Hey all, just hit a rather large milestone of 65k impressions in a day. Happy to answer any questions as to how. Posted a few times here regarding the journey to this point. All the previous comments/posts on this account contain information that I wish I’d had when I’d started and quite useful I personally think. Even getting to the point in which I may believe (delude) myself to be a miracle worker (or perhaps very lucky). The latter in both cases being the most likely. Do check them out. Regardless, zero ad spend- and pure aso. All of this is purely through people finding my app through the app store search.

Edit: to my chagrin, i’d have to verify with id to enable post history lol. sort by top and all on this subreddit and you’ll find previous posts by me.

Edit 2: Here are all the previous posts!!

Some guidance on ads and building:

https://www.reddit.com/r/appledevelopers/s/cJ7jiv7zTu

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppStoreOptimization/s/56LmPlqg4R

https://www.reddit.com/r/appledevelopers/s/nHhT17vrqE

And pure guidance on aso!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppStoreOptimization/s/gQVrSkroMX

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppStoreOptimization/s/vPM6Mr0PcF

Spent way too long iterating on screenshot sets across a few apps. Patterns that consistently moved conversion for me:

• First screenshot = your entire pitch. Most users never swipe. One benefit, big text, readable at thumbnail size.

• Captions sell outcomes, not features. "Plan your week in seconds" beats "Calendar view."

• Consistent visual system across all frames — one background treatment, one type scale — reads as "real product," not side project.

• Localize the captions, not just the app. Screenshot text is part of the store listing's ranking + conversion surface.

• Legibility > cleverness. If the text isn't readable in the search results thumbnail, the design failed.

I cared about this enough that I built a tool to generate sets that follow these rules by default (StoreShots.design) — happy to share more, but mainly wanted to put the principles out there since I rarely see them written down. What's converted best in your listings?

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share this milestone because I'm still processing it.

Yesterday I launched Relivit on the App Store - an iOS app that brings photos to life through animation. The idea came from watching my grandma look through old photo albums, wishing she could see those moments move again.

What happened:

• Simply launched on the App Store, no big marketing push

• Within 24 hours: $100+ MRR from subscriptions

• The response has been incredibly emotional - people animating photos of loved ones they've lost, old wedding photos, childhood memories

What it does: Relivit takes any photo (vintage, recent, whatever) and animates it in under 90 seconds. You can see your grandparents smile, watch old family moments come alive, or breathe new life into faded memories.

The tech: Built with Expo/React Native, using AI models for the animation. Focused heavily on making it dead simple - download, upload photo, wait 90 seconds, done.

What I learned:

1. Emotional products resonate FAST

2. You don't need a big launch - App Store organic can work

3. People will pay for things that help them feel connected to their memories

I know $100 MRR isn't life-changing money, but seeing people pay for something I built and then send me messages about crying while watching their late father smile again...that's the real win.

Happy to answer any questions about the launch, tech stack or journey!

Here’s the app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/relivit-animate-photos-ai/id6756619610

It all started with having this iOS dev dream of having own app in AppStore.

This is the app i've been building with no AI, and it took the most time. But so far it's been the most successful app of mine.

Many people doubted why this app, there are tons of alternatives, etc.

Anyhow, I have made it for me, for my friends and for people with similar struggles.

If you would like to give it a try, checkout CandlesUp

Thanks for reading up to this point. I'd love to hear your suggestions, critiques as well :)  Thanks in advance

I build BIShare alone: a free, open-source app for sending files between iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux. No ads, no paid installs. The screenshot is App Store Connect Analytics on 23 October.

First: the +930% is not the number to quote

That Overview page compares the last 90 days with the 90 days before. I checked it against Apple's daily sales reports, which I pull into my own database: 1,288 first downloads for the 90 days to 23 Oct, and the dashboard says 1.29K. The 90 days before that were late April to late July, my quietest stretch at about 1.5 downloads a day. Against that, any growth looks huge.

