Frederick James
@frederickjames • 8,523 subscribers
semi employed engineer open sourcing my journey
Videos
My app just hit $7k/m. I'll hit 10k/m before I quit my job & fly to vietnam 🇻🇳 This is how I did it. Part One: The App. 1. Built an iOS app. 2. Found a validated niche. 3. Improved upon existing apps. 4. Read reviews to see pain points. 5. Improved everything: UI, onboarding, features. 6. With AI and good taste it's so easy to win. 7. You can build beautiful & useful product in a week. 8. Stack: Native Swift & RevenueCat. 9. Pricing of 7.99/w, 14.99/m and 49.99/y. 10. Typically weekly + yearly combo is good. 11. Adding monthly increased my conversions. 12. This will vary by niche: see what competitors do! Part Two: Apple Ads to 1k/m. 1. Used the $100 free credits to get data! 2. Measured my onboarding & paywall with posthog. 3. Already had 70% onboarding completion. 4. Reduced all friction: got it to 85%. 5. Ran AB tests using remote paywalls. 6. Kept everything compliant with Apple guidelines. 7. Achieved 8% install to paid. 8. Split campaigns by territory groups: US, AU, TH etc. 9. Used competitor names as strict keywords. 10. User searches for competitor: • My app way better so they download mine instead. 11. This relies on a really good app store page. 12. Mock up screenshots in Figma then enhance with AI. 13. ChatGPT Image-2 is free with Codex. Part Three: Scaling to 7k/m with Tikslop. 1. Scrolled in my niche, found organic viral posts. 2. Remade them myself: film with friends or use AI. 3. Seedance 2 mini is the best ROI video model I think. 4. I made ~8 formats, ~15 creatives. 5. Give each creative $50 of spend. 6. After $50, if CPA LTV then stop spend. 8. LTV is hard to calculate. You can ask Rico. 9. Better for me: Aimed for profit on first transaction. 10. This is simpler & more ambitious. 11. Expect to burn at least $500! Part Four: Scaling Ad Spend (The Big Leagues) 1. If the CPA is staying consistent. 2. Increase spend by < 30% each time. 3. My advice: ~15% each time. 4. 50, 60, 70, 90 etc. 5. Performance can be volatile. • Yesterday I made ~$170, a small loss. • A few days ago I made ~$600, big profit. 6. Measure averages over time. Remember: there are infinite ways to win, this is mine. It took me about 3 years to make a successful app. Winning is simply losing on a long enough timeline.
Frederick James101,632 views • 15 days ago
My app just hit $7.8k/m in revenue. This is how I'm running ads for mobile apps. To hit 10k/m before I quit my job & fly to Vietnam 🇻🇳 Part One: Apple Ads (First $1k/m). • Repeated this a lot so to summarise: 1. $100 free ad credits, ez mode. 2. Run strict keywords on competitor names. 3. Split into tiers for countries & scale the max bid. 4. Use RevenueCat or Superwall for attribution. 5. Give ad spend & transactions to claude: find winners. 6. Measure the onboarding: tighten funnel. 7. Daily budget can be low at first, like $20. 8. The max bid is the important variable here. 9. This will get you to $1k/m. Part Two: TikSl0p Ads ($1k to $10k) • This is much harder to make profit. • But when you do, it's exponential. • Read Open Book's guide on this first. 1. Make ~6 formats, ~12 creatives. 2. Leave campaign targeting super broad. 3. I do $70/day of campaign budget spend. 4. No demographic or interest settings. 5. Let the algorithm find your perfect user. 6. Give each creative $50 of ad spend. 7. After $50, if (close to) profitable then scale. 8. If no profit, then stop the posts. 9. Use realised LTV to begin with. 10. Simple: revenue / paid customers. 11. 400 IQ chad: aim for profit on initial transaction. 12. Ask Rico for unrealised LTV. Can be hard to calculate. 13. Expect to burn a few hundred $$ to find profit. Notes: If you none of your creatives are profitable, then go back to the drawing board and try again. You're taking $50 gambles each time. When you find a winner, it'll repay the initial investments 100x! This is a game of pain tolerance. You need to be able to stomach losing hundreds of $$$ without seeing any returns. Part Three: Scaling. 1. If you're consistently getting > 2x ROAS. 2. Up your campaign budget by 15%. 3. Do NOT increase more than 30%. 4. Otherwise I will be very very cross with you. 5. You'll kill performance. 6. Performance can be volatile. • Measure ROAS over weeks, not days Notes: When you've found a winning creative, create multiple variations of it. We're talking 100 different kinds. I'm being lazy and need to do this more!! Part Four: Experimental Ad Spend ($10k +). • This is the next level: I've gone 0-1. • I've not seen much sauce on X about scaling past this. • So, this is where I'm at now. I'll share it with all of you. My current position is: 1. Trying out other platforms: Meta, IG, etc 2. Continue reinvesting the profits from previous ads. 3. I'm trying multiple new avenues right now: • Paid influencers, UGC, slideshowmaxxing, etc. Keep pushing, we're all gonna win.
Frederick James16,140 views • 11 days ago
My app hit $3k/m today. BUT: $4k revenue in the last month! Perhaps we focus too much on MRR. Especially with b2c apps (churn is high). What I'm doing: • Yesterday I made $575. • My best day yet! • From $200 of Tiksl0p ad spend. • I won't scale it for a few days.
Frederick James18,029 views • 26 days ago
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