743: $1,000 a Month with Simple Vibe-Coded Apps

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Side Hustle Show — Episode 743

Title: $1,000 a Month with Simple Vibe-Coded Apps
Host: Nick Loper
Guest: Steve Young (appmasters.com)
Date: June 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into creating profitable, simple mobile apps (“vibe-coded apps”) that solve singular problems and can bring in $1,000 or more per month—even for beginners. Nick Loper welcomes app marketing expert Steve Young, who shares actionable steps, research tactics, optimization methods, and monetization strategies based on years of experience and real-world results. The focus: leverage demand-driven ideas, keyword research, and straightforward user experiences to create passive-income side hustles in the app store ecosystem.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Focus on Distribution, Not Features

• [01:50] Steve Young: “First time founders focus on features. Second time founders focus on distribution.”

  • Building the right app means going where demand already exists.
  • Keyword and app store optimization (ASO) are far more important for success than endlessly refining features.

• [03:10] Steve Young: “All you really need is 100 downloads a day to have a six figure business in the app space. [...] If you just want $1,000 a month, that’s only ~10 downloads a day.”

2. Finding Profitable App Ideas

• Leverage Free Tools:

  • ASOMobile.net for keyword and volume research ([05:14]).
  • SensorTower for seeing grossing apps and their revenue ([07:45]).
  • Keywords Everywhere browser plugin for Google keyword volumes ([13:07]).

• Look for Specific, Narrow Keywords:

  • Example search terms: “JPEG to PDF,” “paraphrase tool,” “green noise” ([05:14]-[07:22]).
  • Steve highlights the method of “unbundling” features from big, competitive apps and focusing on overlooked user needs.

• [07:38] Nick Loper: “The play is to look at the apps that are super popular, that are doing well, and then almost an unbundling of some of their feature set because people may not need the whole thing or want the go-to source for this specific problem.”

3. App Store Competition & Keyword Strategy

• Check volume AND competition:
  • Assess how many apps have your target keyword in their title ([10:36]).
  • Examine the number of ratings for each app in search results; low numbers signal opportunity ([11:16]).
  • Avoid directly competing with hyper-saturated giants (Calm, Headspace).

4. Monetization and Paywall Best Practices

• Implement a paywall at onboarding:

  • Changed a $2.99 one-time fee app to a $60/year subscription by adding an onboarding paywall—a move that 4x-5x'd revenue without adding features ([03:49]-[04:38]).
  • Hard paywalls (no free option, no “X” to close) double activation rates; freemium can work but test both.

• Copy competitor pricing:

  • Research leading apps and match their pricing; for example, if Endel charges $60/year, so should your equivalent niche app ([22:08]).
  • One-time-use tools (like converters) often convert best with weekly subscriptions; recurring subs are preferred ([22:47]-[23:04]).

• [24:29] Steve Young: “With one-time use apps, weekly tends to perform very well. Like JPEG to PDF converter, paraphrase [...] If it's a frequency app people use every day, go with yearly.”

5. Launch & Optimization Process

• Start simple: Launch a minimal app to test downloads before investing in features or fancy branding ([25:45]).
  • “Time is the most important variable. If you can't do screenshots, you’ll be fine. Get distribution first.” ([35:25])
• App Title and Screenshots:
  • Use exact keywords for the app name/title.
  • The first screenshot should showcase the app’s keyword and, ideally, a human face ([20:15]).
  • “You don't need a full branding package. The app name is literally the keyword you're targeting.” ([20:38])

6. Steve’s “Greatest Growth Hack” for App Store Growth

• [26:11] Steve Young: “Lifetime growth hack”:

  • Run a lifetime deal promo through platforms like Indie App Santa for a big boost in downloads and reviews, which drive organic ranking.
  • Prompt for app ratings after initial use or positive action for a surge in reviews (boosting ASO) ([27:14]-[28:02]).

• ASO + reviews + optimized paywall = massive growth potential.

  • Case study: $200/mo app → $7,000/mo & $90k in first year with no new features, just better ASO and lifetime offer ([28:02]).

7. Conversion Boosting Paywall Language

• “Free” in feature descriptions increases conversion by 11% ([36:50]).
• “Continue” instead of “subscribe” boosts conversions 30%+ on iOS ([37:13]).
• “No payment now” below the call to action increases trial activations ([37:36]).
• Match plan comparison timeframes (e.g., annual vs weekly) for easier decision-making—this increases conversions by 38% ([38:39]).

