Cardstock · B2C · sports card scanner app
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
Workedugc-creatorscreator-opsorganic-short-video
What they did
Once the tips-slideshow format was proven in-house, they loaded it into Nois: 38 hook images, ~230 body images with captions, and a set of pre-written text hooks. Nois auto-generates a slideshow for each creator, who posts it on their own account; Nois handles attribution and payouts. The brand pays ~$1-2 CPM and Nois keeps half. Most posts get few views, but the volume adds up. The dashboard breaks results down by text hook and image, so the best hooks are visible. Nois put them in a Slack channel with advice. Earlier they tried paying creators CPM directly (a campaign on Growe, hiring via Sideshift, DMing people on TikTok) with a Google Drive of photos and pre-made hooks.
What happened
~7,600-8,000 posts in the last month and 9,000+ total; $2,600 paid for the views shown, about $1 CPM. Kyle calls it the biggest thing they've done recently to grow both apps. Individual posts rarely pass 10-20K views.
- Stage
- scale
- Effort
- ~2 months, ~$2,600 in creator pay
In their words
The Superwall Podcast · Kyle Fowler - How I make $42k/mo passively with simple no-code apps (copy me)“the biggest thing we've done recently to grow Scanemon and Cardstock is uh via this platform called Nois, which is uh a platform for like distribution, and you allows you to like run slideshows and stuff. Pay creators to post.”
“So, you pay the creators like $1 CPM or whatever, or $2 CPM, and then Nois takes half of the CPM and the other half goes to creators.”
“Like we have in here, and you go in here, and you can see like there's 38 images in here. Like, these are the images they pull for the hook.”
“we've generated like 8,000, like 7,600 posts in the last month.”
“'Cause we've also been trying to bring on creators to post slideshows and pay them CPM directly, and like a campaign on Growe, and then they just like pull from our Google Drive and take the photos and make a slideshow and then post it.”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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: Hire a friend to figure out TikTok with you before paying an agencyFriend became the de facto CMO; knew enough to spot a good UGC agency later
- 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