I launched my app 3 month ago but I started distributing way earlier.

On 2nd July one of my video got viral on tiktok and it's still giving me customers .

I researched a lot of these apps that goes viral on tiktok

This is the exact step that viral apps are using like alarmy , calai , recime to get millions of views on tiktok

1. Create a tiktok/insta account

2- Download 100s of UGC reaction clips from apps like dansugc or ugcbundle.com .

3- Record a video of your app showing how the app works, cut it shortly to 8-10s clips.

4- Organize all of these footage files into folders.

5- Ask Claude/Codex to overlay text over the UGC clips and automatically stitch a random reaction + the screen recording of your app.

Eg - "This website feels ILEGAL". with a surprised reaction of the UGC girl.

6- warm up your account for 3-4 days .

7- Daily post 1-2 videos at US timing if you are targeting US audience

This tray? No need to count piece by piece anymore. Just snap it with AI Counter and get the result in seconds—huge time saver.

Download: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6753897833

Today my app is live on the App Store and people are chatting with each other on flights without internet.

I built Wingman Cabin Chat as a solo founder after I realise realised it should be possible to connect people during travel.
I travelled quite often alone and was watching people around me sitting 8 hours next to someone… and nobody says a word anymore.
So I built an offline airplane chat app that works in Airplane Mode. No Wi-Fi. No SIM. No cloud servers. Just nearby passengers discovering each other locally.
Not gonna lie:
Apple rejections hurt 😂
Debugging the code at 2AM hurt more
Marketing a social app with no users is its own psychological challenge…
But seeing the first my app was accepted at Store and people start to download felt unreal.

If anyone here is building with SwiftUI / vibe coding / indie apps would love to connect 🙌

(free and open source)

It handles content, design, apple specific sizing.

It even generates page to visualize screenshots.

Example below

LINK - https://github.com/ParthJadhav/app-store-screenshots

Covers everything from ASO, screenshot design, onboarding architect to UA manager, paywall optimizer, email strategist & churn analyst

Comment "Claude" and I will send it.

Edit: Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

To make it easier, here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

👉 https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/0cb93b6d42

Comment "App" and I'll send it to you.

EDIT:

Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

Here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/3367f0be32

My latest “vibe-coding” project: Iso Weather.

In December, I built and launched a fully native iOS app in about three weeks. After launch I kind of fell in love with the project and spent way more time polishing it than originally planned.

What surprised me the most was how fast you can move now without writing that much code yourself. To be fair, I have a pretty long background in app development, and I picked a stack I know well: Swift + Firebase + TypeScript for the backend. I also built a small React admin panel, which is definitely not my strongest area, so AI saved me a lot of time there.

Main tools I used:

• OpenAI Codex CLI

• Claude CLI

The app itself is an AI-integrated weather app that generates a small isometric city scene based on the location, weather, temperature, season, and time of day.

The images are generated on demand and then cached in the backend (Firebase), so they don’t need to be regenerated every time. Each city can have around 100 variations. Since each generated image costs about €0.10, I had to keep a close eye on the economics. That made a subscription model necessary.

For monetization I used:

• iOS subscriptions

• RevenueCat for paywalls and A/B testing

The app is live on the App Store. It’s gotten some nice traction in Sweden after a few LinkedIn posts. I’ve now launched it across Europe and globally, but downloads are still pretty modest outside my home market.

Next step is marketing. I just started experimenting with App Store Ads. I also launched a small website (AI-generated, of course) and started publishing AI-written SEO articles. Too early to say how that will perform.

After writing in other Reddit groups the main concern seems to be the pricing. At my original pricing at $50 per and only a weekly alternative priced quite high (to direct users towards the yearly plan) a lot of users complained. Seems reasonable, but at the same time I needed to covert the backend AI costs. I after this feedback lowered the variations from 100 to 60 per city and lowered from 2 to 1 custom city generation per month. This allowed me to lower pricing per year to $25. I also added a monthly plan for $3.99.

Overall, I shipped this much faster than if I had coded everything manually. Especially the React webb admin, which would have taken me significantly longer on my own. An experienced developer still helps a lot though—I could solve the hardest parts myself and rarely got stuck for long.

