A health and fitness app · B2C · guest's recent acquisition
Target 24 more versions of the keyword you already rank #1 for, and cut Apple Ads
What they did
- Stage
- post-acquisition
In their words
Steve Young - Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026
Joseph ChoiAnd are these two organic App Store Search, or paid search?
Steve YoungNo, it's all organic. Yeah, this is primarily organic. We're doing a little bit of paid. Here, this one that we just purchased, I'm spending about 5,000. I'm I'm lowering it. So last month I spent about 10,000 on Apple Ads, and this month I want to lower that, because I found that ASO, there's a lot of keywords that I can still go after, so I'm actually going to I'm scaling down Apple Ads and scaling up ASO. Because, again, this is a niche that no one's paying attention to, and so when I'm when I'm talking about ASO and the way I approach ASO is like, I'm not trying to compete with everybody. I'm trying to be in the corner, Joseph, and be like, "Nobody pay attention to me," type of thing.
Joseph ChoiYou know what this reminds me of? You know how people compare consumer apps to dropshipping? Because the marketing is similar, right? Like because building is so easy now, you can just market your app on ads and TikTok, and it's like similar to dropshipping. The way that you're talking about it right now with ASO is almost like Amazon FBA. This is a deep cut. I don't know if people are into internet marketing and stuff, but Amazon FBA is all …
Steve Young… the way the the way I'm approaching this, but the analogy would be like, oh, there's blue noise, there's purple noise, there's all these other noises that I can go after that have search volume. So I'm using data. I'm looking at the spreadsheet right now for the app that I just acquired and I'm like, "Wow, there's like" I just sorted it by the main keyword that uh we're already number one for, but like also that word is has different iteration.
Steve YoungThere's 24 keywords that have at least 24 search volume and up. That's 24 keywords with the main green already in there that I can start to go after, and nobody Not a lot of people are paying attention to it. So my approach is, instead of like diluting this, why don't we just keep moving this and calling everything green, blah, blah, blah?
Joseph ChoiHere's another analogy, like Migraine Buddy: Track Headache. This, in a way, has three different keywords, right? Cuz it's like migraine, which is the main one, Buddy is their brand, Migraine Buddy, and then track, right? Cuz like some people might be searching migraine tracking, and then headache is like another keyword, right?
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More from this episode
- Buy an app that ranks #1 but charges $2, then add a $60/year hard paywallRevenue up from $1-2K to $8-10K a month with the same downloads
- Remove the X from the paywall so users must start a trialTrial starts doubled from 6% to 13%; trial-to-paid unchanged; some one-star reviews
- 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
- Pick keywords where the top 3 apps have few reviews and lack the keyword in their titleUsed to launch and buy apps that reached #1; no pooled numbers
- Name the app after the keyword and use the App Store autocomplete phrase as subtitleReached #1 for 'green noise'; still #3 with little upkeep
- Buy a profitable app with a 10-year loan and pay it back from the app's profitMoney back in 3-4 months on one purchase; example leaves ~$5K a month after loan payments
- Buy apps that already get organic downloads but earn too little or skip a channelBest buys fit this; one $18K purchase without it flopped
- Try Meta ads on a small organic app, including a hard paywallOnly ~$1 revenue per install; economics didn't work
- Send Meta sign-up, paywall-view and checkout events while still optimizing for purchasesGuest says the ad account got smarter; no numbers
- Show paid Instagram and Facebook users a paywall with no X; let organic users close itReported to perform a lot better; no numbers shared
- Switch from a closable paywall with no trial to a hard paywall with a free trialPerformed a little better; no numbers
- Launch a good-enough app, and only finish it if downloads show upSpeaker's standing process; no numbers
- Rank for a niche keyword first, then climb to broader onesOutranked Canva on a keyword
- Build just the viral feature as a TestFlight and let creators film it
Tags: app-store, apple-search-ads, keyword-variants, budget-shift, long-title