I studied 30,600 apps making $20k-100k/mo+, the method is stupidly easy

only 1.7% of apps in the iOS App Store make $20k/mo+ that's over 30,000 apps (i researched all manually, no ai)

i've also lost $300k+ making expensive mistakes, and most of them could've been very easily avoided.

so if CAN'T afford to spend years and hundreds of thousands figuring everything out yourself, you probably can't afford to ignore what's already working.

mobile apps are especially interesting because the hardest part used to be building.

you needed Swift, developers, months for an MVP and then somehow had to get the thing through the App Store.

that's changed.

tools like Claude Code made building dramatically easier, which means the advantage moved somewhere else:

picking the right idea, shipping fast, getting people to pay, and DISTRIBUTION.

and i have spent years building internet businesses together, and after studying thousands of successful apps, the same patterns keep showing up.@chddaniel

the ideas repeat. the onboarding repeats. the marketing repeats.

you just need to understand the patterns and execute them better.

here's exactly how i'd do it from zero today:

1. YOUR APP IDEA MATTERS WAY MORE THAN YOU THINK

you can do everything else correctly and still make this unnecessarily difficult for yourself by picking a problem nobody really cares about.

it's called B2C for a reason.

business to consumer.

but somehow the consumer is the part people forget about.

before thinking about features, branding or what AI model you're going to use, figure out who is actually supposed to pull out their card and pay for this thing.

then ask the more important question:

why would they care enough to do it?

if i had limited time and money, i'd heavily favor problems people already feel.

things like:

• losing weight
• looking better
• screen time addiction
• getting over an ex
• improving sleep
• quitting an addiction
• relationships
• tracking food
• getting stronger

you don't need to convince someone that these problems exist.

they already think about them.

they search for them.

they watch content about them.

and most importantly, they already spend money trying to solve them.

look at Cal AI.

📷cal ai website

the entire product can basically be explained in one sentence:

take a photo of your food and instantly track the calories.

that's it.

there are obviously a lot more things happening inside the product, but the reason somebody downloads it is incredibly easy to understand.

people want to lose weight. tracking calories helps. manually searching for every ingredient and entering everything you eat is annoying.

Cal AI removes part of that friction.

the app reportedly did around $28k in its first month, $115k in its second month and eventually reached roughly $1m in monthly recurring revenue within six months.

the lesson here isn't to open Shipper and build another Cal AI.

the lesson is that a very simple solution attached to a massive existing desire can become an enormous business.

and competition shouldn't automatically scare you away from one of these markets either.

Steve Hoyek's Journable is a good example.

it's another calorie tracking app entering a category where there were already countless alternatives. instead of looking at that and deciding the opportunity was gone, they looked at what people disliked about the existing products.

a lot of calorie trackers had become complicated.

so Journable went in the opposite direction and focused heavily on making the experience simpler.

it eventually crossed $100k/month, with most of that revenue reportedly coming from Android, which is another interesting lesson by itself considering how heavily mobile founders tend to focus on iOS.

competition can actually be one of the strongest forms of validation.

if you find a category with 5 apps doing $20k, $50k or $100k+ every month, you now know people are willing to pay for the problem.

compare that with finding some completely untouched idea where nobody has built anything similar.

maybe you've discovered an incredible blue ocean.

or maybe nobody built it because nobody wants it.

i'd rather have evidence.

before committing to an app, i'd want to know whether multiple competitors are already making serious money, how big the biggest players have become and, just as importantly, how they're acquiring customers.

because the way an app grows should influence what you build too.

a product that naturally works in a 7-second TikTok demo is different from something that needs 3 minutes of explanation.

an app where users naturally share their results gives you a completely different distribution advantage from one where everything happens privately.

a product built around transformation can naturally produce before-and-after content.

these things matter before you write a single prompt.

so don't spend weeks trying to invent a problem nobody has ever solved before.

find a market where people are already spending money, understand why the existing products work, find the parts customers still hate and then decide where you can make something meaningfully better or different.

you don't need to reinvent human behavior.

you need to build around behavior that already exists.