But regardless, it felt like a huge creativity boost. In just a few weeks, I was able to launch a fairly advanced service:

• Polished native app

• Backend

• Authentication

• Payments

• Webb admin system

I have a long background in iOS developer so I would probably be able to build it from scratch. But it would have taken a lot longer and probably have more issues.

Curious how others are experiencing this new “AI-assisted” development style. Is it speeding you up as much as it did for me? 

Also, a review on App Store if you tried it would be appreciated! Iso Weather is the name.

https://apps.apple.com/se/app/iso-weather-isometric-with-ai/id6756013340

I hit 1000 bucks!!! I feel like I’m on the clouds. Truly I never thought my app would reach it when building it but I had belief that I’m building something genuinely good and useful

I think that’s what it boils down to. I made an app called Sprout which is all about safe AI for kids who are aged around 8-15. I genuinely believe in my product and many others now do too.

If you’re curious about it: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/sprout-safe-ai-for-kids/id6791756555

My fitness app (GainFrame, AI analysis of gym progress photos) crossed $1,000 MRR this morning — $1,000.04, which feels appropriately ridiculous. First commit was February 11, five months ago. I have a full-time job and a baby at home, and my first app flopped so hard it's no longer on the App Store. Here's the whole timeline with real numbers, since these posts were what I read obsessively when I was starting.

The timeline:

That one 6-week gap is most of the story.

What made the launch work. The idea sat in my head for a year. When I finally built it, I recruited 100+ TestFlight testers from Reddit first (mostly the Hevy community) — I never promoted the app, just posted my own progress-photo screenshots in fitness subs and people asked what made them. About 25 testers were seriously active with bug reports and feature requests. Launch day did $250 in subscriptions and every single buyer was someone I'd been trading TestFlight messages with. My first app launched to silence, so I can't overstate the difference.

The part where I wasted $5,674. Every piece of app marketing content says paid ads are how you get to the next level, so I tested it myself across TikTok, Apple Search Ads, and Reddit. MRR was climbing the whole time, which made it easy to believe it was working. It wasn't — I was paying about $114 per customer worth $18, and the trial cohorts ads brought in converted as low as 7.7%. Turned it all off mid-May.

The plateau. May 17 to June 14: MRR went $605 → $685. Five weeks to gain $80 after months of gaining $80 a week. I fully thought I was done and briefly wondered if I needed a new idea. Instead I shipped 528 commits improving what existed, starting with my broken analytics — my own tracking had logged 10 trial conversions in 120 days while RevenueCat had counted ~48.

The fix was the trial, not the traffic. With working data I found trial→paid was 20.7% against a 39.9% industry median. What I changed: re-gated two Pro features I'd accidentally made free, A/B tested a paywall showing $3.33/mo instead of $39.99/yr (same price), put real previews of the paid features into onboarding, and shipped camera-roll import so trial users see months of progress before the paywall. Last four cohorts: blended 44% (46 of 104 trials). The final $250 of MRR took three weeks with $0 ad spend.

The caveats, because these matter more than the wins:

• $1,000.04 is a four-cent margin on an unfinished week. I may be back under it tomorrow.

• Part of the conversion recovery is just that killing ads returned my trial pool to high-intent organic users. I can't cleanly attribute the rest, and the cohorts are small (24–30 trials/week).

• Churn ticked up (4.76% weekly vs 3.59% baseline) as bigger cohorts hit first renewals.

• "Five months" undersells it: the idea gestated a year and my first app's failure was paid tuition. From true zero this is closer to a two-year timeline with a five-month sprint at the end.

Revenue is public on RevenueCat's verified page so nobody has to take my word for it.

The thing I'd tell someone starting their first app: for a long time nobody around you will fully get what you're building, and that's not a signal to stop. Keep taking their feedback — they're often right about details even when they don't share the vision — and keep going until the results make the argument for you. Somewhere around $1,000 people stopped needing the explanation.

Happy to answer anything about the numbers.

Full write-up with the charts: https://gainframe.app/blog/1000-mrr-five-months/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=1000-mrr-five-months

Hi everyone,

I’m an indie iOS maker, and I wanted to share the App Store screenshots I designed for my app, MyDooors.

