'll ask me like, "Ankit, why is 5,000 important, you know? Why could it not be coming from an account with a million followers?" It's because when it's under 5,000 followers, the content goes viral not because of that account's reach, but because of the content itself. Second is scalability. You need to grind, man. You need to put out volume. It's a volume game. It's about how much can you put out, how much can you understand what's working, what's not. At one point, we were putting out 150 pieces every day to test a single hook. And for this volume, I always say pick something that can be scaled. Can you produce 100 of these without burning out? How? Either you use AI-generated content, which has become incredible. You look at Kling 3.0 videos, you look at Seedance videos. The kind of content that's been created is really close to realistic videos. Or, the second thing we also did is we hired UGC out of Eastern European countries and Russia, and it was literally $1 for a 60-second video. You go on a channel like kwork.ru, and it's like the Fiverr of Russia, and you can find this UGC for this cheaper price.

AnThen the third, which is the most important: convertibility. You can go viral on social media by taking a format that's already working and creating another video like that. But if it doesn't convert for your product, it's not worth anything. How do you determine this? When you're trying to find the right kind of content, you go on the content and you see the comments. If it's promoting a product, are people asking for the product? Are they …

An… starts from here, where we're tracking what is happening with the account: Is it on warm-up phase one, two, is it paused, is it healthy, unhealthy, stop, blocked, et cetera? Then we switch to understanding what channel is it on: Does it have TikTok only? Does it have TikTok and Lemon8? Does it have TikTok and Instagram? So, as you can see, Pat, some of them have reactions, some of them have slideshows, some of them have other kind of content.

AnMy team goes in every single day and they track how many views are we getting on the videos, how many likes are there, and then they leave notes in the comments on what is working, what is not working. Why? Because this helps us understand what part of the video performed well, what would should we try to replicate today, what should we not try to replicate today. Another cool spreadsheet we have is where we track the hooks and how they're performing individually. Based on this, if this is working, then we'll iterate on it the next day and the next day and the next day by changing small wordings or putting the placement differently. One of the secrets we had is we were having a woman who was reacting on the camera. We discovered that if we put the text right on her neckline, so not on her face, right on her neckline, the video performed the best for some reason, right? This is something we discovered after putting it out every single day.

Pat WallsAll right, well, I love this spreadsheet, and if you're cool with it, I'm going to put it as a link in the description that anybody watching this can download this template for free if they want to do the same thing and implement the VSC framework and track all of their content. So, I will put that down there in the description if you're okay with it, and you can download it right now for free.

Pat WallsOkay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing that. Last question that we ask all founders who come onto Starter Story: If you could go back in time before you build this app, what advice would you have for anyone that's watching this who wants to build an app that makes $10,000 a month?

AnI would say the biggest thing would be, if you want to make sure your app makes money and it's not just sitting on your phone, you need to employ systems in place. People chase virality, they believe that I need to create the right kind of content. No, you need to create enough content. Make more content, push out more volume, understand what's working, what's not working, what's working, double down on it, create more of it.

Pat WallsWell, that's awesome. Great advice, An. Super cool story, super cool framework. Thank you for coming on and sharing. I think people will find it useful.