A habit tracker app · B2C · guest's own app
Remake viral videos from your niche as TikTok ads with ~$50 each
Started the hockey-stick growth from ~$5K toward ~$10K/month
Workedpaid-social
What they did
Scroll TikTok in your niche, find videos that already went viral organically and remake them yourself. He ran five formats, one post each (five ads total), with about $50 of spend per ad. Keep ads running if they convert or are only slightly unprofitable, since early on the ad account needs signal to learn whom to target (lose money on the account, not on the app); stop ads that are very unprofitable. Decide up front how much you are willing to lose to find a winner.
What happened
TikTok ads brought the hockey-stick growth from ~$5K to ~$10K/month, combined with budget scaling and target CPA.
- Stage
- growth
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
“I found videos that had already gone viral organically, and I remade them myself.”
“I gave each of those posts about $50 of ad spend, and if they got conversions by the TikTok ads, or if they were a little bit unprofitable, I just kept running the ads.”
“So, if you can loss-lead on the account, not loss-lead on your app, if you can make if you can be unprofitable to gather signals for the targeting of the algorithms, I generally think that's kind of a good way to go.”
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
- Bid on your big competitors' names as exact-match Apple Ads keywordsHis breakthrough channel; took the app from $0 to ~$5K/month
- 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
- 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