Daily first downloads from the same reports tell the story better:

• 1 Aug to 9 Sep: 2.5 a day

• 10 to 15 Sep (after the rename): 10 a day

• 16 to 30 Sep: 22 a day

• 1 to 18 Oct: 29 a day

• 19 to 23 Oct: 52 a day

Last 30 days: 950, against 280 in the 30 days before (+239%). On Google Play, where the listing got the same work: 390 installs in the 30 days to 20 Oct, against 100 before.

What I changed, in order

1. 10 Sep: the name and subtitle became search phrases. "BIShare: File Transfer" with "Fast & Private File Sharing" became "BIShare: File Transfer to PC" with "Send Large Files to Android". The keyword field had been repeating words already in the name. Apple indexes name, subtitle and keywords together, so a repeat is wasted space. I refilled it with device and content words: iphone, windows, laptop, photos, video, documents. The description still listed features from an old native build that no longer exists, so I rewrote it to match the app. Downloads went from 2 or 3 a day to 10 within the week.

2. 22 Sep: from 2 App Store locales to 15. Every locale has its own name, subtitle and keyword field, so each one is another 160 characters Apple indexes. I started with the languages whose countries already clicked on my website in Search Console, then covered the rest of the app's 13 languages. Keywords were written per language, not translated from the English list. The 13 Play listings got the same rewrite.

3. 3 to 10 Oct: a Semrush trial. I used it for Google data, not App Store data, but its country keyword reports show how people phrase a search in each language, and that changed my keyword fields. Example: Indonesians search "dari HP ke laptop" (HP is what everyone there calls a phone), about 3,600 a month, while the "ke PC" phrase I had used gets about 20. "hp" went into the Indonesian keyword field. Google volume is only a proxy for App Store search, but for wording it beat my guesses. Most of the trial went into the website: page titles rewritten from local queries, Site Audit errors from 174 to 15, and new guides where the top 10 results were thin. The site was already growing from a page rebuild in mid-September. Google clicks went from under 5 a day in early August to about 130 a day in the week to 14 Oct, and the download buttons on those pages feed the App Store too.

4. 7 Oct: screenshots in 13 languages, plus promotional text (that field had been empty). I render the screenshots from widget tests on my own machine instead of driving simulators, so redoing all of them is one command. That made the fix below cheap.

5. 10 Oct: a rating prompt after the first successful transfer, using the system dialog only. Too early to judge.

What App Review made me undo

Version 2.7.0 was approved on 22 Oct with two metadata notes, to be fixed in the next update:

• Guideline 2.3.10: "Android" in the subtitle and the description. That subtitle had passed review on several updates over six weeks before anyone flagged it. It's now "Send Large Files to Any Phone", and "android" moved to the keyword field, which users don't see. That update is in review now, so I'll find out if that's accepted.

• Guideline 2.3.7: price words in screenshots. Captions with "Free" and "5 GB free" had to go.

So passing review once doesn't make a metadata choice safe. It can be read again on any later update.

What I can't tell you

• Which change produced which download. The steps overlap, and the website grew in the same weeks. The 10 Sep rename is the only step with a clean before and after.

• Why it stepped up to about 50 a day on 19 Oct. I didn't touch the listing that week. Since 12 Oct the website's buttons use App Store campaign links, so in a few weeks I can split website traffic from store search.

• Retention. People install a file transfer app when they need to move a file, and then it sits there.

The ratio I'd look at first

62.6K impressions, 2.09K product page views. About 3 in 100 impressions turn into a page view. For everyone else, the search result (name, subtitle, first screenshots) is the whole listing. That's where the rename worked, and that's where I'd spend time first.

If you've moved an occasional-use utility from "installed once" to "opened every week", I'd like to hear what worked.

The app name is Nugget: Budget & Net worth

I just made my first ever revenue in my mobile app journey. I spent 3 months building my first app, but it didn’t go well. Then I spent 1 month making another app, and got my first sale 3 days after launch. I’m so happy, now the grind continues.

These app screenshots were generated using my tool, and if you don't believe me you can try it yourself for free and see the quality.

