An AI Bible study app · B2C · Bickster app
Set Meta ads to find buyers, not installs, and test videos at ~$500/day
Install-to-purchase rose from ~6% to ~18-20%
What they did
What happened
In their words
How He Built an $800K ARR App Using Simple Strategies
… things, right? You know, make sure that's solid rock solid, right? That took us a while to dial that in with all the meta. There's not a good, there's not really good documentation with meta for developers to be honest. It's really bad and it's old anyways. sorry if there's any many people out there but um but we figured it out with them tried to get some videos up but anyways yeah yeah we honed it in anyways so you have you know your campaign
structure you gotta make sure that's right um you know and then it's creative like you know i mean everybody knows now it's all about the creative is your your your targeting now it helps there's no like hey i'm gonna target you know 50 year old or blah blah blah no it's your creative that tells made up meta what to target right so the creative is so so important um you know and purchase campaigns you got to go after purchases right you don't go after installs you go up to purchases yeah you gotta go and it costs a little more but you're gonna get more learn it's all about learning and then iterating right and we've gone you know from you know like six percent
conversion rates we're up to like 18 20 purchase rates installed purchase rates yeah on meta right So you've got to get the creative locked in. You've got to iterate on it. And with AI now generating creatives, there's no excuse to kind of keep trying. A buddy of mine has seen very similar, and he has the same philosophy as you, Chris. No trial. He has a couple of offers, but no trial. And he's saying like 18%, 20% just pay rate from Meta.
So a couple of other questions. Attribution for Meta? Are you just using the Meta SDK or using something else? Yeah, AEM, you know, we don't use scan or scat. Oh, God, that's I hate it. We try to avoid that at all costs. Because the cost, you know, you got to get 100 installs. It's silly. So we use the AEM, we use the Meta SDK, right? You know, for all the attribution and just set it up. And we don't even worry about the ATT prompt. Meta has solved that. They know how to
fix it. They don't need it. They don't need it. Yeah, they don't need it now, which is awesome you know it's off about you know we've measured about 15 to 20 percent installs and purchases it's off by if you look at the app store connect console because app store connect console will tell you everything coming from meta right you just can't feed that information back into meta which you know it's another problem apples itself but you know you you …
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More from this episode
- Turn a $5.99 paid app into a free download with a subscriptionRevenue jumped from ~$200/day to ~$2,000/day overnight
- Sell lifetime access instead of subscriptions unless the app has real running costsWorks well across their apps; subscriptions drew complaints on one
- Offer $59.99 lifetime or $39.99/year with a 3-day trial on a closable paywall~6% of installs buy; best revenue per 1,000 users of the variants tested
- Keep installs about half organic, half paid; fund only channels returning 2-3xOn track for ~110K MRR
- Use Apple Search Ads only if the cost per install fits your numbersBest paid channel for this app; too pricey for many of their others
- Run Google and Bing search ads and feed sales back to them every nightTwo of the three main paid channels; Bing small but profitable
- Test a one-screen landing page against sending search clicks straight to the App StoreDepends on the app; no general rule
- Test lifetime prices from $4.99 up to $49.99 at fixed ad spend to find the ceiling$29.99 beat $49.99 on day-one revenue; a later $39.99 now beats $29.99
- Build quick AI-coded versions of several app ideas; keep the one that sells
- Spin off an AI Bible app for chat users who asked religious questionsSold at $29.99 lifetime with little effort; ads near break-even
- Launch with a hard paywall, one offer and no free trialOne offer gave the clearest pricing lessons
- Test with exact-keyword Apple Search Ads, then scale on MetaMeta converted even better than Apple Search Ads
- Title the App Store page with plain search terms and put the brand last
- Test app icons first, including wildly different versionsGuest says icons move conversion most; no numbers
- Test dropping the onboarding screens entirelyNo onboarding won in several apps; even one welcome screen hurt
- Use Adapty to change prices and paywalls without an app update
- Show one offer on the paywall with a 'view all plans' link
- Lay out paywall plans side by side instead of stacked~2 points higher conversion (guest unsure of the exact number)
- Skip paid attribution tools; use Meta's own numbers, in-house tracking and Mixpanel
- Put a hard paywall with one lifetime price on an app ranking in search
- Run Meta ads at ~$150/day for a fitness app for people 65+Nobody bought after $3-5K; buyers came from App Store search
Tags: meta, purchase-optimization, aem, meta-sdk, no-skan, creative, creative-testing