8. Platform & Passive Income Recommendations

• iOS monetizes far better than Android; launch on iOS first ([37:36],[39:18]).
• Passive maintenance: Once ranked, only occasional optimization & minor customer support are needed. Apple handles refunds ([40:56]-[41:29]).

9. Buying, Selling, and Valuing Apps

• App businesses can be sold/bought on Flippa or via brokers.
• Valuation: Typically 2–4x annual earnings ([46:28]).
• Look for apps with clear keyword opportunities and under-optimized monetization to acquire and grow ([42:46]-[44:41]).
• Multiple small apps (singles, not home runs) can stack to significant income.

10. Hit Rate & Realistic Expectations

• Only 4 out of 10 launched apps generate meaningful revenue. Quantity and iteration are critical—don’t expect every attempt to succeed ([48:45]).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [01:50] Steve Young: “First time founders focus on features. Second time founders focus on distribution.”
• [03:10] Steve Young: “All you really need is 100 downloads a day to have a six figure business in the app space.”
• [03:53] Steve Young: “You have to ask for the pay. That app did not have it. We added the paywall to the onboarding, increased the price, and instantly went from $1–2k to $8–10k revenue. Just like that.”
• [20:38] Steve Young: “You don't need more features. You can literally just do a one featured product.”
• [26:11] Steve Young: “My favorite strategy is what I call a lifetime growth hack. Greatest growth hack in the world.”
• [36:50] Steve Young: “Time is the most important variable. Whatever gets you distribution quickest, do it.”
• [37:13] Steve Young: “No payment now right underneath your call to action increases the trial activations by 30%.”
• [46:28] Steve Young: “It's roughly around 2–4x. We've sold a bunch for two. We acquired a bunch for two. This one we just recently acquired was around 2.5.”
• [50:39] Steve Young: “Distribution, Nick. I would say think about distribution with any business. How are you going to get eyeballs? If you can figure out how to get eyeballs, you can figure out the rest.”

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Notable Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:50 | Features vs. distribution & why keyword research matters | | 03:10 | Feasibility of app income by downloads | | 05:14 | Using ASOMobile for keyword research | | 07:45 | Researching grossing apps on SensorTower | | 10:36 | Assessing app store competition and opportunity | | 20:15 | Importance of screenshots and naming | | 22:08 | Pricing strategies and competitor research | | 24:29 | Subscription vs. one-time payment models | | 25:45 | Launching with bare-bones app to test demand | | 26:11 | The lifetime growth hack strategy | | 36:50 | Importance of speed to market; don't overthink LLC/branding | | 37:13 | Paywall conversion copywriting tips | | 39:18 | iOS vs. Android monetization | | 42:46 | App buying/selling philosophy and marketplaces | | 46:28 | App valuation (2–4x annual) | | 48:45 | Steve’s real-world app hit rate (~40%) | | 50:39 | 2026 closing tip: Eyeballs/distribution over everything else |

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Main Takeaways

• Simple, single-problem apps can generate substantial recurring income by leveraging keyword-driven demand and focused distribution.
• Pre-launch, invest in ASO, keyword research, and market validation—don’t overbuild.
• Use hard paywalls and copywriting tested to maximize conversions; recurring revenue beats one-time sales for most use cases.
• Launch on iOS first; cross to Android only if it’s worth the reach.
• Stack up several small wins rather than chasing unicorns—iterate, test, and know not every swing will be a home run.
• Apps can become sellable assets valued at 2–4x annual profit; leave growth room for buyers.
• Above all, distribution (eyeballs) is the foundation—get this right and all else can follow.

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For more from Steve Young:
Visit appmasters.com and check out App Masters on YouTube for deeper tutorials and app growth hacks.

Transcript

[Nick Loper]

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bucks a month from simple apps now thanks to AI, anybody can make an app now. But just because you can make it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make you money.

In this episode, we're going to bridge

that gap with my go to guy for all things app marketing from app masters.com Steve Young welcome back to the Side Hustle show. It's been, it's been almost a decade, man.

[Steve Young]

It's been crazy. Nick, I'm honored to consider you a friend and to be a listener as well. So I'm super honored to be back.

