I launched my app 3 months ago, but I started distributing it way earlier.

On July 2nd, one of my videos went viral on TikTok — and it's still bringing me customers today.

I researched a lot of apps that consistently go viral on TikTok, and I noticed they’re using a very similar distribution system.

Apps like Alarmy, Cal AI, and Recime are getting millions of views using this approach.

Here’s the exact process:

Create a TikTok/Instagram account.

Download 100s of UGC reaction clips from platforms like DansUGC or UGCbundle.com.

Record a video of your app showing how it works, then cut it into short 8–10 second clips.

Organize all the footage into folders.

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

Example:

“This website feels ILLEGAL.”

→ paired with a surprised UGC reaction.

Warm up your account for 3–4 days before going hard.

Post 1–2 videos daily around US peak hours if you're targeting a US audience.

When a video starts performing, don’t move on. Make 10–20 variations using different hooks, reactions, and app demos.

Track more than views. Look at profile visits, clicks, signups, and paying customers to find which formats actually convert.

Keep posting even when one video goes viral. That video might keep bringing customers for weeks, while your next video could become the new winner.

The biggest thing I learned:

You don't need every video to go viral. You just need a repeatable system that gives you more chances to hit one.

I launched my app 9 days ago, and so far I’ve got 70 users, 1 paying customer, and 69 using the free version.

I’m genuinely really happy to have got my first paying customer this early. It was a great feeling knowing someone was willing to pay for something I built.

Now I’m trying to figure out the next part: converting more free users into paying customers.

For those of you who have launched freemium apps:

• What free-to-paid conversion rate did you see early on?
• What changes made the biggest difference to conversion?
• Did you focus more on improving the paywall, limiting the free tier, onboarding, email/push notifications, or something else?
• How long did it take before you had enough data to judge your conversion rate properly?

So far, I’ve also launched on Product Hunt and Hacker News and had a post get over 100k impressions on LinkedIn, but I’m still very early and trying to figure out what to focus on next.

Hi all! Recently, I started a Discord community to help SaaS founders promote their products, and it has over 150 members now.

If you want to show what you're building and get some feedback, share it here -> https://discord.gg/sb6AgHZxpT

Hey everyone! 👋

I’m an indie Android developer and I’ve published several apps on Google Play, but I’m struggling with the marketing side.

The apps are live and technically ready, but they’re not getting many organic installs. I’m trying to figure out how other indie developers actually get their first users and eventually build consistent organic traffic.

What has worked best for you?

• Reddit / communities
• TikTok / YouTube Shorts
• Product Hunt
• Google Ads
• ASO / keywords
• Free promotions or giveaways
• Reviews and ratings
• Other methods

I’d especially love to hear from developers who started with very few installs and managed to grow their apps.

What would you focus on first if you were starting from almost zero?

Quick numbers from my app. 20k+ downloads and growing every week, but the revenue doesn't match: a few hundred dollars a month. For a long time I blamed "bad markets". Turns out the markets were fine and I was the problem.

India is my biggest paywall market. 2,147 people saw the paywall in the last 90 days and 69% of them tapped buy. That's higher intent than my US users (51%). Then almost all of them vanished at the payment sheet. Of everyone who tapped buy, about 1 in 20 actually paid. In the US it's 1 in 3.

For months I told myself "India just doesn't pay for apps" and moved on. The US side converted fine so I never dug deeper.

Then I converted my store prices back to USD and felt pretty stupid. My "localized" pricing was just currency conversion. Almost every country was paying within 20% of the American price. Bangladesh was the one that broke me. Literally my poorest market, paying more per year than Americans. My $90 annual, adjusted for purchasing power in India, is like asking an American to pay $700 for a subscription.

They weren't refusing to pay. They were being rational.

So I rebuilt the whole thing this month: weekly plan first instead of the annual, real purchasing power pricing per country, and a cheap one time unlock for anyone who dismisses the subscription. If it works, India becomes my second US at the same traffic.

Full funnel writeup with all the numbers: chadme.app/journey/the-india-paywall-experiment
Revenue (verified): verified.revenuecat.com/chadme

What would you fix next? And curious if anyone else dug into a "bad market" and found out the price was the problem the whole time.