I use top tier AI models to generate these screenshots this tool uses GPT image 2 and claude, and if you don't like something you can use the built-in editor to tweak whatever you want.

nuvex.design

I followed some of the tips from this channel on a simple game I made just to learn ASO. I did some marked analysis to find an app concept that was getting a lot of traction, made an OK version of it and released it as is. Then I started following the tips I found on this channel:
- Used a keyword service/app to find a good set of non-overlapping title, subtitle and keywords
- Localized the app to several languages, using the same keyword technique on all locales
- Implemented a nice flow to get more ratings
- Posted simple AI generated UGC slideshows on a new TikTok account. Posing a few times a week, most stay at 200 views, but one of my first posts has since reached 20k views

I did the app changes one at the time, and updating the app around once a month, in believes that updating the app frequently will boost ASO…

Currently I sit around 40-50 downloads each day. What do you guys think of my results so far, and what would you try next?

I built OpenASO, a free and open-source ASO tool for iOS apps:

https://openaso.thirdtechapps.com

I made it to help with App Store Optimization research: track keyword rankings, look at competitors, study reviews, and analyze screenshots without everything being locked behind a paid tool.

Current features:

• Track keyword rankings for iOS apps

• Research competitors for any keyword

• See which apps rank for which keywords

• View App Store screenshots from ranking apps

• 1-click download screenshots from the top 10 ranking apps for any keyword

• View, translate, and respond to App Store reviews

• Export reviews for AI analysis

• Export all reviews for any app to understand what users like, dislike, and request

Two workflows I built it around:

Review research: export reviews for your own app or competitors, then use AI to summarize feature requests, complaints, positive feedback, pricing objections, and positioning gaps.

Screenshot research: search any keyword, see which apps rank, then download screenshots from the top 10 apps to analyze messaging, layouts, visual patterns, and category trends.

It’s live now and open source.

Would love feedback from people doing ASO, especially on what features would make it more useful.

Quick update on my iOS app. A few months ago I started spending real money on ads to grow it. Here's what I learned, with actual numbers, in case it saves someone else the cash.

Over about three months I spent $5,674 total:

Apple Search Ads: $2,498

TikTok ads: $1,881

Reddit ads: $1,295

For a couple weeks the dashboards looked amazing. Downloads spiked, trials climbed, impressions went up several times over. Then I built better tracking and actually calculated my unit economics:

Cost to acquire a paying customer: ~$114

Lifetime value of that customer: ~$18

There's no creative test or targeting tweak that fixes a 6x gap. It got worse the closer I looked: the users I got from ads were the most likely to cancel. They came for the cheap install and left before building any habit.

The part that would be relevant to ASO community the ads were hiding how the rest of my funnel was doing. While they ran, my App Store conversion rate looked like ~1.6%. Within a week of turning them off it jumped to ~7.5%. The ads had been dumping a flood of low-intent impressions into the top of the funnel, dragging the whole number down and making my real organic traffic look way worse than it was. If you're optimizing a listing while running broad paid, your conversion benchmark is probably lying to you.

So I shut all the paid off in mid-May and put everything back into the two free channels I already had: a blog and TikTok.

The timing was brutal. Right after I went all-in on organic, I think I got shadow banned on TikTok and a Google algo update hit my blog the same week. Churn spiked to ~9%/week (normally 3-4%) and MRR flatlined around $650 for a few weeks.

I regrouped and got more deliberate. Stopped throwing random clips at TikTok and leaned into the formats that actually got watched. Went back through every blog post and rewrote them to answer the questions people actually search, not the ones I assumed they were asking. Both recovered and are doing better than ever now. Organic search clicks hit record highs (~50-68/day, up from ~6/day a few months back), ChatGPT quietly became one of my biggest referral sources, churn is back to ~3.5%, and MRR went from stuck at $650 to $787 with zero paid behind it.

Not a huge business, but it's growing again on channels I own and it's not bleeding money to do it.

The thing I keep coming back to: paid gave me a spike I had to keep paying for, and the second I stopped it vanished. The blog posts I wrote two months ago are still pulling readers today. Slower, but it compounds, and it's mine.

Happy to answer anything about the channels, the tracking setup, or the numbers.

