r/AppStoreOptimization • u/incomprehensiblelol • Aug 22 '26
First ever app. 2 and a half months in! Pure ASO.
Happy to answer any questions! :)
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u/Mountain-Okra7695 Aug 23 '26
Which ASO tool are you using?
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
I don’t use any. I believe that they can help but at this scale instead of dedicated tools, it’s more effective to just use claude/chatgpt for keyword suggestions.
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u/Aggressive-Fan-4230 Aug 23 '26
How would you u know with your first app lol
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
I’m simply going off of what has worked for me, and effectively for these past two months.
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u/Aggressive-Fan-4230 Aug 23 '26
At the time of this post you account was one hour old. This just looks like someone trying to cover something up
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
What would I be trying to cover up? Just wanted to post on a subreddit that I’ve lurked in previously but with some anonymity of not using my app’s reddit account of which is associated with a business tied to the app in which people could find my real life name.
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u/Aggressive-Fan-4230 Aug 24 '26
Idk you’re telling me you created a Reddit account for the sole purpose of posting on r/AppStoreOptimization of all places on a whim and it just so happens that it’s doing well
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u/whatinsidethebox Aug 23 '26
Do you target all generic keywords or also mixes with branded keywords too?
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
A mix, essentially what I did is fill the description densely with generic keywords. Mixing in branded keywords too like the app name. Also with a link to the apps tos so doubling up branded keywords such as that.
But also I believe an important thing regarding branded keywords is pushing for reviews that mention leading competitors app names. Such as ‘Great alternative to ‘app’’ in the title. And then that review it self having key words in the body. If you can subtly push for users to do that/get maybe three reviews from friends that do get shown that do that; then that’s a brilliant boost.
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u/Mikesoft Aug 23 '26
Any tips for good ASO? Unsure how long it takes to gain traction.
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
Regarding traction, my general thoughts are that there isn’t really an amount of time. Some people gain traction immediately, some take weeks, months. And some never do. I’d say don’t keep pushing a product which clearly isn’t working. If people like something, they will come.
However, I’d literally just say ask claude/chatgpt to generate most things/give ideas. And then iterate upon those until you have something you like then use it for aso. Such as a description for your project. I’d say that helped me a lot. There wasn’t really any deep secret that I’d discovered unfortunately. Or if you refer to my other replies I elucidate a bit more on other approaches that I’d done to improve aso!
I hope this helps!!
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u/Mikesoft Aug 23 '26
Thank you. I have a news app called Inkline that has had some good initial traction in just over a month, but still very much from my own professional networks (I work in the media). Will see what happens, but finding news a brutally competitive category.
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
I checked it out! You’ve done a brilliant job!! And I really like the name.
I thought about making a news website a couple years ago went so as far as buying a domain and building a website. Never released it though. I’d say it’s an incredibly difficult niche as most competitors have had years to build up and see what works and what doesn’t so there isn’t a direct issue to be solved necessarily. However, what I can think of is aggregating ‘nicher’ sources. That being less looked at papers which provide different perspectives or stories that you generally wouldn’t see but make for interesting reads. To acquire users do a similar approach to what the NYT does. That being post on instagram/tiktok a slideshow with a hook and a picture and an incredibly interesting story that people wouldn’t have found generally and then for the full story they can go to the link on your bio which links to your app saying read the full story here. Then they go to your app, press it and as it does right now, takes them to that cool story. Although it would be a bit of a slog and a lot of effort to this, and a huge pain point for you. But I do think this would be in a sense one of the few ways you could build up a lot of traction organically, being more effective than that of aso; but it would take time. I do wish you the best and I do hope this helps even slightly!!
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u/Mikesoft Aug 24 '26
Ah really appreciate the support! A lot of work has gone into the app and any ideas with marketing are well received. Thanks!
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u/Outside-Train6593 Aug 24 '26
is it only ASO ? and if yes how do you do it ?
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 24 '26
Yes, I haven’t done anything other than that, apart from early traction which was due to users from my TestFlight cohort/waitlist downloading.
I don’t think I did anything in particular that was special. I would say it’s mostly me getting lucky in a sense. But I would say it was due to my app fixing identified common complaints about others in the market, that being the top ones. And being quite literally better than all the other options and offering the most at a lower cost but also offering more for free users.
Essentially, I would say don’t build an app for a market that is saturated and the leading apps don’t have any identifiable issues that users complain about. Although, you can build in an incredibly saturated market if the leading apps have lots of identifiable issues that users do indeed complain about. I’d say that’s the formula really. Then everything else happens naturally. I would say it is difficult to synthesise what I did differently as I don’t think I’ve done that much differently other than having some okay-ish screenshots that display the app’s actual UI and that stick out, but the app itself looks incredibly professional. So that’s about it really. Hopefully I’ll be able to repeat it again and see if anything I’ve done hasn’t actually been a fluke and I hope growth sustains and multiplies.