[Nick Loper]

I'm excited. Hopefully it won't be nine years before the next appearance. Here you shared a couple examples of apps that on the surface look pretty straightforward. Making 500 1,000 2,500 bucks a month, a frequency generator app for, I don't know, Binaural Beats or Healing or something like that.

A JPEG to PDF converter seems pretty straightforward ones that are like relatively simple ideas.

But how are you coming up with this stuff? It's like I want to build what I want to build, but it's like, no, no, no. I want to instead want to go where there's some level of demand versus just building something and putting it out there.

[Steve Young]

Distribution is the name of the game. And Nick, I love this quote. First time founders focus on features. Second time founders focus on distribution. So to answer your question, I, I just look at what people are searching for. Look, I know a lot about aso, which is just SEO for the App Store. And so I just see, hey, what are. And I'm gonna break down all the tools that use that are free and you can do keyword research, figure out what people are searching for. Then you build an app because that's the quickest path to revenue and that's all we're trying to figure out. And that's what we've discovered is distribution is just so hard that that should be the number one thing you think about versus, like adding more features to an app.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, less is more. Kind of like, what's the one single problem that it solves?

[Steve Young]

It sounds like, yeah, I mean all the apps that I sent you, they solve just one single problem. The more niche you could be, the higher likelihood that people are going to pay for your app. And so for that frequency generator app as an example, like you can do a sleep sounds app. Like people use it for sleep sounds to sleep or either focus, you can go after those keywords or you can be in more niche. So what I say is like, okay, sleep sounds or focus sounds, focus timer. Or you can be more niche and go binaural beats frequency generator. All you really need is 100 downloads a day to have a six figure business in the app space. I know you're only just trying to get to 1000 so you can just half that by 10% if you want to just get to 1000.

[Nick Loper]

Really? That feels very feasible. That feels like, oh, I can find 10 people out of the entirety of the Internet. I can find 10 people a day.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, it's that easy. I'll break down the apps that we have and I'll say how many downloads and how much revenue, but that's all you need. And with this app, we purchased it, a hundred dollars a day is only charging a one time fee of like 2 99. And it did not have a paywall on the onboarding. Right. That's number one monetization tip. During the onboarding process of any app, it's free to download. Have a paywall. Yes. People are going to pay you before they actually use your app. All right. I know it's very different if you're coming from the web world, but yes, people who pay 80%.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, like, oh, that kind of like makes me tighten up. Like, oh, isn't that like bait and switch?

[Steve Young]

Nick's a very nice guy, so he, he doesn't like this type of stuff, but it works, Nick. Okay, so you have to have the paywall on the onboarding. Okay. You have to ask for it. So they. That app did not have it. What we did when we bought it was we then added the paywall to the onboarding. We increased the price because I looked at the market, people were charging $60 a year. So we just copied that price, we added that in there and instantly went from 1 to 2000 with just a hundred downloads. A day to 8 to 10,000 revenue. Just like that. And I have the charts to show you. But it went that quickly with just a hundred downloads a day.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So the downloads stayed the same because it was already ranking in the app Store optimization. And it was just. What tweaks can we make on the back end to squeeze more revenue out of it, to optimize some of the other elements of it.

[Steve Young]

No new features either. No new features at all. It was all the same features. Just a paywall on the onboarding with an increased price and went from a one time purchase to a subscription of $60.00.

[Nick Loper]

Oh, okay, recur. Okay, now it was recurring.

Got it.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, we went to recurring when we bought it. It was not even recurring. They just had a one time fee.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, got it, got it, got it. Well, that's exciting. So let's dive into some of this research process and saying. Okay, I'm excited. 10 to 100 downloads a day, that seems feasible, at least from the outside looking in. Maybe it's much harder than that. But what's. What goes into this?

[Steve Young]

Okay, I'll start off the JPEG one. Cause that's doing about $500 a month.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

And I'll tell you why I want to start out with that one, Nick is I thought PDF converters were so saturated, right? Like there's so many of them. There's some big ones that do PDF conversion, PDF generation, all this stuff. And I thought it was super crowded, but when we were doing keyword research was like, hey, people are searching for JPEG to PDF. Like what? People are searching for png, PNG to PDF as well. I was like, oh, interesting. All right, here are real numbers. I'm using ASO mobile. I'm not affiliated with them at all. ASOMobile.net, they have a free plan so you can get started with.

[Nick Loper]

Right?