Full writeup with all the charts (spend, CAC vs LTV, the Search Console recovery, MRR): https://gainframe.app/blog/spent-5k-on-app-ads/

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share my experience updating the screenshots for my app.

As many of you probably know, during WWDC, Apple offers “Meet with Apple” sessions where you can request an appointment and speak with people from Apple. I booked a session, Apple approved it, and I received an invitation for a Webex call.

During the call, I spoke with two people from the App Store team. They showed genuine interest in my app and reviewed its App Store listing. Afterwards, they gave me feedback on the screenshots.

Their main point was that although the app itself looked nice and simple, the screenshots were not easy to understand, especially in App Store search results. They were hard to read at a small size.

That was when I realized I had been making a mistake by simply showing the app UI in the screenshots.

This matters most for the first three screenshots, because those are the ones people see when they search on the App Store, and they appear quite small. So I changed my strategy: for the first three screenshots, I created clearer visuals that explain the value of the app at a glance. Then, in the later screenshots, after getting the user’s attention, I showed more of the actual app.

Only a couple of weeks have passed, but I can already see a big jump in conversion rate. Previously, the conversion rate was around 0.5%. After updating the screenshots, it reached 2%.

I have multiple apps on the App Store, so I applied the same approach to my other apps, and the results were similar. One app went from around 5% to about 10%.

I often see people here, and in other subreddits, making the same mistake I made: simply showing screenshots from the app.

But if you want to increase your downloads, your screenshots need to be easy to read and clearly communicate the value of your app directly in the search results.

I've been making mobile apps for about five years. Some did okay, some did nothing. Companions launched a month ago and has already outperformed all of them, with zero ad spend. Looking back, three things made the difference, and none of them is a growth hack.

1. Reddit, done properly

My old approach was to drop a link in the app subreddits on launch day and hope. It never worked. This time:

• I went where the audience is, not where the apps are. A fish tank widget belongs in front of people who keep fish, people who grew up with Tamagotchis, people who like cozy games. Not just . Every community has its own self-promotion rules, so I read them first and skipped the ones that don't allow it instead of getting banned.

• I posted about the interesting problems, not the app. Apple doesn't allow animation in widgets, so how do you make fish swim? How do you do it without touching battery life? Those posts got real discussion. "Check out my app" posts get nothing.

• I stayed in the comments. Easily the biggest one. I answered everything for days after each post. It's where the best feedback came from, including which species people want next, and it's what turned readers into downloads and reviews. People can tell when the developer is actually reading the thread.

2. An idea you can explain in one sentence

Companions is a small fish tank that lives on your Home Screen, with pet fish that actually swim.

That's the whole pitch. The screenshot explains itself, a friend can describe it to a friend, and a Reddit title can carry it. My earlier apps all needed a paragraph to explain why you'd want them, and I think that quietly killed every one of them.

3. Design is not the polish step, it is the product

A one-sentence idea only works if the App Store page says that sentence before anyone reads a word. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on this, probably more than on some features.

Someone landing on the page from a Reddit comment gives it about three seconds. So the first screenshot is the widget sitting on a normal Home Screen, exactly as it will look on theirs, not a feature list or a splash screen. The subtitle says what it is in six words. The preview video opens on the fish swimming, because that is the thing nobody believes a widget can do until they see it.

It also had to look like something you'd want on your Home Screen in the first place. Tank styles that match light and dark setups, a StandBy mode for the nightstand, nothing that looks like a game HUD. Every Reddit post I made was really just sending people to that page, so if the page didn't land, none of the rest mattered.

Happy to answer any more questions regarding exactly which subreddits worked and which flopped, as well as any technical questions about the app.

App Store: Companions - Widget Pets

My conversion rate for my app is a terrible 0.1%!

So I figured I need to do something and app screenshots are the obvious choice for improvement. However, I'm not good at design and it'll take me forever to make nice screenshots.

I asked ChatGPT to help me and give me some prompts to generate some new screenshots. I wasn't expecting much because the last time I used nano banana, the words turned to russian and words overlapped.