2. ONCE YOU'VE PICKED IT, BUILD FAST

once the idea is validated, your next goal is getting it into the App Store as fast as possible.

your first version should not take 3 months to build. i'd aim for 7 days, maybe 14 if what you're building genuinely needs more time.

anything longer and there's a good chance you're building things nobody has asked for yet.

the first version only really needs 3 things:

1. Onboarding 2. Monetization 3. The core app loop

that's the app.

everything else can be added once real people are actually using it.

and this is where building mobile apps in 2026 is completely different.

with Shipper, you don't need to start with an empty project and manually turn every idea in your head into code. but that also doesn't mean you should open it and type:

"build me a fitness app"

then expect something incredible to appear.

📷shipper website

before i build anything, i'd find the best apps in the category and use them as research.

download 5 or 10 of them. go through the entire experience as if you were a customer. screenshot the onboarding, paywall, home screen, core feature and any interaction you think is particularly good.

pay attention to what they don't include too.

then use all of that to figure out what your app should actually be.

you're not trying to copy another app screen for screen. you're trying to understand the decisions underneath it.

why does the onboarding ask that question?

why is the paywall shown there?

why does the main screen only have 3 actions?

why does the result look like that?

once you understand those decisions, you can give Shipper significantly better context about what you want to build.

instead of describing everything with words, show it.

give it screenshots.

give it visual references.

explain the entire user journey.

tell it what happens when somebody opens the app, what the main action is, what happens afterward and how you want the product to feel.

AI builders are only as good as the context you give them.

if you're vague, you're forcing the AI to make dozens of product and design decisions for you.

then people blame the builder when they get something generic.

don't make it guess.

the process i'd use is basically:

#1 find the apps already winning in your niche #2 screenshot and break down their onboarding, paywall and core loop #3 decide what your version does differently #4 give Shipper the plan + visual references and build the first version #5 keep iterating until the app actually feels like something you'd download yourself

and #5 is where most people get lazy.

getting a functioning app isn't the finish line.

if the first version looks generic, keep going.

if the spacing feels wrong, fix it. if the typography makes it look cheap, change it. if a screen has too much going on, simplify it. if you can't explain what you want, find an app that does it well and attach the screenshot.

there's basically no reason anymore for vibe coded = AI slop.

the tools are good enough.

you just need enough taste to recognize when something isn't finished yet, and enough patience to keep prompting until it is.

this matters even more for consumer apps because UI can literally become a distribution channel.

if somebody sees your app for 3 seconds in a TikTok and immediately wants to know what it is, the design just helped you acquire a customer.

if users screenshot their results and share them with friends, your product is creating its own content.

and if the app is polished enough to get featured by Apple, good design can turn into organic distribution you never paid for.

so yes, BUILD FAST.

but fast doesn't mean shipping whatever the AI gives you on prompt #1.

use Shipper to compress months of development into days, then spend the time you saved making the product actually feel worth paying for.

3. ONBOARDING IS WHERE THE MONEY IS MADE

this is probably the part of your app i'd spend the most time studying because by the time somebody reaches your onboarding, you've already done the difficult part of getting their attention.

they saw the TikTok, clicked through, went to the App Store, downloaded the app and actually opened it. you might've already paid to acquire them or spent days creating the content that brought them there.

and now you have one job: don't waste that attention.

most apps immediately do exactly that.

"welcome!"

"here are our 3 amazing features"

"create your account"

nobody cares.

your onboarding shouldn't feel like instructions for using the app. it should feel like the beginning of actually using it.

📷Provide a caption (optional)

think of the whole flow as moving somebody through a sequence of beliefs:

i have this problem → this app understands my problem → this could actually help me → i want the result

and only then do you ask them to pay.

that's why the questions you ask aren't there just because you want more information about the user. every screen should have a specific reason for existing.

some questions help you personalize what comes next. others make the user think about how serious their problem actually is. some screens show proof that the solution works, while others create a small amount of commitment before asking the user to make a bigger one.

and whenever possible, let them experience the actual product before asking for money.

if you're building a calorie app, don't spend 15 screens explaining how good your food scanner is. let them scan something.

if you're building a screen-time app, show them what their current behavior actually looks like.

if you're building a looksmaxing app, give them a piece of the analysis.

the user should reach the paywall already wanting whatever comes after it.

this is also why i'd almost never design an onboarding completely from scratch.

the largest apps in your category have already spent years figuring this out. they've tested different questions, different screen orders, different copy, different paywalls, different prices and probably hundreds of variations you'll never see.

study the final result of all those experiments.

don't blindly copy their screens. understand why they're there.

if three of the biggest apps in your category all ask a similar question before showing the result, there's probably a reason. if they all introduce social proof at roughly the same point, pay attention. if everyone delays the paywall until after a personalized result, that's something worth testing too.