[Steve Young]

And you want to find the different keywords. So I have Paraphrase, which is one of our apps that's making about $2,600 a month. Right. To be specific. Now it should do more because we just got number one for these two tools. But you want to find keywords around 30, right. And this app, it's not even ranking that well. You can see some of the keyword volumes. It's ranking for Paraphrase, AI being number one also Paraphrase tool. And now those downloads alone are generating the $2,500 a month for this app.

[Nick Loper]

What is that a score of? Is that kind of like the competitiveness

[Steve Young]

metric or what is that Measuring, it's a traffic score. So you want a traffic score of at least, let's say 20 on the low end. But try to find 30. The app that we had 100 downloads a day. It was ranking number one. And you want to be number one if you can, for two keywords with a search score of around 30 is the sweet spot. We have another app that is doing way more now, but initially launched with just targeting those two keywords, and we were able to make sixteen hundred dollars within the first month of launch.

[Nick Loper]

Wow.

[Steve Young]

So it was just finding those two keywords. And I use ASO Mobile. I go down to app keywords. You can put in any app that you're like, hey, what's an app? You know, one of the best ways to do it, Nick, is obviously do a lot of keyword research or also look at the app store, see what apps are in the top grossing. Put that app in there. And for us, it was like ChatGPT, right? Like, okay, people are using ChatGPT, but what are they using ChatGPT for? What's the functionality within ChatGPT that people just want an app for? And we found that paraphrase was the one that people are searching for. And so we decide to build an app to target that particular keyword.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. So the play is to look at the apps that are super popular, that are doing well, and then almost an unbundling of some of their feature set because people may not need the whole thing or they want, like, I want the go to source for this specific problem that I'm trying to solve.

[Steve Young]

Yep, absolutely. So if you think about Endel, right? Endel is an app that does focus and sleep sounds.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

I'll show you how much they're making. So I'm gonna pull up Endel on Sensor tower. This is free, by the way. You guys can pull it up. It's making about a million dollars a month.

[Nick Loper]

A month.

[Steve Young]

Super huge a month. And so I'm like, okay, they're going after super competitive keywords like focus and sleep sounds. What are some keywords that Endel is not focused on that I can start to target? And so green noise, if you remember, calm was doing a lot of green noise ads. And guess what happened, Nick? People were searching for green noise. So there's another strategy.

[Nick Loper]

I've never even heard of green noise. This is like nature sounds.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. So this is one of our apps right here. We're number two for green noise.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

Calm was doing a lot of TV ads, talking about, hey, this green noise, it's really good for nature and all this stuff. And so people started searching for it. So one idea is use keyword tools to see popular apps and what people are searching for. Or just look at the ads. Like, there's the Facebook ads library now of the big apps and see, like, the really big apps, the comms of the world, the fitness, like the pelotons of the world, what are they searching for? But really do keyword research and then build the app. And that's how we built this Green noise app. You can see this one's doing about two, three hundred dollars a month just purely based off of the green noise keyword.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. And so again, in this example, it says free with in app purchases. But, like, are people going to be able to use it until they pay? Yes.

[Steve Young]

For this particular app, you get the green noise for free, but everything else you're going to have to pay for. So there's also pink noise, brown noise, blue noise, whatever color you like.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so get like a freemium model in this case.

[Steve Young]

Yes.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

Sometimes I don't like it. I rather you just go straight into paid right away. Because we have seen that sometimes for niche apps, just going paid right away is better. Like, there's no freemium option. You either pay or get out. And that's what I call a hard paywall. So if you were launching an app, that's how I would launch the app. Force them to pay you and see if people are willing to pay you and then start thinking about a freemium model later on.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, this is super cool. This is helpful to look at some of the biggest apps that are out there and trying to find, like, their tertiary keywords that they don't really care about because they've got big marketing budgets. They're going after, like, really highly competitive terms. But I could. I could unbundle a forgotten feature of theirs and hopefully rank number one. Be a big fish and a small pond.

[Steve Young]

You've been doing this for a long time. You said it way better than I did, Nick.

[Nick Loper]

Great.