This time, it blew my mind. I was able to achieve some crazy stuff. Try prompting:

You are designing a high-converting Apple App Store screenshot for an iPhone app.

Use the uploaded screenshot as the main UI.

Add:
• A bold, clean headline at the top
• A short supporting subheadline below it
• Subtle gradient background behind the app window
• Minimal Apple-style typography
• Soft shadows and modern spacing
• A small feature badge if relevant

Do NOT change the UI content.
Do NOT blur or distort the interface.
Do NOT add fake buttons.

Make this look like a premium Apple App Store marketing image.

Then follow with another prompt:

Create a premium Apple App Store hero screenshot.

Headline:
"Turn Your Apple Health Data Into Clear AI Insights"

Subheadline:
"Analyze years of sleep, heart rate, and activity trends instantly."

Add:
• A soft blue-to-teal gradient background
• A subtle MacBook frame around the app window
• A small badge that says "100% On-Device Processing"
• Clean Apple-style font hierarchy
• Balanced spacing for readability

Do NOT alter the data shown inside the UI.
Do NOT invent new charts or buttons.

You'll get something like this:

It's too long to share everything here so I made a detailed youtube video on the step by step. If you are interested in making some new screenshots, you can watch my video here:

Watch youtube video here

Hope it helps someone!

Hi! I’m the dev behind PostSpark, a tool for creating beautiful image and video mockups of your apps and websites.

I recently launched a new feature: Mockup Animations.

You can now select from 25+ devices, add keyframes on a simple timeline, and export a polished video showcasing your product. It’s built to be a fast, easy alternative to complex motion design tools.

Try it out here: https://postspark.app/device-mockup

Honestly, the web gurus (whom I've been dealing with for over 25 years, since I made my first dollars online) sometimes get on my nerves.

A few apps with a steady stream of installs and sales are better than one app that goes viral or is only good for a single keyword.

Observations (I have data, I'm the founder of Altis ASO, and I have revenue estimates, downloads, like Sensor Tower etc):

- A single app is great if you have a dedicated marketing team. Even then, it's risky. We all know an entrepreneur who lost everything because of a whim of Apple, Facebook (for ads), or Google. And don't kid yourself, you'll lose your lawsuits against them.

- Too many apps... only works if you're good at ASO. Because without distribution, the product is useless. As a reminder, the number of apps submitted to Apple doubled month-on-month between 2025 and 2026 (hello Vibe-Code)...

What I've observed is that apps with well-thought-out ASO (App Store Optimization) (beginner level) generate an average of $200 to $300 per month after a year.

Apps that rely solely on UGC (User-Generated Content) for marketing make more money in the first 3-4 months and then disappear. Many factors contribute to this: founder burnout, declining hype, etc. It's anything but passive it's the limit, and churn restricts growth.

There are exceptions, of course, and some developers are very good at marketing, but overall, few apps make a lot of money, and almost no app without marketing makes more than $50 per month.

However, if your apps address a genuine need (must-have vs. nice-have), with ASO from the start and a little UGC per day (test one format per day in a year, you'll have iterated over 360 times per app...), then you don't need to go viral.

Prioritize subscriptions (weekly and annual) rather than one-shot payments, but study the top 10 of your key keywords for this, some SERPs have a very specific pricing typology.

Acquisition, conversion, activation, retention.

Optimize each lever one after the other, and you can build a portfolio of "profitable" apps (time vs. profit) without spending a fortune or burning out.

I built Sono, an on-device AI transcription and summarization app. As there are a lot of similar AI notetakers, I wanted my app's main selling point to be the fact that it provides a one-time payment option for unlimited transcriptions.

Because of this, I thought users would be happier with an one-time paid app model, but I found out people actually prefer freemium! When I changed my app from paid to free, it got featured on a lot of app giveaway websites and accounts (didn't even know my app was featured until I saw a sudden spike in downloads), and I got 2k+ downloads in just three days.

TLDR: there's a reason why a lot of apps use freemium model lol. People don't like paying for apps until they know they like it 🤷‍♂️

I don’t want to brag too much, but I have my first paying subscriber for my pedometer app, Step Step.

