GTM Sauce

A niche subscription app · B2C · App Masters client

Name your new app after a keyword with ~30 searches that nobody uses in their title

#1 in week one, 100 downloads a day, $1,600 first month, ~$20K MRR years later

Workedasopositioning-nichevalidation

What they did

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.

What happened

Ranked #1 within the first week, ~100 downloads/day, $1,600 in the first month; grew to $12-15K MRR on ASO alone with a couple of keywords, now close to $20K MRR.
Stage
launch

In their words

Steve Young - Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026

Play from 15:14

Steve Young… stuff, which this is your unique advantage, right? And for me, yeah, that's the article that I was like, "Hey, I love this," and I kind of took inspiration off of that into the slide that I put. And I gave you credit, bro. But I it was a great article, dude. Like you you did an amazing job of that. And for me, it's just different, right? Like I use a different tool. You use SpyTok, I use Appfollow, that was a great tool, right now ASO Mobile.

15:14

Steve YoungSo when I see an app like this, like Migraine Tracker or Migraine Buddy, and I'm like, "Oh, [laughter] shit, let me go into ASO Mobile, see put that key put that app in there." And then ASO Mobile, unlike other ASO tools, will give me all the keywords that it indexes for. And I can just see, okay, great, it's indexing for these keywords. Okay, how much volume does it have? So I'm looking for keyword volume, the search volume, for around 30-ish and up. So that's where I feel like one of the clients we launched with, we used this exact approach and I was like, "Dude, do you want to call your app this?" Because I found a keyword that I felt like I could rank for, and it was search traffic around 30, two keywords. Think Superwall one word and Superwall two words. And I was like, "Do you want to call your app that?" He's like, "Okay, let's do it."

15:56

Steve YoungAnd so we did, and we were able to get to number one within the first week. And then after that, you know, we brought in $1,600 within the first month. It's now close to 20k MRR a few years later. And now he's starting to do, but we were able to get it to about 12, 15 with just ASO, with just like a couple of keywords, and that was it. If you're trying to build a six-figure business, you can do that with ASO. To get to like a seven-figure, it's a little bit harder. I think for me, I feel like, okay, I use ASO to just sort of figure out and that it something's here. Joseph, this is what I wanted to riff with you on, cuz I think a lot of people talk about Meta and ads, and not enough about like the economics behind it. Cuz I talk to a lot of people, and a lot of people are just like break-even.

16:40

Steve YoungSo a lot of people, they can share their MRR, but like what is their profit? Like I almost feel like people share their MRR and their ROAS at the same time. I get it, but I've heard really from people who are doing amazing MRR, but their ROAS is just like 100%, which is break-even for those who aren't math nerds. So I've heard from those, or just slightly under at 90%, but you know, they're so proud of their MRR and they're sharing it on social …

Get tactics like this every Monday

New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.

More from this episode

Tags: app-store, keyword-in-title, keyword-first, app-naming