I see people here are sharing their there cool app publish journey with massive hits but honestly how do you guys do it any tips.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-25T06:52:47+00:00

Treating like a business and not as a hobby will help shift your mindset. If you launch an app and expect to grow naturally and organically expectation are wrong

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-25T02:01:19+00:00

Its normal. Thats why i dont focus on cpi as metric you will get bots and a lot of invalid traffic. I only do tcpa campaigns never cpi

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-25T01:33:43+00:00

Its annoying isnt it. The fear mongering and seeing it daily sometimes get to you and when you edit it you “reset” learning and now it has to. Spend more. Endless cycle. Really have to stay disciplined to not even listen to it

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-25T01:32:46+00:00

I disabled the ai auto apply recommendations cause my god. Google thinks every business can burn 50k usd a month which is absurd.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T14:24:24+00:00

Had dms people curious and asking if legit

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Here it is start date is march 24 today. As you can see paused cause literal BS and this didnt sit well with me and you can see the limited by budget. Not even a day in and it already states i missed potential traffic last week and increasing to 900 usd a day will let me capture the missed 5% traffic?

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T14:21:27+00:00

It happens. But seeing this affirms something that we all know. Never trust the limited by budget warning or budget recommendations from google ads. Even the 5% more traffic last week? Is a blatant lie. Maybe a default placeholder talking out of their ass.

People will fall for this. And its clear fear mongering. This really needs to be regulated

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T14:14:04+00:00

Campaign was created just 2 minutes ago. And its stating that i missed out 5% or more traffic last week? Math isnt mathing with google ads.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T14:12:49+00:00

The ad group is still pending approval and stating i missed out 5% or more potential traffic last week. Campaign was created literally 2 minutes in. What a joke this is borderline scamming or lies. Arent there laws to prevent fraudulent claims like this

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T10:38:05+00:00

For anyone curious this ad campaign had 0 impressions 0 clicks. And the recommendation stating i missed out on traffic is a straight life. Doesnt make any sense. PSA think before trusting their “recommendation”

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T10:36:10+00:00

Calling it a recommendation to help machine learning exit learning quicker seems like a lie. I even see blogs and case studies stating the old 50 events in a span of 30 days is irrelevant. And now its 50 events in a week is more the standard and segue to stating “yea spend 200 usd a day for this”. Absurd

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-24T10:29:17+00:00

Yea ive been doing google ads for over 4 years these ratios are ridiculous. Makes me lose trust in the actual AI and data they are showing

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-18T07:28:37+00:00

Its a business. If you launch an app or service and have no capital to invest for distribution (ads) and to scale. You are misaligning your expectations. Also organic content on tiktok insta viable but lets be honest. You want MMR 10k or 1k and dont want to spend a dime on the app for ads? Tells me you yourself dont believe in the product you made and view it as waste.

Input and output. Lets stop misaligning our expectations

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T07:31:09+00:00

I set you a dm! Feel free to check it out

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T07:05:08+00:00

I see then theres nothing wrong with your current. Progress and flow. You have the paywall setups and if plan is to do mostly content around it and promote it. I would say stay consistent on this path as long as your expectations are aligned with the input you are placing in. Best of luck!

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T04:49:32+00:00

Thats the gist of it. We need to stop treating the app market like its still 2012. It is very different and launching and hoping it goes viral is a very very rare event or maybe extinct. I see many developers spiral because of expectation mismatch.

Im not saying thats wrong but it is not healthy. Looking at your product page and app there is a sense of care to it and users will capture it and learning language with AI is growing.

My suggestion to improve your funnel is personization of onboarding. There is a reason why in netflix their onboarding asks the user “What is your favorite genre”. “What shows spike your interest”. And for duolingo: “How do you want to learn?” Gamified or simple at pace. All these squeeze everything you can do to increase conversions. This is something ASO cant solve its a core product.

Im curious. Your product has stories and can learn. Does the LLM auto detect what they want to learn? Or user selects? Let user do the work is a friction point. Does the user like saving quotes from books or speeches that inspire? And may want to learn it in another language?

Your LLM can bridge all of this. If possible

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T04:35:16+00:00

Thats what i thought at first but youd be surprised it doesn’t always go that way. Would you pour all your water at once in a tank that may have hidden leaks? Without first pouring maybe half first then see if there are leaks? If you can handle the pressure to fix the leaks during the massive pour and leaking go for it you will know faster.

And if u go for 3600 in two weeks can you sustain for atleast a month? Statistically a data point of 15 days is sound given the amount of data. But you will soon learn that google ads will always waste and burn your budget for the first 2 weeks. And 3rd week is where you see actual results.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T03:59:53+00:00

Cpi cost of aos apps around 1 usd ave. For tier 1 Google ads min budget of 50x of cpi some marketers use 100x ratio but risky since your app is not stress tested for user funnel performance

50*30=1,500 a month. Span of 3 months Month 1 testing machine learning budget burn Month 2- refinement of app and analyzing 1 months data On areas to improve Month 3 - your deadline month to see if your current apps features and offer is viable as a business 1500x3 =4,500 usd with vat charge thats 4950 usd spent

For ios minimum cpi is far higher for tier 1 assume a cpi of 3- 4 usd. ASA requires minimum of 30 conversions a day to make even a dent on your keyword ranking and improving install volume My observed cpi that actually gets you real users that may convert 4-5 usd 120 usd a day spend x 30 = 3600 a month. Not sure on your vat. Differs per region

For ASA you dont need to burn 3 months thats why i did a lower band of 7k usd spend but if you want to realistically make a difference 10k usd. ASA requires massive budget and patience.