Cal AI is probably one of the clearest examples of how far this can go.

their team reportedly ran 123 A/B experiments, tested 160 unique paywall designs and created 424 total variants, with 61 meaningful experiments specifically around the onboarding paywall.

during that period, monthly revenue grew more than 3x and trial-to-paid conversion improved by 31%.

that's not one genius onboarding someone designed in an afternoon.

that's hundreds of small decisions being tested until the numbers moved.

and that's how i'd think about yours too.

your first onboarding is just the first hypothesis.

once you have enough users coming through it, start looking at where they leave. test the opening. remove unnecessary screens. change the questions. move the aha moment earlier. change when you show social proof. test the paywall. test the offer.

you don't need to rebuild the entire thing every week.

sometimes moving one screen or changing one sentence can affect what happens to every single user who downloads your app afterward.

your paywall isn't something you design once, and your onboarding isn't something you ever really finish.

they're part of the growth engine.

build the first version, get real people through it, find where you're losing them and keep improving that part.

then repeat.

4. DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE APP IS APPROVED TO START MARKETING

You should already be working on distribution while the app is being built. Start by looking at the apps you used for inspiration earlier, except this time don't study their product. Study exactly how they're getting customers.

Find their TikTok and Instagram accounts, search the app name to find creators posting about it, look for the founder's account, find their ads and save every piece of content that performed unusually well. You aren't trying to become completely original yet. You are trying to understand what the algorithm and the customer have already proven they respond to.

Look at the hook, the first frame, how quickly the app appears, how the product is demonstrated and what CTA they use. If you see the same format working over and over again across multiple apps in the same niche, that's not something to ignore. It's basically free market research.

Then start making your own versions in volume.

This is where the Marketing Hierarchy from earlier actually becomes useful:

Tier 0 = Low views Tier 1 = Views Tier 2 = Views + Engagement Tier 3 = Views + Engagement + Downloads Tier 4 = Views + Engagement + Downloads + Conversions Tier 5 = Views + Engagement + Downloads + Conversions + Low churn

Understanding which tier you're stuck at tells you what you actually need to fix.

Tier 0 means the content itself isn't working. Your hook isn't strong enough to make somebody stop scrolling, so nothing underneath it matters yet.

Tier 1 means you've figured out attention, but attention by itself is worthless. A video getting 500k views and producing almost no downloads isn't a winning piece of marketing just because the number underneath it looks impressive.

Tier 2 is where this becomes even more deceptive. You can have thousands of likes and comments while still making almost nothing. Maybe the creator is entertaining, maybe the topic is controversial, maybe people are arguing in the comments. None of that means they want your app.

Don't celebrate engagement until you've confirmed that the engagement is actually moving people further down the funnel.

Tier 3 is when the content finally starts doing its job. People watch, understand what the app does and actually download it. If you get thousands of downloads from a piece of content but barely anybody converts, stop blaming the video. Your problem has moved further down the funnel and you need to go back to the onboarding or paywall.

Tier 4 is when everything starts connecting. Views become downloads and downloads become paying users. This is where you finally have something worth scaling.

And Tier 5 is the real goal. The marketing worked, the onboarding worked, people paid, and the product actually delivered enough value that they stayed.

This is why I don't really care about "going viral" by itself. You can get millions of views and make almost nothing, while another video with 100k views can bring in thousands of dollars because every person watching it is exactly who the app was made for.

The goal isn't views. The goal is finding content that moves people through the entire hierarchy.

Once you find that, don't immediately get creative again.

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make. You finally find a format that works, then after posting it five times you get bored and decide you need something new. You have seen every single one of your posts. Your audience hasn't.

If one hook keeps bringing downloads, make another 20 versions of it. If screen-recording demos work, keep making them. If slideshows work, make more slideshows. Change the story, opening line, person, example or visual, but keep the underlying format that already proved itself.