[Steve Young]

I'm gonna steal that one.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Anything else? On the market research side, it would be surprising to come up with something like never before seen. Like, somebody else has probably beat me to this, and that is gonna be discouraging. Or like, did you say, well, maybe there's some validation there. What level of competitiveness is like, oh, shoot, it's already been done. Or I gotta go one layer deeper down into the niche.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. Here's another thing that I do. Okay, so let's just pick on Green Noise for now. Okay. Found the keyword comms ranking for it. ASL Mobile says it has that traffic score that I need. Now look at the search results. ASMobile will have their complexity score or other way of phrasing it. It's difficulty. It may not be as accurate. Right. But it gives you some indication. So you can see like, okay, I'm looking for 30, and I'm looking for a pretty low difficulty score. But I also look at the search results, and what I'm looking for is how many apps have it in their title. So if you know SEO, you know the title is the most important part or the app name. And if there's not that many, in

[Nick Loper]

this case, it looks like two on the first page.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. Then you know you got something there that you can be like, okay, not only is there search volume, but I, as a new app, I can build it and get it to rank well, because there's not a lot of competition for it. And so that's how you start breaking down your. You unbundled the big app and then you go, all right, what does the competition look like? If you don't want to pay for a tool, just look for it in the App Store and just figure out which ones have it in the title. And then if they do have the title, look about the ratings. So if you wanted to build a Green Noise app, Nick, I'd be like, do it. The number two app only has 138 ratings. Like, that's not that much. Right. It's not in hundreds of thousands of ratings. Whereas meditation. You know, now we're talking about something different. Now you're talking about, like, apps that are.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. With sometimes millions of reviews, probably.

[Steve Young]

And this is too much like, I don't go after that term.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Call them headspace. Yeah. All these huge brands.

[Steve Young]

It's. You're not going to compete. You're not going to outrank them either. So go in the niche of this big app.

[Nick Loper]

Is there a rule of thumb to say, like, okay, if too many people are targeting this in their title, or there's too many. Too many entrenched reviews or players where it's like, I don't want to touch it.

[Steve Young]

It's just the number of ratings. Because if I feel like the ratings give me an indication of how much I can beat them, let's say there's an app. Let's say we found one that was like Green Noise and there was a lot more. Right. There's like five or six. They're like, oh, man. But they all had like a hundred. I'm like, no problem, go for it. You can probably beat them. There's no incumbent to beat. Like that has 16,000.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. That's like the very clear market leader.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. If as long as that doesn't exist, then you'll be okay.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, how about on the JPEG to PDF converter? Like even figuring out that that was a keyword, like some of the stuff I wouldn't even necessarily know about. And it looks like some of these on ASO Mobile, maybe our brand names that people are searching for directly, maybe a framework or two to come up with even seed keywords or broad topic ideas.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. So one of the other things I looked at like paraphrase, I noticed that paraphrase AI was getting some ranking on Google. Right. And Google is a good source for app downloads, especially if people search for, let's say paraphrase app as an example. Right. So you got 700. I'm using keywords everywhere as a Google plugin right here. So that's why I'm getting all these search results. Yeah, but another thing we can do, Nick, like, you know, remember the SEO days? We, we look at Google keyword tool. So that's another way that you can look for it and you're looking for things around app. So even if you, let's say you're inspired to do something, we talked a lot about baseball and some walkout music stuff. And then we're like, okay, it's inspirational. Great. One, is there somebody doing well in the app space? Good. That validated the market. There's demand for this, meaning they're making money. Two are people searching for it. Now I use search, but if you don't want to, you can run ads. But I don't want to spend money to make money. I'm cheap, so I'm doing search. So now I'm like, okay, well paraphrase when ChatGPT was hot, I was like, what's something you can do within that? And then if you look at this, you see that it's 12,000 searches. So. So it gave me some indication that yes, people are searching for this on the App Store as well. And before we were able to even rank well for Pairaphrase itself, which is a brand new thing as of this recording literally just happened, Nick, we were able to make that much money. So you know, if we had me on like a month or two later on, I think that paraphrase is going to get to $5,000 a month now that we're Ranking well for paraphrase itself.

[Nick Loper]

And what's the use case? I'm having a hard time understanding what even like, it's just like for articles spinning, like, why are people wanting to paraphrase stuff? You know, summarize this for me. What does it do?

