How I Built It: $40K/Month iPhone App

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How I Built It: $40K/Month iPhone App

Starter Story

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Sep 24, 2024

This is how Steven Cravotta built a viral iPhone app to over $40,000/month.

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TikTok (link)
99designs (link)
Upwork (link)
MixPanel (link)
Amplitude (link)
RevenueCat (link)
Superwall (link)

So my mobile app Puff Count is currently doing 40 000 per month in recurring revenue

I honestly don't think you need any experience to build mobile apps because to be honest

I didn't have any

How did this guy build a 40 000 per month mobile app with no coding experience

Well it's all because of his unconventional approach to shipping

Marketing really is 95 of the success of a mobile app

Stephen Cravata started his journey as a typical online entrepreneur

jumping from one business model to another while not seeing really any success with anything

But one day he stumbled upon mobile apps and immediately recognized the opportunity

Not a lot of people are doing mobile apps right now

but it's a lot easier than a lot of people think to get into It's untapped

So I gave Stephen a call and asked him about his business

and how anyone can start building similar profitable mobile apps from scratch

Luckily he shared his entire process how to find and validate your idea

how to build an app with no experience and how to market and monetize it

All right let's get into it

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

What's up Stephen It's exciting to have you

Thanks for joining the show

Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and the business that you built

Yeah sure

I'm Stephen Cravata

I build viral mobile apps

I've amassed over 12 million downloads on my apps in total

I'm working on an app right now called Puff Count

that is currently doing 40 000 in monthly recurring revenue

So this is the last 30 days of sales for Puff Count

As you can see we did 43 000 in sales

And if we look at the last 90 we have done just over 112 000 in sales

So before we get into how people can actually start building these apps

can you tell us what you really like about this business model

With apps there's unlimited scale

You can reach anyone on the planet

and all you have to do is build it once and you can sell it a million times

So it's unlike any other business in that way

But also it's a lot easier than a lot of people think to get into

With no code tools and with Upwork you can build these apps in less than a month

And there's templates online so you don't have to start from scratch anymore

The biggest misconception people have is that it's hard to get into

So not a lot of people are doing mobile apps right now

It's untapped

But I honestly don't think you need any experience to build mobile apps

because to be honest I didn't have any

I don't design anything

I don't develop anything

I just have the idea and I know how to put a team together

You just need to be driven and not give up on your idea

Got it

Okay let's talk about how you can actually build something like this step by step