Volume is extremely important here because you're basically running experiments. Ten videos barely tell you anything. Once you've made 50, 100 or 200, patterns start becoming obvious. You'll notice certain hooks constantly outperforming, certain problems getting more comments, certain demos creating more downloads and certain creators converting far better than everyone else.

That's when you can start multiplying yourself.

Instead of immediately hiring influencers with huge audiences, I'd look for smaller creators who clearly understand short-form content. Follower count matters far less than whether they can actually make people stop scrolling. Someone with 8,000 followers and multiple videos above 500k views can be far more useful than someone with 300,000 followers whose audience barely cares about anything they post.

Look at their content, their communication, whether they're comfortable on camera and whether they've repeatedly shown that they understand hooks. Then give them everything you've already learned: your best-performing videos, competitor examples, winning hooks, screen recordings and the angles that have already produced downloads.

You don't want creators figuring out your entire marketing strategy for you.

You want them producing more variations of a strategy you've already started proving.

Once you get that right, distribution starts becoming a machine. Instead of you making 5 videos, you might have 5 creators making 5 videos each. Then 10 creators. Then more accounts. Suddenly you're testing hundreds of creatives and learning significantly faster than someone posting whenever they feel inspired.

And the winners from all of that organic content give you the next step.

5. SCALE THE WINNERS

Paid ads should come after you've already figured out what people respond to.

Too many founders do this backwards. They build an app, make three random ads, put $200/day behind them and then conclude paid acquisition doesn't work when they lose money.

You're paying to test something you could've tested organically.

If you've already made 100 pieces of content and 5 of them generated most of your downloads, those are the concepts I'd start spending money on. Take the same underlying idea and create more versions with different hooks, creators, openings and demos.

Paid ads should amplify something that's already working, not rescue something that isn't.

Once you start spending, the entire business also becomes much easier to understand because you can finally see the economics clearly.

Say you spend $1,000 and get 500 installs. Out of those 500 installs, 50 start a trial and 20 eventually pay. Now you know exactly where the biggest opportunities are.

Improve the creative and that same $1,000 might buy 700 installs. Improve your App Store conversion and more of the people you send there actually download. Improve onboarding and maybe 75 people start a trial instead of 50. Improve the paywall and maybe 30 pay instead of 20.

Then improve retention and every one of those customers becomes worth more.

This is why small improvements start compounding so aggressively once you have distribution. You're no longer optimizing random screens. You're improving the economics of the entire machine.

And only now would I start spending significantly more time improving the actual product.

At this point you finally have enough users to tell you what matters. Read App Store reviews, support messages, refund requests and cancellation reasons. Look at where people disappear. Look at what your best customers repeatedly use and what people keep asking you for.

But don't make the mistake of turning every request into another feature.

Your question should always be: does this make the core promise of the app stronger?

Sometimes the best product improvement is a new feature. Other times it's removing three screens, making the first result happen 30 seconds faster, changing the default experience, improving the output or rewriting one section of onboarding.

You're trying to improve revenue, conversion, retention or the actual result the customer came for. You're not trying to win an award for having the longest feature list.

Then scaling becomes surprisingly simple.

If one creator keeps producing customers, give them more work. If one content format keeps generating downloads, make 30 variations. If one ad stays profitable, scale it and make more creatives around the same idea. If one audience converts twice as well as everybody else, go deeper into that audience.

Most people imagine scaling as constantly discovering new growth hacks.

In reality, a huge part of it is just finding something that works and refusing to stop doing it.

THE FORMULA IS LITERALLY

1. Find a proven app category with a painful enough problem. You don't need to invent a completely new market. If multiple apps are already making serious money solving the same problem, that's validation.

2. Build in 7 days, not 7 months. Study what already works, use references, build the onboarding, paywall and core loop in Shipper, then give the app enough taste that it doesn't look like another AI-generated clone.

3. Treat onboarding like part of your marketing. Getting the download isn't the finish line. The user still needs to understand their problem, experience the value and have a strong enough reason to pay.

4. Find proven distribution formats and make them in massive volume. Don't judge success by views. Track whether those views become downloads and whether those downloads become money.

5. Scale whatever survives the entire funnel. More creators, more winning creatives, more paid spend, better conversion and better retention.

that's really it.

Today is August 27th, and we are 65% done with the year.

Don't just bookmark this and let another day go by without taking action.

Build something amazing.