[Steve Young]

Let's say I'm a student, I had chat GPT created this paragraph. Now I want to make it sound more human so that it bypasses the GPT stuff. Bypass GPT, another keyword then that allows you to do that. So same thing with paraphrase, but the way I thought about. And we've added way more functionality now. Like you can literally talk within the app if you're a non English speaker. And it will paraphrase it to English for you. So I won't just do a normal translation, I'll actually paraphrase it for you. So if you wrote some stuff out and you're like this, I did it in funny mode. So I'll take it. I'll take this description, I'll throw into paraphrase AI, I use it too. And I'll be like, make it funny. And then it will make it funny. And I'm like, great. Make it sound more professional. So it has different modes in there too.

[Nick Loper]

Got it.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. I mean, I thought that's why I like the jpeg, because PDF converter scanner, these are keywords that have been in existence since I first started. Right. And then now when I went deep, deeper, I'm looking at my ASO spreadsheet that I have here, but I see document, scanner, photo, scanner, photo to PDF, the picture to PDF. So these are all keywords that you can target. That is just beyond. It's still the same niche of a PDF converter, but again, those big guys probably aren't going to go after these smaller keywords that you and I can vibe code super easily.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, a thousand bucks a month isn't interesting to them. But for side hustlers, I could stack up four or five of these different little tools and all of a sudden, I'm doing good.

[Steve Young]

Hey, after this episode, I hope to see a lot of apps called Picture to PDF. How about that?

[Nick Loper]

Okay, maybe that'll be the next thing.

Coming up, Steve shares his greatest growth hack in the world, the one that

took one app from 2000 to $7000 a month without adding a single new feature.

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so we've talked about ASMO, we talked about keywords everywhere. Just different tools and resources to see what is out there and less looking at the volume. But rather than this keyword score, because that kind of gives you A sense of what you might be able to achieve. And aiming for 30 on there, it's higher than that. My understanding is probably going to be too competitive for you, even though it may be higher volume, is that right?

[Steve Young]

Well, yes and no. Like the jpeg PDF is about 56 right now and it's 62 difficulty according my tools that I have it. But also, again, that's why I said look at the search results, because this, looking at the search results will tell you how truly competitive a keyword is, whereas all these tools will come up with their own random score. And so when I do this, I'm like, okay, as long as the score traffic score matches what I want, great. Then I can get it to start ranking. And like, we've seen that, like, having the keyword repeated in the first screen helps because people search for that keyword. You see that keyword in a screenshot, you're more likely to tap on this. Having people, a human face in that also helps. And so we're using some of the

[Nick Loper]

best practices on the first slide of these little, like, sample screenshots. The marketing screenshots.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, yeah. Cause where are you, like, most likely to click on? Right.

[Nick Loper]

Like, yeah, it definitely stands out.

[Steve Young]

Yeah. So that's some of the best practice. The first screenshots show up in the search results. So you definitely want to have the targeted keyword in your first screenshot. And for me, because I'm doing the long tail way of doing it, I don't need an app name. The app name is literally the keyword that I'm targeting. And it is that simple.

[Nick Loper]

Don't need to come up with a full branding package for this. It delivers what it promises.

[Steve Young]

You don't need more features. You can literally just do a one featured product. And as long as you have distribution, that's going to be enough for you. I got so many examples of apps that are just doing bonkers in terms of revenues, which is simple features. You're like, really? You. I mean, you did that a bunch of times today already, Nick. Really, this app, like. Yeah, yeah.

[Nick Loper]

That's what's maybe most surprising about it is like, in my head, it's this very complicated and technical thing, but it's like if you can do one thing well and slice off, you know, just a piece of that market, I think there's, there's definitely a path forward there.

[Steve Young]

Especially if you're just side hustling, man. These, these are, this is automatic, right? As long as you get that ranking, then that's all you really need.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Steve Young]

From a monetization perspective, definitely have your paywall. From a pricing perspective, how to price different products, just look at your competitors and just copy it. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. None of this is reinventing anything. It's taking like you said, taking a very popular product, unbundling some of their features, seeing if that feature has volume and if you can rank for that feature and then literally charging the same price for the bundled product is what we did to take that one to $2,000 app to 8 to 10,000. We just said, hey, Endo's charging 60, let's just charge 60. And it worked. I was just like, okay. And so yeah, it was just a feature but Endel had a lot more. But we just took the feature and just charged the same amount. And so if you want to charge a little bit less, sure, go for it.

[Nick Loper]

That would be $60 a year is kind of the default price point.