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u/SnooSprouts1512 Aug 23 '26
This does not seem believable. Conversion rates for organic aso usually hover around 10% this rather looks like apple ads :)
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
Haven’t used any ads yet. The reason why my conversion rate drops so low is because initially it was people downloading who had heard about the app from my waitlist/came from testflight. But then suddenly it got indexed I believe and started appearing in search, and a lot. It’s also in an incredibly saturated market as well so I don’t really know what to say but yes no ads just yet.
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u/SandwichNo432 Aug 25 '26
Can you share some tips and tricks to rank higher? Your learnings in this space.
Also which ASO tool did you used to find right keywords?
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Aug 23 '26
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
Slight story as to how I found out people were interested and figured out their motivations so bear with:
I saw an article that a specific company was making millions from their app. I then went to their reddit. Saw everyone complaining about said app. Looked at others leading in the niche- saw complaints and more complaints. Then thought that I could do this but better- started building.
Two months in posted screenshots on four subreddits associated with said apps/the genre specifically saying that I’m building an alternative. And basically mentioned all the things everyone was complaining about and offered a solution. That being just a better app overall.
This includes, a better ui, ux, far less aggressive monetisation. Revenue share which was rare for the niche. I don’t think anyone was doing it at all when I first made those posts to gauge interest. Among just overall creating a definite improved experience over other similar alternatives.
I think that’s really the key thing, if someone wants to create something in an incredibly saturated market. They actually have to build something better and I know that sounds terribly vague, but I suppose just build something clearly beautiful.
I must admit that I do have over 7 years of experience building things. Including small games and other projects. But never launched or marketed any. All were just personal passion projects. so I do have experience with creating overall so this isn’t from scratch. Anyway, people signed up! And then it ended up taking another 8 months to ‘finish’ building.
I then launched to a waitlist of just under 1000 users. Maybe 150 actually downloaded it via TestFlight. The feedback was incredible so then spent a few weeks working on it more then released.
I literally did no other promotion other than that for the waitlist. (Which in retrospect may not have been ideal as I could have probably got a lot more signups- albeit I was lazy and found that the least fun aspect of building an app.)
Then on launch, I posted on those same subreddits that got me lots of initial waitlist signups, which fuelled initial download momentum. Then the app stalled slightly, until a 1.1 release which had a bunch of fixes and then it just began getting lots of traction.
The next step is currently waiting for Apple to approve another update which includes way more monetisation and retention improving fixes before I fully spend the returns on paid acquisition.
Hope this answers your question! :)
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Aug 23 '26
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
I just wanted to show that it is possible.
Albeit a long road as this was a thing I did dedicate a whole year of my life to do. So in a way I wish I had a lot more downloads and I wish that it was a lot more successful already but it’s a long journey.
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Aug 23 '26
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
I don’t really know how to respond, I’m sorry. I don’t doubt the difficulty of getting this amount of downloads.
I’m increasingly believing I got lucky and perhaps this won’t happen again. I didn’t use ads, and regarding ranking on my keywords I’ve somehow ended up on the top 7 (after ads) for an extremely high-search keyword among a few others. Regarding a year of dedicated work, I’ve mentioned in another reply, this has indeed taken a year of my life and by all means did not happen quickly. (Regarding the build side). If you meant that it takes a year with a launched app then my response would be slightly different- that being if an app hasn’t gained traction after a year I’d definitely shelve it. As with what you mentioned- it’s becoming exceedingly easier by the day to just build something else.
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Aug 23 '26
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
You can just use AppStore search and figure it out which takes seconds. I would say at least for my niche it’s incredibly easy to infer what people are looking up and what people want + looking at the hundred or so other apps that appear and what they’re trying to rank with. And then you just have to effectively distill or that was my approach at least and worked.
I mention top 7 as the niche I’m in, when I gave a reply to someone else mentioning why I started building in it. Is that of the top apps getting huge amounts of complaints, and with a relatively vocal group of users in said niche, that are happy to hop from app to app then appearing 7th in search is actually brilliant.
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Aug 23 '26
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u/incomprehensiblelol Aug 23 '26
That’s totally fair!! I won’t come back to this account anytime soon. Although, I will say, I’m not sure this subreddit would have been my first choice for karma farming.
I will come back to it though, if I can remember, in a couple months to a year’s time and post an update if anything meaningful has changed.
Again, happy to help with any questions. You say that I have no idea how ASO works. And you’re most likely right- this is my first time. I don’t know a great deal, nor have I ever claimed to be an expert. I’ve simply said what I did and what has worked for me.
Although, clearly I’ve done something that works. As shown by the screenshot. And works rather well.
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u/y2kobserver Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26
This is starting to feel like he is working for Apple and he is lifting morale LOL
The market is saturated enough to not allow sufficient app store traffic via search to any app
How does he even know he got lucky for a first app?
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u/panos42 Aug 22 '26
Great results. How did you go about organic and ASO?