My first app, 100,000 downloads within first 3 month.No money spent on advertising.

Please note I am the only person responsible for designing + developing + marketing.

I wrote this story so that my friend can sell it off to get a job and he did get it :smiley:

So here is the story:

It was my first app and since I was just a student ,that means I didn’t had any money to advertise.
However I managed 150$.

  1. The selling point for my app was the UI/UX. And for me the presentation was everything. I knew I was short on budget,and I wanted to convert every click into a download (i mean there is a high probability that if a person clicks on the link,he may not download it because of poor screenshots)

So good,professional looking screenshots were important.So for that I needed a photoshop professional
(although I designed the app myself,I wasn’t very good at photoshop) so I hired a guy from freelancing websites.
I paid the guy 50$ for 5 screenshots

good icon was also necessary,i paid about 20$ for it.

I then hired a guy for the video.
Now if you don’t know how most of the videos are made,you may end up paying 150-400$
there are websites from where you can buy templates for virtually everything.
So we purchased a 25$ template,hired a guy for 40$ to do the changes to it.
So the whole video was done for 65$

2 I got fake facebook likes(40,000 likes for 40$ people are real but they don’t come to know when they liked the page,there are scripts for fake facebook likes) as we thought it can be used as an audience,but turns out it was a waste,as facebook has changed it algorithms,and a post’s visibility only increases if it gets enough momentum(i.e comments and likes).And it is quite obvious that no one would be interested in a post from a page which they never liked themselves.
The post never reached 40,000 people which was our intended target.

  1. I got the description done,ourselves.There are websites for SEO (or ASO ,app search optimization)like sensor tower which can be used for figuring out which keyword to use.

  2. Added 1000+ friends on facebook from my college before the launch

  3. I launched the app.

  4. I gave credit to those people on how they were so supportive and accepted our random friend requests and then sneaked in the download link with very pretty images.People like to take credits for no reason ,just like they want to feel good and superior and want to be a part of something, without any reason,I just exploited it.

  5. The early downloads and reviews were quite important

  6. They reviewed and downloaded.About 200-300 of them.

  7. Just after I launched it,I changed my schedule and started sleeping 9 hrs in 2 days .i.e 4.5 hrs a day,with 3 hrs of sleeping shifts.
    i searched for lists of websites which review android apps.Sent them a copy pasted message and often making intentional mistakes while typing the subject like “Android ‘ApP’ Review”,to get their attention as you are not the only one sending them emails. we tried to make it look as professional as we could.But tried to keep the message friendly.I posted them 100 each day.

  8. Spamming on facebook groups.The post here doesn’t have to be professional and the screenshots should not look professional,if they are
    ,(these screenshots were differnt from the ones one the app page) you will give an impression that your app comes from a company and it won’t appear as a personal request but like an advertisement which you don’t want.I posted them 100 each day

  9. Sending messages to youtubers to review it and then posting on their new videos ,asking people to try it and asking the channel owner to review it.I posted them 100 each day or maybe more.

  10. Posting on reddit,forums, qoura etc.

  11. reviews from friends,you can try cheap reviews from fiverr.

  12. backlinks for aso

  13. update regularly for aso

    We did this for 20 days.
    The rest of the downloads were all organic(means they were due to people searching for a music player etc,rather than clicking somewhere)

  14. Now the app is getting 11000+ downloads per day on average (for the last 40 days).All of them are organic.

As of now,(i.e on 1st feb ,it has 600,000 downloads

Currenlty when you search for a “music player” my app ranks at the number 5

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bitsie.playmee.musicplayer.free

I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’d be interested in reading your story. :slight_smile:

done :slight_smile: edited the post so you can read it

Very interesting! Loved it. Pretty organic too. I think the moral of the story is that you put in the work, and now you’re reaping the rewards. :slight_smile:

I completely agree that presentation is everything. Your app photos look VERY nice/attractive, almost making me want to download it, hehe. :smiley: The UI does remind me a lot of the Windows Phone.

Two questions:

  1. Where do you hire your people (i.e. for professional looking app photos for the screenshots, video, etc.)? I don’t have any apps of that caliber but it’s something I’m looking into.
  2. Do you mind if we ask how much revenue you’re getting from this?

If you compare windows ui and this app’s ui,by keeping them side by side, it won’t look similar.
Money for first month 100$ 2nd month 200$
3rd month 400$
According to first few days of this month, it will get about 600$. I know it is less right now but it is growing.

I hired from freelancer.com

You need to know how you want it to look ,or else they won’t be able to figure it out.

Nice. It’s good to hear that you made it back already, and it’s growing.


Okay, that’s one of the sites I was expecting.

yeah,I have contacted app brokers and they said I can sell it at approximately 100,000 $-500,000 $.
but i will stick to it and will improve it for an year or two until it reaches the saturation point.
there are a lot of bugs to be fixed so i am missing out a lot.

hahhahhaa nice joke:)

This comment shows your perspective in life.
It isn’t a joke.if i were you,i would compare myself before making such a statement.

I know it’s your first app and you are excited as a little baby etc… But man, get real! I had a lot of apps with 1m+ and I don’t think that anyone will give e.g. 100k$ for ir, it’s insane money. You will never earn so much with this app. I’m not even talking about 500k$ because it’s only your sick imagination…:wink:

BTW, good luck and keep going!

I wish you had better contacts than you have now.
I know a music player owner who earned 60,000$ last year alone.
Have a good day :slight_smile:

Congratz!!!

Congratz, great app!

Do you mind sharing the video templates website you mentioned?

Amazing and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

Templates for After Effects, Apple Motion and Cinema 4D | VideoHive

Thank you

:smiley:

any ads used inside of your app?

Admob banner ads

I agree, $100k for 50-100k app with admob monetization? Good joke, even with 1-5 mln users you will not get it. I also had couple 1mln+ apps and you will probably earn this 100k but in one year with more than 1 mln DAU, not downloads! You are not giving your active users stats here, so I bet you can have 10-30%. 30k active users I can make easily in couple days. Key and hardcore is to make milions of active users, not some shitty <100k

…and what is $60k in year! mmmkkkss, me and couple developers here, have it in month, so more respect man if somebody found your nonsense. I understand that you published your first app and you are excited but…write about real world, not your imagination^^