A habit tracker app · B2C · guest's own app
Bid on your big competitors' names as exact-match Apple Ads keywords
His breakthrough channel; took the app from $0 to ~$5K/month
Workedapple-search-ads
What they did
Start with Apple's $100 free credit; no big budget needed. Create the campaign with Search Match turned off and exact-match keywords only, using the names of your big competitors (e.g. searches for Duolingo show your app as the ad). Start at Apple's recommended max bid and give it at least 2 days. If it still isn't spending after a couple of days, someone is outbidding you, so raise the bid to match.
What happened
Guest calls Apple Ads his breakthrough; the host summarizes the $0 to ~$5K/month stage as pretty much all Apple Ads.
- Stage
- launch
“So, the marketing, I got started with Apple Ads. This was my breakthrough, um, on the app. You get $100 free to start.”
“We're going to turn Search Match off and use the exact keywords only. And the keywords are going to be the names of your big competitors.”
“If it's still not spending at all after a couple of days, it means that someone else is bidding more than you, and so you need to increase your bid in order to match theirs.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Rebuild an app you saw broken down on X, with better design and missing featuresOrdinary habit tracker reached ~$10K/month; guest credits the premium design
- Fill your onboarding with images restyled from Pinterest using an AI image toolGuest says images make the app feel more engaging; no numbers
- Mock up every screen in Figma before asking AI to build the appGuest says the agent can one-shot screens instead of many iterations
- After launch, keep testing your paywall and price options
- Polish your App Store screenshots before running search ads, since they are the adPart of the Apple Ads setup that reached ~$5K/month; no separate numbers
- Each morning, give AI your ad and sales exports and ask for the best performersDaily routine behind his Apple and TikTok ad decisions; no separate numbers
- Remake viral videos from your niche as TikTok ads with ~$50 eachStarted the hockey-stick growth from ~$5K toward ~$10K/month
- Raise budgets on winning ads by at most 20% every few daysKept winners running before switching to target CPA; no separate numbers
- Set a target cost per customer on TikTok ads and let it scale spendSpend jumped from $200 to ~$1K/day; revenue $5K to ~$10K/month in a week
- Check every morning that ads pay back on the first purchase after feesNot profitable for the first couple of weeks; ~30% margin on paid ads now
- Share your app-building journey openly on XHost says it got him noticed and featured; no revenue tied to it