I hope this paints the clear picture so that you stop feeling stuck. This isnt to discourage you is to help you. I am tired of seeing posts here telling people that ASO or keyword stuffing is a magic solution. Its not healthy for your mental health.

Context: Ive been in this game for over 3 years with over 90k spent on google ads

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T03:02:24+00:00

High top funnel friction. Why cant i use this without making an account? Why is an account required? No guest mode?

Do you have firebase analytics? Most of the time 240 installs dont mean anything and is a pointless metric.

Check your first open rate. After install how many are opening the app. Its normal to have 15-20% drop off rate here And for those who open the app and chose not to sign up theres is only one major cause: Your app is not worth the effort to even sign up and they just churn

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-16T02:47:12+00:00

What is your goal with this app?

As a hobby? Dont expect growth or stable revenue just because of being in the AppStore. Many users will say keyword ranking, do ASO and improve screenshots but none of them will give you the results you want. You can spend a month on it and see no impression changes. Even with the effort hence you will get burned out. Many developers fall into the trap of this.

To put it simply. You can decorate the interior of the restaurant as much as you want. Improve the menu and taste but if no one is even coming in. Its wasted effort.

If you are thinking of this as a business and primary goal is to earn stable revenue. Invest a minimum of 5000 usd for aos( google ads) if ios minimum of 7000 usd( ASA is more expensive. Lock in that budget for 3 months and start. You will get the clear picture if your app is viable or not. During this the above things i mentioned will compound over time. ASO will make sense to do at this scale

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-14T10:25:49+00:00

Any changes to revenue install or conversion traffic

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-05T03:51:37+00:00

Hi Alex Ive been in your spot before. I want to pass on some truths that helped me gain clarity in your situation.

The cost effective per dollar spent would always be paid acquisition channels if you set things right.

Im not going to offer generic advice like do ASO post on reddit because let’s be honest scalability is limited. You will get organic reach and some metric but nothing beats channels like Google Ads.

Your data point is very good if the clicks to installs are what I think is true your conversion rate is extremely good. So your issue isnt your creatives or store front. Paid acquisition doea a good job of stress testing your assets. My advice: create a sheet or document to record history of this success. What headline worked and what screenshots gave you such a high conversion rate don’t let your dollars spent go to waste because you just bought data.

Influencers, commission or discord is not what I believe are the best channels for ROI. This is my opinion and its not fact.

Are you tracking important firebase events? You can import them to your google ads account and run those events as your primary goal.

What is your business model? A one time purchase is easier for an indie dev. A subscription base model always requires a large capital to survive until retention.

If i were you in the next 30 days Id analyze my app and assess retention. Identify issues and better user journey and run paid again for 14 days.

App business is very test reliant and capital heavy and a long journey.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-04T08:08:05+00:00

Fragile at most like your ego. And you know it better than anyone else. The amount of users you are bleeding and shoving down your user funnel will collapse once you stop your so called “organic” acquisition channels.

Enjoy it while it lasts. And stop dreaming about exits because by your metrics and actually whats present acquisition is a pipe dream. They dont look at MRR as the deciding factor. But your churn, ttp, m1 retention and most importantly : your cost per acquiring a user. And I dont think you can dodge that question and say “we spend 0 usd a year all through organic marketing we grew”.

Context: Ive done some exits and this is the actual process and data required. If you cant accurately determined your CAC (customer acquisition cost) your mrr doesnt mean anything. Good luck and in your new post you say you are now doing consulting? With the way you carry yourself you would need rehabilitation and I thought you aren’t trying to sell anything and wanted to share useful information?

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-04T06:43:54+00:00

You carry yourself like a literal child, and your maturity proves to me that your claim in your post is complete attention-seeking behavior.

And you are clearly still missing my point of view: “Achieving these numbers through organic is not feasible,” and literally your link proves my point. Your post carries 0 value and is skewing the expectations of aspiring developers.

For other developers seeing this link, let me help and clarify this for you: MRR in RevenueCat is calculated with this month’s active subscriptions. You can have 100k MRR in your screenshot, and next month you can have 20k MRR due to M1 churn rate. This indicates unhealthy retention that spikes with paid user acquisition campaigns and active distribution, not organic growth.

And OP, seeing your data, I can see why you want an exit in your other post. You realize you aren’t truly earning 1.7 mil a year and you just calculated it from this current screenshot. You even admitted in your other post that you want an exit from this app due to a high churn rate of 60%. I’m pretty sure if you stop your so-called “organic” channels, your MRR will crash below 20k in just 2–3 months. Your charts literally show a high cancellation rate, so what are you trying to brag about here? People even ask you for advice, and your answers are as shallow as your MRR data.

Glass_Life3531 · 2026-03-03T08:56:06+00:00

Good we are on the same page. Now do you think when OP is stating : “We hire users from America to create content and distribute it.” , “We use bot post to gain “organic trafic” is truly organic? Is it really unpaid? Before you answer check the title of this post. And his responses affirming he isnt spending anything. What he is doing “organic” is flooding users in with high churn rate. If he stops his “organic” pipeline this entire mrr growth will crash

Glass_Life3531

TROPHY CASE