Everything starts with an idea right

Can you share your ideation process

I take mental notes of problems that I experience in my day to day life

If you're building an app from the position of solving a problem for yourself

you become the ideal user

And that makes you so much better at creating the product

and making it useful for the people you're trying to reach

If you can solve a problem for someone

and you can kind of take them through this transformation

whether it be weight loss dieting quitting vaping

If you can improve someone's life they are going to love your product

And the marketing becomes much easier as well right

Because you can be like hey you have an XYZ problem

Here's the solution

So everything becomes easy if you're solving a problem for someone

Steven is the perfect example of how someone with zero experience

turned a simple idea into thousands of dollars

But that came with knowing the right information

and having the right problem to solve

Now imagine there was a place that gave you all this

The problems to solve the blueprints to solve them

and the strategies that turn simple ideas into million dollar online businesses

Well that's what you're going to get at Starter Story

It's a library of over 4 000 case studies and business idea breakdowns

where you can access this

All backed by data from real entrepreneurs

So if you're serious about building a profitable side project

head to the first link in the description

and we're going to give you 52 micro SaaS ideas just like Steven's

so you can get started on your journey right now

Okay so scratching your own itch is definitely the way to go

if you want to find a painful problem

But what do you do after you get the idea for your app

How do you actually validate it's an idea worth building

I did market research

I looked at Sensor Tower looked at other you know

quit drinking or quit smoking cigarettes apps

and I saw that they were crushing it

Looked at Google Trends saw that vaping was on the rise

and then probably the most important part was I looked on TikTok

I saw that vape videos were going super viral on TikTok

But I think where a lot of young entrepreneurs especially fall short

is they give up on the idea too quickly

If you have a good idea and it solves a problem for people

like commit to it

Just like me for Puff Counter

The first four to six months I didn't make any money

It was only after I locked in the marketing

Like marketing is 90 of being successful and validating an idea

All right we'll definitely touch on the marketing later

But for now let's focus on building the app

What do you do after the idea is locked in

What I do is I brain dump everything

So I get on Google Docs and I brain dump all the ideas

all the features that I want in the app

I put all the competitors there and I kind of write out

you know what I think the app should do

And then from there I literally take a piece of paper and a pencil

pencil and I start to sketch out the app

When you're looking at these competitors

and you're seeing who's making money in your niche

in the market on the app store

you should be taking note of everything

Their features their onboarding their UI

That will give you a good guide into what a good app looks like

And then you take those sketches

and you upload them to a site called 99designs

You upload those sketches and you say

here's the app here's the premise of it here are the features

make my app come to life

And you'll have 50 60 sometimes 70 plus professional UI designers

all submit their idea of what your app should look like

This is how I developed the UI for literally all of my apps

Okay And what about turning that design into an actual working app

How do you build it with no coding experience

You go on to Upwork and you look for a developer

You can price it based on like the complexity of your app

For an app like PuffCount it's fairly straightforward

A couple of main features

You get that done for less than five grand right

You can get the MVP out there

I recommend only hiring developers from Eastern Europe

They're going to give you the best quality code for a cheaper price

Once you have your developer that you'd like to go with

you do it on a per project completion basis

So I don't pay anyone per hour

I pay them when the app is complete it's on the store

There's no bugs but 100 you can build an app for less than 1 000

You can go to a website called ThemeForest

and you can download a pretty decent starter template for any app out there

And again you know just launching an MVP like keep it simple

And if your budget is tighter like the simpler your app the better

And how do we trust the developer

What if they steal the idea for our app

It's never been a problem for me

And also your ideas are worth absolutely nothing

And more likely than not the idea that you have for this app already exists

So like the ideas out there you just have to trust someone

I always take like a 15 minute interview call with the people that I like

from the applicants on Upwork

I get their vibe

I see are they coming to the table with more ideas for my app

Do they seem excited about it

How do they present

But you have to get past that fear of hiring someone online that you don't really know

Like that's part of being a founder is finding great talent

trusting them and iterating as you go

Okay now let's talk about the elephant in the room

Marketing share your strategy

Marketing really is 95 of the success of a mobile app

And TikTok is the best way to market any app

The only thing you need to be successful on TikTok is

you need to know how to do market research

So that's exactly what I did

I went on TikTok I typed in vaping and I saved all of the most viral videos there

And I put them into a spreadsheet so I could really understand what the hook was

what the value was how they were shooting the content

For example this one that got 8 3 million views

drove tens of thousands of downloads for Puff account

I saw a viral video

This guy had like 20 million plus views taking apart a vape

So I was like okay cool

I'm going to use the same concept

And I'm going to show people exactly what are in a vape

And then at the end conveniently call to action baby

Nothing crazy

I think where a lot of people go wrong is like

they'll make the entire video about their products

and they'll talk about the features and all this other stuff

And then it becomes a clear sales video

Like that sucks

No one wants to watch a sales video on TikTok

My TikToks are entertainment first call to action at the end

A quick two second call to action

Okay so right now TikTok organic is the bread and butter of marketing mobile apps

But are there any other marketing channels that have worked well for you

The beautiful thing about organic TikTok is if the video does well organically

it's a great indicator that it's a great creative in general

You can put them on paid ads and click the spend my money button

That's literally all you have to do because as long as the creative is good

the algorithms on Facebook ads or TikTok ads or whatever

they will optimize around that solid creative and they will find you customers

What you can also do is you can find influencers on these platforms

and you can pay them to make content for you

In my experience it's tough to you know work with influencers

They always want a ton of cash and they don't really care

you know how the videos perform for you

But you can find those diamond in the rough creators

and you can reach out to them and get pretty cheap content

And you can use that and scale that way

As well

Okay cool

Now let's talk about the next step of the process of building a mobile

Monetization

What's the best strategy to turn these users or turn these eyeballs into paying customers

Yeah so there's many different ways to monetize apps

And in my first games I monetized through ads

because people were on the app all the time

They were playing the game a lot

So the ads worked well for Grid and Wordle

But for these tool focused apps like Puffcount

ads don't really work because you're not expecting the user

to be on your app for a super long period of time

So the way you monetize that is through in app purchases

You need the user to either buy your app or commit to monthly yearly weekly subscription

The kind of strategy that everyone is using now is the app is free

You go through the onboarding and then you hit what is called a hard paywall

This is essentially a screen that asks you to pay

pay And if you don't pay you can't access the features in the app

A hard paywall is unskippable

When I changed Puffcount to a hard paywall

and I made users commit to a free trial before they could use any features in the app

it changed my business overnight

My conversion rate shot through the roof upwards of 20 25

Nice

And what about pricing

How can someone find the best price point for their app

I A B tested different pricings

I started at 4 went up to 12 right

With a lot of users coming to your app you're getting a lot of data

and you're understanding which price point gives you the highest LTV

the highest lifetime value

I use Superwall to do this

You can remotely configure your paywalls and you can change the price

without sending app store updates

You can do it much quicker

And Superwall will actually tell you which price point will give you the best LTV

