Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app
Test creators beyond fitness: moms, comedy, and fitness sub-niches
Mixed: some moms profitable at $10 CPM; comedy got views but low intent
Mixedinfluencerpositioning-niche
What they did
Split fitness into sub-niches: bodybuilders, gym bros, women's fitness, weight loss. Then tested mom influencers (expensive because they know they convert), and comedy/viral creators (e.g. the 'no door, no problem' drive-thru guy, signed to scan fries at McDonald's). Some niches only needed one video or one creator.
What happened
Some mom influencers were profitable at ~$10 CPM, others weren't; comedy videos got cheap views but low-intent audiences.
“So obviously we had fitness. We would kind of break that down into a couple of different niches, so it would be like bodybuilders, uh kind of like the gym bro niche, then we would have like women's fitness, and then we would have weight loss creators.”
“We tested a lot of mom influencers. Some of them did incredible, and were profitable at like a $10 CPM, and some influencers didn't do so well.”
“Like the CPM would be great, uh, because like some of the videos would blow up, but it's just not a hyper-focused niche.”
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All 84 Cal AI tactics- Pay $350-450 for four posts plus view bonuses that stop at 1M viewsKeeps the upside of viral hits; founder gives no numbers
- Price a creator on the average of their 5 worst of 20 recent videosMost deal videos land nearer the mean, so the rest is profit
- Ask creators to cross-post on both platforms as a casual, no-big-deal extraCreators accept most of the time; founder's claim, no numbers
- Pay creators a base rate plus view bonuses, capped at about 1M viewsViews past the cap come free; founder's reasoning, no numbers
- Match download spikes to each creator post early on to learn what convertsEach early video showed as a spike (e.g. 100 to 200 downloads an hour)
- Run a short ad with a one-line hook, the app in use, then the store linkAd has run about four months, which the host reads as a winner
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