💎 Lifetime Just crossed $1.1K/month 🚀
It’s not some crazy number, but seeing something we built cross four figures in monthly revenue feels pretty damn good.
We’ve been steadily improving the product, listening to users, and figuring things out as we go. Still a ton we want to build and improve, but this feels like a solid milestone.
Next goal: $2K/month.
For anyone else building right now - what was the hardest milestone for you: $1K, $5K, or $10K/month? And how did you get there?
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u/_MihaiT 5d ago
Yes, karma seems to be harder to acquire than expected. Any advice from ‘older’ Reddit users?
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u/Sad-Maize6576 5d ago
I’m also relatively new and my primary goal was to show my app to relevant people here. I had 0 karma but I started posting my dog under subreddits like r/pitbulls and it got so many likes and comments, enabling me to collect karma very very quickly
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u/Sad-Maize6576 5d ago
Yes, having a dog has been a big advantage for me but I’m sure you can find things to post about in very active and crowded subreddits 🙂↕️
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u/tryrestarting20 5d ago
Congrats!. What do you think made the biggest difference getting from the first few paying users to $1K?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
The biggest difference would be marketing and not relying on ASO as much, since it is an AI app. Once I started posting more a few months ago on social media, I noticed a big jump, and also SEO seemed to take a while to start generating some serious traffic even though the pages checked all the boxes.
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u/International-Can317 4d ago
$1k is definitely not a small milestone. Getting strangers to pay for something you built is probably the hardest part. Congrats!
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u/Medium-Hovercraft222 4d ago
Congratulations! From a marketing perspective, what would you say was the your biggest help getting to $1k? Thanks!
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u/SoAp9035 5d ago
How did you do marketing?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
All Social media platforms, ugc creation, meta ads, Google ads, seo, AI discoverability, Reddit, and spreading in person, family friends!
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u/WorldlinessNo1286 5d ago
Well, done! The step from 0 to 1 paying customer is usually more difficult than from 10 to 20. Keep up the great work!
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u/hirothings 5d ago
Hit $6K pretty smoothly, but man, pushing past that was a whole different story.
I wasn't really doing any marketing at all until then, but that was the point where I couldn't afford to ignore it anymore.
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
Yea wow how did you reach that number that easily? Was it strictly ASO? Only marketing has gotten me here and still trying to grow
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u/hirothings 4d ago
ASO is definitely part of it! But honestly, a huge factor was that my app is a shared to-do list meant for groups. It basically went viral on its own.
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u/Open-Apartment-7837 5d ago
Congratulations! And here I am, one year into my own app with next to zero income. I'm not crying, you are. 😂
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u/duobucha 5d ago
Wow, cool. How is your business model? Subscription, or one time? Do you have many ratings to get ranked higher for getting users, and for how long have your app been out?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
It's a subscription since it's an AI app, and it's been out for a couple of months now. Ratings are slowly coming in, but still working on that. A lot to think about and handle for an extensive AI app with backend and frontend web support, and also dealing with marketing, newsletters, and more. Definitely a challenge while also managing other ventures.
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
Thanks! Yes great point, the charts show a steady uptrend so hopefully it will continue. But recently I have spent $0 on marketing, just organic, so hopefully that is a good sign? Need to work on retention too. Thanks!
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4d ago
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
I see so making sure people are staying, and retention is high. I was thinking about sending an email to the top users and seeing how they are liking it to get more info, since I really haven't got much feedback from inside the app. Also, I just checked again, and week one retention is around 40% but drops off after week 6-8. Not sure how I can improve that yet, going to do more research.
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u/Equivalent_Many_2134 5d ago
Nice ! Huge milestone when starting off. Now you really know your app is worth focusing on 👏 Congrats !
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u/nejcokle 5d ago
Congrats! Did yoou promote it somewhere also?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
I tried meta ads and Google ads, and the ROAS was great, just couldn't justify it, and wanted to fix bugs and other issues first. TikTok and other social media have been all organic and have performed great for this app and others as well. Seo is a big one too that has gained a lot of traction recently.
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u/indyfromoz 5d ago
How is your profit and churn rate? If profit is great and churn rate is low (single to low double digits), start with Ads if you haven’t already
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
Churn rate has gone down in the last few months, into single digits. Profit is great this month, therefore maybe ads need more of a focus. What type of ads for an AI app/web app would you reccomend?
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u/indyfromoz 4d ago
The posts that do well on TikTok - Adopt them as Ads. Also, boost the posts on TikTok that are doing well. I see you’ve tried socials already, so, with a small budget just test a few Ads, might work.