So I just optimize for that the highest LTV price point

You mentioned earlier that before getting hit with the paywall

the user is being walked through the onboarding process

What's your experience with that

The onboarding is super important because this is an opportunity for you

to walk the user through their own problem

So for example on PuffCount my onboarding is extensive

and I ask the users a lot of questions

And some people say that's annoying

I don't want to do that

I just want to get into the app

But the data has told me that if I walk the users through the onboarding

they commit time and I'm able to walk them through their problem

that PuffCount is solving

So when they hit the paywall they've thought about their problem a lot

lot and they're like wow I actually really do need to quit

quit or I really do need this product

And they're much more likely to convert

All right now let's get technical

What tools and software do you use to build all of these apps

The tech stack I use to build apps is pretty short

I use Upwork to find and hire developers

I use 99designs to get the UI built

I use Superwall to A B test my paywalls

Optimizing your paywall is how you're going to make money with your app

Like you need to optimize your paywall and find the highest LTV

So that is 100 essential

Everyone who has a mobile app should be using Superwall

I use RevenueCat for analytics data

RevenueCat is good too because that will give you more data on your user lifetime value

And again your user lifetime value is like the most important metric in your app

You need to understand how much paying users are generating you over their lifetime

so that you know how much you can spend on paid ads or on influencers or on installs

And as long as your customer acquisition cost is lower than your LTV

you're making money

I use AppSupplier as my MMP

It connects with my mobile app and Facebook or TikTok ads

and sends data back to those platforms

I use TikTok and Facebook ads to send traffic

I also use Mixpanel and Amplitude to get kind of more in depth analytics in my products

and see what people are doing in the app once they do download it once they do pay

And cheat code is like you should stay on the free plans

I don't think you should ever really upgrade Mixpanel or Amplitude

Like you should get your data understand what you need to change and then get out

All right for anyone looking for ideas I want to ask

what do you think is the most lucrative niche to build an app in right now

When I look at like the most profitable niches in mobile apps

I think a lot of them do have to do with helping people be better

Lose weight quit vaping quit drinking

Anything in the health space I think will absolutely crush

And of course like there are already apps that are doing really well

Like in fitness you have like MyFitnessPal

and you have all these weight training apps

But it comes down to the marketing

Can you get in front of people at a cheaper cost than these mobile apps right

Being a young founder you truly do have an advantage

advantage because all these old heads in the industry these big

slow moving companies that never iterate on their idea

a small nimble entrepreneur can take them out

All it takes is one viral TikTok

All right another question for you

Some people watching this right now may have started a couple other things before

but didn't see immediate results and eventually gave up or quit

What advice would you give to those people

The struggle of building something new is

it's never going to be perfect on the first try

But I've done this enough times now to know it's a process

and you have to keep iterating

I know it's a good idea

I know it can make money

That's all I need

I don't need it to work super quick right

Like I just need that validation

And then I can go out into the market and talk to customers

and make it better over time

Everything is built over time

Puff Count's been live for four years

but only last six or seven months have I really made decent revenue per month

It takes time it takes commitment and you have to be willing to learn

All right next question

How does a day in the life look like for a mobile app builder like you

I'm actually nomading

I've been traveling for about six months now

I'm in Europe time

So my day doesn't start till later in the afternoon

like 1pm is when I start hopping on the phone and talking to people

So I have my morning to myself

make a coffee go to the gym get a workout in

And then I'm in the zone to start building

start talking to my team start taking sales calls whatever it is

And I work till 7 8 9pm sometimes much later

depending on what's getting done

And then you know on the weekends

I have a chance to explore an entirely new city and new culture

and meet new people and try new things

So inspiration is a fleeting feeling

And when you do feel inspired to build an app

or build a new project or work super hard

like you have to take advantage of it

Going back to why I kind of like decided to be a nomad and travel

like it's so I can do more of that

So when I had these moments of inspiration

inspiration I wasn't distracted by anything

I can lock in

All right last question that we always ask

If you could stand on young Stephen's shoulders

shoulders and give him some advice or advice for anyone who wants to make it

in this online business world what advice would you give

First of all it's not as hard as you think

Like you just have to be driven and you have to you know

know be willing to work with people who have skill sets that you don't

Outsource what you're bad at and build a team around you

build a team that you trust treat your team well

And again don't give up super early on the idea

It takes months sometimes years for a project to take off

Relentlessly talk to users

users get feedback and iterate based on data

A huge mistake that I see first time mobile app founders doing is like

they're like hey I have this random idea for a feature in my app that I think

I'm going to spend two months developing right before launching my MVP

Don't do that

Like go to market with something simple that you can afford

get feedback from users and then build on top of it with your team

All right Stephen thank you so much for your time

The businesses that you've built are amazing

And thank you for coming on here and sharing it with everyone

Peace brother

Yo guys I really hope you enjoyed the rest of the video

video and got some good takeaways from Stephen

But I want to say something quick

At the end of the day the point of these videos is to inspire you

and show you that this is possible so that you can go start your own thing on your own

While learning is important and will give you new ideas

action is the thing that's actually going to move the needle forward

and take you where you want to go

go So research learn find an idea and then go build that shit as fast as you can

If you're still feeling a little lost right now

click that first link in the description and you're going to get a free list of

Micro SaaS business ideas so you can get going on your side project

Much love and I'll see you guys in the next one

Peace

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