A habit tracker app · B2C · guest's own app
Set a target cost per customer on TikTok ads and let it scale spend
Spend jumped from $200 to ~$1K/day; revenue $5K to ~$10K/month in a week
Workedpaid-social
What they did
Turn on goal-based budget increase with a target cost per acquisition ('I want customers at price X'). TikTok then controls spend: instead of manual increases every few days, it raises the budget automatically for as long as the ads hit the target CPA.
What happened
His inflection point: daily spend went from about $200 to about $1K and revenue went from ~$5K to ~$10K/month in about a week.
- Stage
- scale
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
“So, part three, and this is the real uh, inflection point for me, was I used goal-based budget increase, and I set a target cost per acquisition.”
“If your ads hit that target CPA, it will just keep increasing the spend. And this is where the real snowball effect happened.”
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
- 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
- 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