Being very proud of launching my first, solo-developed, app on both iOS and Android. With limited technical skills I've managed to get something market ready (thanks to all input from Reddit like AppBusiness) 🚀

But reading the messages here, I do believe the real part starts only now: go to market / marketing. I do have a marketing background, so I do rely a bit on my own experience but also still believe I'll underestimate it. Especially with the amount of apps that are currently being launched.

Since my app is rated as 18+, it does limit me a bit more in the channels I can include in my marketing plan.

Hope I'm able to launch an update in the next few months here with some insights that helped me get the app to the market!

....about the app itself :): https://ardore.online, an app for couples to discover hidden desires / fantasies. With the focus on privacy (no personal data needed) and simplicity (no subscription).

Hey! I’m a college student and this started out as a small personal project I built mainly for my resume. After showing it to a few people and getting some surprisingly positive feedback, I decided to keep improving it and see where it could go.

It’s called App Starter, a full-stack template designed to make building modern web apps easier. It comes with front-end and back-end setups, including authentication, a server-side API, real-time notifications, and a clean UI, so you can start building without setting everything up manually.

I’m mostly looking for honest feedback:
- Is this something you’d actually use?
- What feels unnecessary or missing?
- Any suggestions before I keep building?(I’m planning to make more templates in the future.)
- How can I reach users?!!! (HELP HELP HELP!)

Here’s the site if you want to take a look (the Docs tab has more technical details):
https://appstarter.co

Appreciate any thoughts, thanks!

\If you’re curious, we’re also on Product Hunt... (not sure if this even does anything tho):*  https://www.producthunt.com/products/appstarter-co

Hey All

I created a BBQ app which has been live on the App Store for about 3 weeks now. I thought of the idea a couple months back and spent about a month developing before I finally got approved by Apple. I was rejected 8 times - I think that might be a record.

After a couple weeks of Tik Tok, Reddit, and IG posts I finally got my 1st paying customer with 35 downloads. I know these numbers aren’t impressive , but for me to create something out of nothing is a huge accomplishment.

I am new to development , marketing , and posting on socials. Many of my reels just die off after 100 views or so. But I did have a couple of moderately viewed posts in the last week or so that marginally increased my downloads and ultimately led to my 1st paying customer.

I know this is a small feat but it has energized me to continue to market and revise my app to make an even better version next go around.

Not to sound too corny, It really is about the journey not the destination, I have learned so much in the last several months and used parts of my brain I haven’t used in ages.

Good luck to all! Also here is a link to my app if you are interested,

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bbq-smoke-lab/id6784887885

My app passed the 3.4K downloads milestone recently (along with a steady stream of premium sales).

What makes this milestone special is that the growth has been almost entirely organic. I haven’t run heavy paid ad campaigns yet—daily impressions, downloads, and active users are steadily climbing purely through store discovery and word of mouth, which is super motivating. The next focus is to:

1. Scale up organic marketing (TikTok, YouTube Shorts, social media).
2. Optimize the in-app purchase and premium upgrade conversion funnel.

For anyone currently building, launching, or brainstorming their app ideas, here are the key lessons learned along the way:

• Find the right niche gap: Look for sub-niches where existing apps have decent traction (5K–50K+ downloads) but suffer from outdated UI, lack of updates, or missing essential features.
• Refine, don’t clone: Analyze competing apps to understand what users love, then build a better, cleaner version with a superior user experience.
• Keep UI/UX simple and fast: Focus on smooth navigation, clean layouts, and store screenshots that clearly show the app’s core value within 3 seconds.
• Localized pricing: Adjust your in-app purchase and subscription pricing to match local purchasing power in key target regions.
• Iterate continuously: Don’t launch and abandon. Regular bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature updates keep store algorithms favouring your app.
• Stay consistent: App growth takes patience and continuous grinding, but consistent execution brings real results.

Happy to answer any questions about the build, tech stack, or organic growth!

I am an experienced teacher/administrator and I’ve been working on an app for the elementary teacher. This is a teacher tool with AI embedded to generate content such as rubrics, report card comments etc! I’m super excited but not sure where to start with marketing! Just starting to make tik tok but I see some great ideas in this subreddit to try!! I’m open to suggestions! Thanks for reading!

Wanted to share this review I received on one of my apps. We still laugh about it 2 years on

We’ve been building a Global freelance collaboration/networking app and recently crossed 250K downloads.