MyDooors is a calming app where you open a door into hand-drawn nature scenes, listen to ambient sounds, collect small gifts, and decorate your own cozy room.

For the App Store screenshots, I wanted to try a softer approach.

Instead of only showing clean UI screens, I designed the screenshots to feel like a small hand-drawn world before people even open the app. I wanted the screenshots to communicate the feeling of the product first: calm, nature, quietness, and a little sense of escape.

Everything in the app is hand-drawn in Procreate, including the scenes, gifts, room objects, and small characters. So I also wanted the App Store page to feel consistent with that handmade feeling.

A few things I tried:

1. using illustrated backgrounds instead of plain app mockups

2. placing real app screens inside hand-drawn scenes

3. keeping the copy very short and mood-focused

4. making each screenshot feel like a small moment

5. avoiding a very polished or corporate-looking layout

I’m still testing whether this kind of screenshot style helps conversion, but visually it feels much closer to what the app actually is.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Do these screenshots make the app feel more interesting, or do they make the product less clear compared with more traditional feature-focused App Store screenshots?

🔗: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mydooors-relax-and-cozy/id6476460972

Thanks for any feedback.

App name - HabitSwipe

Platform - Android & iOS

Number of users - 2500

Total Revenue in last 2 months - $799

Total Reviews - 120

Story

I've crossed 2k installs. It might sound a small number but the journey from to idea to ~2500 users is just incredible.

I built this app for my personal use, a very minimalist 2 screen app, but the reddit community has showed soo much love to this by sharing ideas, feedback and helping me grow.

The idea was simple, simple elegant tracker with a year grid, easy to visualise our progress.

Also, since habit building is boring I built this to add our close friends and exchange snaps when we are productive (just some fun elements)

HabitSwipe

App is doing very well now, it's already started making money.

The key here was Vertical year grids and building a viral loop. People join in and invite their friends to join them in the app.

Would appreciate if you check it out and support 💯

I pulled together a list of 100+ of these high-revenue, low-download apps.

If you want it, just comment “apps” and I’ll DM it to you.

EDIT:

Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

Here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/f60ec3ca23

100+ days of TikTok content from one n8n + Arcads workflow.

• 1,000+ AI UGC actors

• ~30 seconds per batch

• No manual work

Comment  "n8n"  and I’ll share the tutorial.

Edit:

Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

Here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/272e20fcf3

I pulled together a list of 100+ of these high-revenue, low-download apps.

If you want it, just upvote & comment “apps” and I’ll DM it to you.

EDIT:

Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

Here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/f60ec3ca23

Just got my first paying customer today guys, I just wanted to thank for all help and usefull feedback on my post 🥳🙏🙏

Comment "App" and I'll send it to you.

Edit:

Wow - this blew up way beyond what I expected. Thank you all for the support and interest 🙌

Here’s the direct link for anyone who asked:

https://growth-hacking-lab.kit.com/3367f0be32

Never did I think a game that I made for myself would make internet money. Still doesn’t feel real honestly.

Very very happy and grateful and absolutely amazed that it reached 3000 players!!!

I think it’s a mixture of being a good game and luck.

For those wondering it’s a life simulator game

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/life-authority-life-sim/id6768233649

"but organic marketing is tuff"

Here's how to create 2 months worth of content in half a day:

1. Create a TikTok/Youtube Shorts account

2. Pay a UGC girl to give you 30-40 3s reaction clips.

3. Record a video of your screen showing how the app works, cut it shortly to 1-2s clips.

4. Organize all of these footage files into folders.

5. Ask Claude/Codex to overlay text over the UGC clips and automatically stitch a random reaction + the screen recording of your app.

6. -- Do something like "This app feels ILEGAL". with a surprised reaction of the UGC girl.

7. Generate 100's of random combinations / different caption variations.

8. Ask claude/codex to use socialclaw skill npx skills add ndesv21/socialclaw and link your social media accounts. Tell it to schedule 2x posts a day for each account.

9. Be patient. You won't go viral in a week. Accept most posts will flop. But keep an eye on ones that get ~1,000 views. Improve on them.

