Bickster · B2C · small app studio
Skip paid attribution tools; use Meta's own numbers, in-house tracking and Mixpanel
What they did
In their words
How He Built an $800K ARR App Using Simple Strategies
… for apple ads because it's so easy so you know you'd have to just test the waters with your app and see what the cpas are and the volume and um you know with that but uh i would think meta or any of the social networks is the way to go these days right um as well as finding a organic you know find some of these organic people out there they're amazing and if you get a hold of them right uh i mean that's that's where to go so smiling because
that's me chris but yeah you use an mmp like app flyer no we we don't we don't use any uh we try not to use any mmp if possible we you know a lot of these networks have their self-reporting sans and self-reporting networks so we try to avoid all of that uh what's it we're small you know i think some of the bigger ones it makes a lot of sense it kind of brings all that in and you have a single dashboard and whatnot but with meta you just don't need it anymore and we have our own attribution on google and bing um you know so we don't need that um so yeah we don't we don't use it for uh anymore
the first guest to ever say bing like insane and that's a little secret another little tidbit you know try bing like it's it's like i said it's not gonna like uh you know it's not gonna build you know it's not it's not the end all but there's definitely uh your cost per clicks on bing are low right so that the cost is low so you can actually uh get volume and the volume of bing has gone up so anyway don't tell anybody don't tell anybody i won't i …
… linked up in your favorite podcast and YouTube player as well. So reach out to Chris. Say thank you for coming on. And if you got anything else, yeah, definitely do that. Chris, anything else you want to say before we say goodbye? No, this was awesome, Steve. Thank you for having me. I hope there was something in this presentation or something we both said that helped people in their business get to the next level or inspired them to keep going.
I know it's a tough road, you know, but don't give up, you know, just do what you love and keep it going. Well, Pablo, thanks you for the feedback. Thank you, Chris and Steve, for the feedback. so that's it and then we've got some questions and why everyone chris how much do you pay to amplitude or an analytics tool what other analytics tool do you use uh we we we use mix panel um but we we don't pay anything uh we have uh we do we do some we do some things yeah so so yeah we don't we don't
pay anything to to uh mix panel uh we basically we don't i don't like all their dashboards and stuff off. So we kind of did our own. Oh, love it. All right. Well, everybody says, thanks. Thank you, Dante. Thank you, PJ. We got Luis and then we got Mo. Good to see you guys as well. H just shake your head. Are we just doing a solo next week? Is that what we're doing? All right. We're going to do a solo episode with just you and me next week, but …
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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
- Set Meta ads to find buyers, not installs, and test videos at ~$500/dayInstall-to-purchase rose from ~6% to ~18-20%
- 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)
- 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: no-mmp, self-reporting-networks, in-house-dashboards