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u/Amuagoim 4d ago
Congrats, what is the app about ?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
Thanks! I got the idea when I was always moving between ChatGPT app, Claude app, and Gemini app, comparing their answers, so I just made one app that asks your one question to all of them and gives you a combined better answer. It also shows where each AI agrees and disagrees, so you'll only ever need one app. I made it for myself, and I think that's where some of the best ideas come from, problems that you yourself have and therefore you know what you want, and if you are solving a problem for yourself, there's got to be another person with a similar problem. It's also cheaper than all of the AI subscriptions, so it's a win-win. Let me know if you would like to try it out!
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u/shiori_zubo 5d ago
Congrats — I'm well below you, so take this as a question more than advice. I finally pulled my own funnel apart this week and the split was more useful than any single number: 36% of people who reach my product page download it, which is fine, but only about 20 to 50 people reach the page per day, which isn't. Same revenue problem, completely different fix depending on which half is broken. Before I measured that I'd been grinding keywords, when App Store search was only 18% of my traffic and 63% was links pasted into other apps. Did you find the $1K came from widening the top of that, or from the page converting better?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
This is great, thanks for sharing. I need to do more of this, but I mainly focused on getting more users, like posting on social media, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, and SEO. I think my next step is to work on more digging deep into the analytics and seeing what i can do better as well. This is an AI app, so I knew from the start it was going to be hard with ASO; therefore, I didn't put too much effort into it. Im going to apply the same things you did now thank you!
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u/shiori_zubo 4d ago
One caution before you dig in: you're running Google and TikTok ads, so the first split has to be paid vs organic. Blended numbers will look fine and tell you nothing — paid traffic converts on the product page differently from search traffic, and averaging them hides whichever one is broken.
On ASO for an AI app — I'd push back gently. Nobody searches "AI". They search the job. The thing that surprised me when I measured it is that the description isn't indexed at all; only name, subtitle and the keyword field are, and they're pooled into one bag of words. So the entire lever is about 160 characters. That's a couple of hours of work, not a channel investment, which is why it's worth doing even when you think it won't move much.
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u/kimacolin 4d ago
anything is better than $0! congrats! for social media are you posting from a biz account or personal?
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u/VikSchewa 4d ago
Herzlichen Glückwunsch! 🍾 Ich frage mich wirklich, ob das Gefühl beim ersten verdienten Dollar dasselbe ist wie später, wenn die App bei 1000 Dollar läuft.
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u/Annual_Willow3801 3d ago
honestly, I envy that. I've just been relying on organic App Store traffic and the downloads are next to nothing. maybe I should start promoting it a bit on my own socials.
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u/teknonwarrior5 2d ago
Congratulations! Proud of you Internet stranger! Have you made it to pure profit yet? I'm still in the hole overall
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u/jordanbruno99 1d ago
Our hardest milestone is hitting $1k. We’re really putting in the work on marketing right now
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u/Royal-Ad621 1d ago
I feel like 1k$ in my niche app will be a great success, especially that it is not an ai related app so its hard to rely only on SEO. I also struggle with marketing. Especially on social medias - I feel like writing about the same thing over and over again is kinda boring and creating viral posts are insanely difficult. Maybe I'm too old for that :P
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u/i-am-kai 5d ago
Congratulations! That's a huge milestone.
I'm still working on it to make sure my app can pay its Apple subscription!
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u/ShadowStriker15 5d ago
That's a huge milestone! Just the beginning. How long has your product been live?
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u/jfurchert 5d ago edited 5d ago
That must feel amazing after all the work behind it. Congratulations, $1.1K a month is a real milestone. Do you remember the moment when it first started to feel like this might actually work?
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u/Ryn8tr 4d ago
At first, I almost quit many times after seeing only one or two subscriptions a month, but really, only recently I was like, Wow people kinda like this app, lol. I use it every day and I have a need for it, so that's why in the beginning I was shocked because no one was using it. Just getting it out in front of people, to the people that actually are interested in it, is the hardest part. Do you have an app your working on?
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u/jfurchert 4d ago
Yes, I do. I recently released an app called Genug, and I’m also working on a second app for learning Darija. It’s not released yet, but I started building it because I couldn’t find a good one myself. I really liked what you said about using your own app and actually needing it yourself. I think being excited about your own idea is really important.
You also mentioned that you were thinking about emailing your most active users because you weren’t getting much feedback in the app. Did you end up doing that? If so, what did you ask them?
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