Cardstock · B2C · sports card scanner app
Hire a friend to figure out TikTok with you before paying an agency
Friend became the de facto CMO; knew enough to spot a good UGC agency later
Workedteam-processorganic-short-video
What they did
Instead of hiring an agency or an experienced TikToker, Kyle hired his friend Jacob, then working at Wendy's, to make videos. They sat down daily: Jacob made videos, Kyle gave feedback and suggestions, and Kyle wrote his repeated feedback into a strategy doc used as a checklist. They learned from Twitter and Consumer Club but chose to solve it themselves first. Later a second friend, Pack, joined. Kyle's reasoning: you have to learn enough to recognize someone great, and a bootstrapped company can't afford a wrong $5-10K agency bet.
What happened
Jacob now knows the channel better than Kyle and trains others; when they started talking to a UGC agency, Kyle could tell quickly that it solved the problems they had hit.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
The Superwall Podcast · Kyle Fowler - How I make $42k/mo passively with simple no-code apps (copy me)“I saw at some point it was like you have to learn enough of how to do something yourself in order to recognize someone great at it.”
“But yeah, we would just sit down every day and he'd be like, "Okay, I'm making these videos," and I'd be like, "Okay, these are my thoughts and why this is good, this is bad. Like, could we try this?"”
“I couldn't hire an agency. I couldn't afford I couldn't afford to make the wrong choice hiring an agency.”
Related topics
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More from Cardstock
All 16 Cardstock tactics- Rebuild your working app for a nearby hobby, built in a day with AI$17K MRR and 3,400 subscribers in a year; more new customers a month than the original
- Build the app you wanted for your own hobby when the App Store has noneGrew into ~$75K MRR over six years
- Give creators TikTok slideshow templates to post and pay them by viewsFounder calls it their biggest success; no numbers given
- Bring in friends for a three-way revenue split and teach them to codeTeam of three grew to five; revenue from a few hundred a month to ~$1.5M a year
- Post on Reddit when the app is finishedFirst downloads came almost immediately; no numbers
More from this episode
- Cardstock: Post your app idea in the hobby's subreddit before building it10-15 people said they'd use it; later drove launch downloads
- Cardstock: Announce the launch in the same subreddit, linking your earlier idea post12 paid downloads (~$60) on launch day
- Cardstock: Make the app free to download and charge $5 a month instead of $4.99 onceBiggest revenue jump ever; growth took off from the 2021 switch
- Cardstock: Spend two weeks on keyword research, then put the best terms in your title#1 for 'baseball card scanner' for 2-3 years; ~$9-10K MRR with no marketing
- Cardstock: Post brand-style TikToks (memes, silent pack openings) on the app's accountFirst videos got ~23 likes; viral ones brought no downloads without the app on screen
- Cardstock: Film a valuable card, scan it with the app in hand, then reveal its priceFirst one hit 184K views; became the repeatable format behind the TikTok growth
- Cardstock: Show the paywall at first open, with a small hidden XMost subscriptions came from this first paywall, before people used the app
- Cardstock: Switch to a hard paywallRevenue reached ~$30K/month (alongside a Christmas TikTok spike)
- Scanemon: Put the app's name on the scanner screen so every video shows itFounder thinks it lifts conversion; no data yet
- Scanemon: Post card-collecting tips slideshows from an account with an AI-made girl avatarSeveral posts over 100K views; the format then scaled through paid creators
- Cardstock: Pay creators about $1 per 1,000 views to post your slideshow template~7,600 posts in a month for $2,600, about $1 CPM; biggest recent growth driver