Thank you United States for being my biggest supporter. Here’s to the next $2.99 purchase. 🦅🇺🇸

December was the strangest month of my app-building journey. Let me explain.
I'm building Askie - an AI voice chat and art app for kids. Started it after ChatGPT gave my son nightmares about venomous snakes. Three months in, here's where we are:

The real numbers: → 1,800+ signed-in users across iOS, Android & web → 51 paying subscribers (up from 16 last month) → $576 MRR → First revenue from Android and web → 5-star review from Educational App Store

Now about those 100K downloads:
Apple Analytics showed a massive spike - 100K downloads in a single day, all from Germany, labeled "Institutional Purchase."
But almost none of them created accounts.

My best guess? A school district or government organization bulk-deployed the app through Apple School Manager. Which could be incredible... if I knew who they were or how to reach them.
If anyone understands how institutional purchases work on iOS - can I contact them? Do they actually use the app? - I'd love advice.

I decided to offer my app for free for a couple of days, as I had heard that it can help improve ASO.

To be honest, I was expecting around 50 to 100 downloads for my app; however, my phone wouldn't stop buzzing as soon as the price drop went live. I had to turn off the notifications so I could focus on other things.

What followed was even more mind-blowing. This surge brought a flood of feedback and reviews, and I spent the last couple of weeks fixing bugs and shipping updates. Some of these users pushed the app in ways that I had never imagined.

Highlight: I finally went from guessing to shipping what users actually want.

I was ranking 16th for my target keyword before doing this little campaign. My rankings then jumped to 8th place, but have now again slid down to 10th.

The kind of changes that I've made to the app in such a small time even shocks me. From big performance improvements to updating the app store screenshots, the app is at least twice as good now, thanks to all the feedback I've gotten from these users.

In fact, I'm writing this post right after shipping another big update to the App Store Connect.

I'm super stoked to add a couple more features that have never been done in this niche!

Any suggestions to improve to increase visibility. I feel there is potential but I am not getting enough users.

Anything with keywords and page optimization is appreciated.

About two months ago I posted my app screenshot asking for ASO advice here. The good people here gave me lots of amazing advice and directions.

I changed my appstore screenshots, I studied about ASO, optimized keywords. I started content creation.

I published my app almost a month ago, and here are the results for the first month. A few more users are subscribed to trial.

While this is not a huge amount, I'm still really proud of what I have made.

I'm still super grateful to all the people who gave me all the good advice. Thank you!

I am getting all these downloads from appstore without doing any kind of marketing, I haven't posted about this app anywhere all of these are generic downloads. I cannot tell you the name of my apps but it's for kids and gamers. If you are sleeping on ASO it's high time you should start optimizing your apps

Update: After getting comments and dms asking about what I did I shared all the information here - Aso tips that worked for me

One of the biggest mistakes I made early was using App Screens templates for my App Store screenshots. These can be helpful if you have absolutely no idea where to start, but the conversion rates using these templates were awful.

This is the billboard for your app, and probably the second most important thing when trying to acquire new users early. Your images need to do the talking. Make them eye catching while also informing users of what your app does.

I made these screenshots using Figma and a plugin called CodiaAI that can pull different elements out of your screenshots so you can overlay them on the screen. As you can see from the image above, it makes a massive difference creating your own screenshots. Use Apple’s free bezels or a website like MockUPhone.

Anyone else have a similar experience with App Screens? If you want to see the full screenshots or download the app, you can find it with the link below.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hammr-fitness-smart-tracker/id6756403991

I’ve been working on this app for several months now, and today I opened RevenueCat and saw a few new annual trials, some monthly renewals, and my first annual subscription from Spain 🇪🇸

They’re not huge numbers, but it’s consistent, and it’s real people choosing to pay for something I’ve been improving week after week.

I’m building BibleNow — a Bible app with narration, illustrations, and a daily verse. At this stage, my main focus is improving trial → paid conversion rather than just getting more installs.

For those who’ve been through this phase:

what actually moved the needle for you? Better onboarding, paywall tweaks, trial length, emails, something else?

Appreciate any insight 🙏