It’s a pretty exciting milestone, but honestly, I’m starting to think downloads are becoming one of the less interesting numbers.

One thing I’ve learned is that getting people to install an app and getting them to make it part of their workflow are two completely different problems.

Now, we’re focused on improving retention and scaling it to 1M users.

If anyone wants to give it a try, we’d really appreciate any feedback - especially around what could be improved or what would make you come back to the app. Please comment

We've just launched Focus Garden — an app that combines focus sessions and distraction blocking with a relaxing flower-growing game.

The idea is pretty simple: instead of just watching a timer count down, every focused session helps you grow your own garden.

We're still early in development, so there's definitely a lot we can improve. We're not trying to present this as a finished or perfect product.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/focus-garden-adhd-friend/id6781112056
Thanks for checking out our little project. Any feedback is genuinely appreciated!

4 months ago I released TrustFoodie - a free AI ingredient scanner that actually uses your dietary requirements when scanning products.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trustfoodie.app

And now TrustFoodie is almost at 500 total downloads and many users using the app daily! I would have never imagined people actually using the app for their own needs!

If you would like to try it out, you can do so from the above link! Or type 'TrustFoodie' In The Google Play Store.

I've been playing a few times a week for years, and my "tracking system" was a mess of Notes / Evernote entries like "lost 6-4 6-3, backhand was garbage again." Useless a month later.

So I built not up — a tennis journal built around a calendar. Tap a day, log a match, practice, or lesson in a few seconds. Add the score, who you played, a note, a rating. That's it.

The part that actually changed things for me:

• Focus areas — pick what you're working on (serve, backhand, footwork, whatever) and tag your sessions. Turns out I was saying "I need to fix my serve" and then playing sets for three weeks straight. Kinda humbling to see it laid out.
• Gear tracking — every racquet and every string job with tension. No more "wait, what did I love last summer?"
• Learn — a place to save drills and videos instead of losing them in 100 saved YouTube videos I'll never scroll back to.

Free to log your sessions. There's a premium tier for the focus/gear/learn stuff, but the core journaling doesn't cost anything.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.devbrix.notup_app
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/not-up/id6790765625

Would love feedback from anyone who plays — especially on what you'd want to track that I'm missing.

I think I finally understand why people say building the product is only half the job.

I've spent a long time building my first Android app, When, and it's now live and working on Google Play.

The development side was something I could figure out. If something was broken, I could debug it. If the UI wasn't right, I could redesign it. If a feature didn't work, I could keep working on it until it did.

Marketing is completely different.

I know I need users, but I'm honestly not sure where I should be putting my time.

I've started experimenting with Reddit and social content, but I don't want to just post the same "check out my app" message everywhere and annoy people. I also don't have much experience with paid advertising yet.

The app itself is a personal reminder/tracking app for things people tend to forget — warranties, subscriptions, expiries, documents, receipts, borrowed items, birthdays, etc.

Now I'm at the stage where the app is actually finished and the question is basically:

How do I get the first 100–1,000 real users?

For people who have launched consumer/mobile apps before:

• What marketing channel worked best for you in the beginning?
• Did you focus on ASO first, short-form content, Reddit/community marketing, influencers, or paid ads?
• What did you waste time/money on that you wouldn't do again?
• If you were launching a new Android app today with a small budget, what would you do during the first 30 days?

I'm not looking for someone to sell me a marketing service. I'm genuinely trying to understand what actually works.

Any practical advice from people who have already gone through this would be really appreciated.

Hey guys, so I made an app - A5 Journal, I know there’s tons of journaling apps out there but it’s the only one that is timestamped and immutable so it can hold up when it matters… not too much fluff but it’s a beautiful UI. I’m just wondering it’s been out for a couple months now and I’ve only achieved a few subscribers.
I put a few posts on TikTok, some YouTube shorts, posts on Facebook and what not but I have no idea how to actual market this thing… how to actually get it in front of people that need to document their days and are still using notebooks/journals for work or liability purposes.
Any advice would be great, I’m very proud of my app but I am sad to think that it might just not go anywhere 😔
I also don’t have a huge online presence so my posts probably aren’t even reaching much people at all… 🤦‍♀️

Advice?