From $0 to $15k/month: App Store strategy revealed

0:00 In March, Victor Sarillie generated $15,200 from the app store alone. That's over $500 a day. And just in case you missed it, he shared his entire strategy on X. From coming up with ideas, building apps, the retention models he uses, monetization, and more. But this isn't Victor's first attempt at building a successful app portfolio. He had already successfully started an app portfolio that generated $33,680 every month until Apple abruptly shut it down. From what Victor has reported, he was previously working on apps under a developer account called Soft Team before moving on to his new company. Apple mistakenly linked his current account to a completely separate developer account managed by the same team he was previously working with.

0:59 This led to his account being banned. And despite evidence showing the new apps were original and had nothing to do with the original team, Apple closed both his old and current accounts. He is now pursuing legal action to correct what appears to be a major case of mistaken identity. This entire case is really fascinating and you can check out the full story in the comments below. This has been documented at length by Victor. He goes back to court in September where he will discover the fate of all his hard work. But do you think this set him back? No. Victor went on to do what he knows best, building cool apps every day. This is Victor's strategy for building multiple successful app portfolios.

1:45 design. A bright icon and compelling screenshots are a key to high install conversion. And there's a reason why Victor has put this in first place. You can create the best app that's ever existed, but if it's package wrong or just looks unappealing, people just won't download it. Quality. Victor often enters existing niches, so he's made his product on par with the leaders in that industry. Onboarding. A well-designed onboarding combined with a payw wall generates up to 75% of all the payments that come through Victor's app portfolio. And this is also followed up by stepbystep user interface that helps users achieve results within the first few clicks or first few steps of opening the app. With his two loop app, you simply open the app, select a video, and it guides you through the process of creating a looping animation.

2:41 transparent terms. There's no hidden close buttons, aggressive pay walls, and there's no pricing tricks. But what he doesn't mention here is that all of his payw walls are an absolute work of art. You just have to experience these for yourself. a clear visual style that includes a background video or animation with app store reviews featured at the hero section to build social credibility and a list of features with colorful and dynamic icon. Then there's the pricing structure. He intentionally removed lifetime deals and provides fewer choices that leads to a higher conversion rate. When you ask users what they want from pricing, they'll always tell you they want a lifetime offer at the lowest possible price. Listen to that feedback and you find yourself struggling to generate any meaningful revenue. Victor focuses on weekly and annual subscriptions that work best.

3:41 Weekly is perfect for testing and annual for those who want the best deal. Weekly pricing can be a hard pill to swallow, especially when you're first starting out. It's hard to justify why someone's going to pay $8 a week for your app. But it turns out a lot of people actually prefer this pricing model. And I guess that's because there's less of a commitment to sign up for a week than there is to sign up for a year. And it's a good way to evaluate whether this app is even going to be something the user is going to use in a couple of months time. And if that's the case, they will generally navigate towards the annual subscription once they've been through the cycle a few times on the weekly plan. Retention. Keep it simple. Listen to user feedback and regularly ship new features. Branding. Victor creates a unique name for each app. And competitors often start using his own brand in their keywords. And looking through Victor's portfolio, I can see a trend here. Each app has its own beautiful brand. Each has its own identity and name with its own logo.

4:53 I've been learning a lot from Victor here. If you make your app too broadly named, it's easy for copycats to create clones. Then users just don't know which one is the original. Instead, targeting keywords and creating a brand around the app is key. And then when the app takes off, uses share your app by name. And talking about app store optimization, Victor uses any tool that works for his research. He just makes sure in the title he always includes the keyword and app name. And he focuses on localization. He calls it the easiest way to grow by translating keywords, screenshots, and the app itself. And this is a topic that I don't cover all that much because it's a strategy I haven't dived into, but Victor makes this a standard practice with every app that he builds. He translates the app store listing, the app itself into multiple languages, and this has the added benefit of targeting even more keywords in local languages and helping you grow your app further. And following on from that, Victor focuses on price optimization by adjusting his prices based on the purchasing power index. And an easy way to do this and to find the purchasing power index is just to do a search for how much a Big Mac costs in each country and then adjust your prices accordingly. And then he focuses on personal use using each app he builds on himself. This is called dog fooding. And when you use software yourself, you become your own target user and you get to see things that you could have missed. Oh, that could be a bit smoother. Oh, that could go there instead of there. It's also a great way to come up with even more app ideas. So, we can summarize Victor's strategy with three main categories. Product design and experience. He focuses on creating highquality usercentric apps that builds trust and delivers value quickly. Focus on design, quality, onboarding, ease of use, transparency pricing models. And then there's the monetization strategy.

7:08 He focuses on effective pricing models that aim to boost monthly recurring revenue and simplify the users's decision-making process. And then growth and optimization, focusing on sustainable long-term growth through app store optimization, branding, and the user feedback loop. Pay attention to retention, branding, app store optimization, and localization.