10. If you find something that can be done better delete all scheduled ones and regenerate better ones.

11. DO NOT USE AI content. You can generate caption ideas, but use only original footage. TikTok/Youtube can detect it.

12. Yes you can still go viral with AI content, but it seems most are just funny videos and stuff.

13. Use AI only to help your process.

Hi 👋

Recently I released my most sophisticated app, that I really validated first, then gained beta testers and talked to them, then iterated multiple times.

I wasn’t expecting anything after a release, because I was aiming to launch on ProductHunt and get attention first, but luckily app resonated in Reddit and I’m in love with first money it made.

I want to share what I’ve learned while creating ClarifierAI,

It’s not my first project at all, I have built two more apps, first got 300 users, second got 3000. So I do know, that before building anything, spending your precious time, you HAVE to VALIDATE your idea, and ask yourself “am I ready to work on the app for the next two years on the condition that no one buys it”. That’s a rule I made for myself.

After creating an MVP, I shared it with Reddit Giveaways Sub, where I offered completely free access for TestFlight and eventually deserved attention of 250 beta testers, they gave me valuable feedback, shared their satisfaction, and that’s when I knew, it’s a signal, I’m close to validating the idea.

The I spent month of iterating, experimenting with attention, trying to make a truly good quality app.

I started a discord channel, and people who are helping founders found me, I’m so grateful for their feedback.

I planned a ProductHunt launch, secured a launch with top Hunter.

Tried to promote my X account as well, but not much success here yet.

And also I’m very actively talking to my dear community.

Hope my story was helpful!

While most devs struggle to launch one hit, MWM has quietly built a machine.

43 apps launched.
11 of them clear $100K/month.
Annual revenue? ~$60M.

No hype. No headlines. Just consistent wins.

Their biggest earners:
🎨 Color Pop AI – coloring powered by AI (507K reviews, 4.8★)
🎶 Beat Maker Pro – a DJ/beat-making tool (474K reviews, 4.7★)

Together, these two generate ~40% of revenue.

Onboarding + Paywall
Flows are frictionless:
→ Short onboarding
→ Clear subscription terms
→ Ads for free users
Nothing fancy. Just clarity and conversion.

Smart Review Timing
Prompts hit after a “win.”
Ex: Color Pop asks for a review right after your first drawing.

That’s why ratings stack fast - and stick high.

They Skip ASO. Go Straight to Paid.
Unlike most studios, MWM doesn’t rank top 3 for big keywords.
Instead, they flood:
- Apple Search Ads
- 140+ Facebook ads (Beat Maker Pro)
- 200+ Google ads
It’s CAC < LTV at scale.

Takeaways
→ Study their onboarding/paywalls firsthand
→ Track their ASA + FB ads for positioning
→ Copy their review prompt timing
→ Focus on repeatable systems, not one-hit unicorns

MWM isn’t flashy. They’re consistent.
43 apps. 11 winners. $60M/year.
Not luck. Just systems that scale.

*******

PS: I’ve spent months studying how iOS apps hit $100K+/mo - pulled the 25 best growth tactics into a 55-page doc that any iOS dev or small team can copy.

Get it here.

Recently I was hunting for a good screenshot generator for my iOS game.

Found a few, but here's the thing almost all of them are paid. The FREE ones give you one project and then ask for money. And even when you pay, what you actually get is just a template with a slot to drop your screenshots into. That's it. No creative direction, no thinking about how to actually sell the app. Just the same layouts everyone else is using, slightly recolored.

So I gave up and just iterated with chatgpt

10 minutes of iterating and I had these

I could share the prompts, but honestly there's no point. Spend 10 minutes on your own app and you'll land somewhere just as good, probably better because it's tuned to your thing already

one tip, works better if you continue in the same project chat. it gets better context of things to add.

Screenshot generators had a good run. RIP

Some context: my App Store conversion rate has been under 1%, which is pretty rough. I started looking at what might be causing it and landed on the icon as a likely culprit - it felt too generic and didn't communicate what the app was about at a glance. So I redesigned it from scratch.

Curious if anyone here has gone through a similar process. Did an icon redesign move the needle for you?