[Steve Young]

I mean it depends on the category. Like these, like one time use apps like the JPEG to PDF. So this is interesting too Nick, maybe in terms of pricing, it really depends. So that's why I said copy what's working. So JPEG to PDF. The most popular plan, Nick, is a weekly plan.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. But still recurring.

[Steve Young]

Yes. So like here within Sensor Tower you can pull in. So I've, I have Endel here, it's making a million. If you scroll down, Apple actually ranks the most popular in app purchase. So you can see their most Popular one is 120 for the yearly. So now you're like, cool, I can charge 60 for the yearly.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

Right. And for my paraphrase app, our most popular plan and for most AI apps is the weekly. For most depends on the category. So we can see if you scroll down here, top in app purchases you can see my weekly plan of 6.99 is the most popular plan.

[Nick Loper]

That's helpful. Follow the leaders, see what everybody else is doing. And leaning towards recurring versus you know, a one off payment. You know, if all else being equal, if you're gonna pay me multiple times, of course that sounds more attractive with

[Steve Young]

paraphrase dude, I launched it. Here, I'll show you. This paywall change we launched in October. We're able to rank it pretty quickly and get downloads. Thousands of downloads. So we launched it with a, we're promoting the yearly, so we have a seven trade trial and the yearly it's $50 and then we switch to B which is the three day trial on the weekly. So if you're gonna do weekly. Generally three days is enough if you're going to do yearly at a very high level. It's different for all apps, but 7day generally works the best. Okay, so this b made 3 times more sales and I'll break it all down for you. So the first three months we launched this, we only made $2,000. People bought the yearly. They activated the trial, Nick, but they canceled. So we only made $800 within the first three months of launch. So when we moved it to this, where we said, okay, yearly, no, no more trial. Forget you. If you want yearly, you got to pay us up front. But if you want weekly, it's the three day trial and we're going to charge you seven bucks a week. Okay, so when we change that, that's when it went up to 6,000 the next three months. So with one time use apps, what I would say is weekly tends to perform very well. Like JPEG to PDF converter paraphrase, it's going to be one time use. If it's like a frequency app like that people would use every day, go with yearly, but you can just see what the market is doing and just copy it.

[Nick Loper]

Got it, got it. Okay. And then Apple or the App Store is taking like their 30% cut on all this stuff.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, they do 15 if you're under a million. But yeah, they'll take their cut, which sucks.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, but they're giving you the distribution. In a way they are. No, that's totally fine. I was going to ask if you have any best practices on the creation side. Whether it's reverse prompting or, you know, asking Claude code or whatever your favorite tool is to go out and build the actual nuts and bolts of this thing before you can add it to the app stores.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, I mean, cloud code is by far the most popular right now. That's what all the developers are using. And they're going back and forth within ChatGPT as well and Codex and being like, okay, help me debug this or what's the right way to prompt this? I think for me it's really just like, can this do this one thing very well? So, hey, build me an app that just converts JPEGs to BDF or takes a picture and or takes it to a PDF and it's an easy prompt. But that JPEG to PDF maybe took two or three days max for us to just get it out in the App Store. We didn't even have the ideal user experience. We just wanted to see if we can get downloads for the app first. Then if we could and get it to rank, then we start building on top of it and adding a proper paywall and all that stuff. And so that's how we kind of dissect it.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. Okay. So the first version may not even have a paywall. The first version is just like, let's get it functional and get it uploaded.

[Steve Young]

Time is the most important variable. If it's going to take you a week to get that paywall in there.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Steve Young]

Then just launch it. If it's going to take you a couple hours and you're really invested in this, then I would prefer ideally launching with the paywall because then you could really see if people are willing to pay for it if you get that distribution. But if you don't have the time yet, then go ahead, launch it.

[Nick Loper]

Got it.

[Steve Young]

So one of my favorite strategies, Nick, is to do what, what I call a lifetime growth hack. So I call this the greatest growth hack in the world. And it worked for one of the clients. So we took an app that was making about 200 bucks a month and made it to $7,000 a month with just doing the things that we talked about. Okay, so now, number one ratings prompt during the first time user experience. Yes, that works. About 1% of all the downloads would leave a review for you because like I said before, reviews do matter in terms of how well you rank. Not the most important, but they are still important. Do aso, which is SEO for the App Store, optimize your paywall. Definitely have it during the onboarding experience. And then what we're going to do is make a lifetime offer and we're going to make it for free and we're going to promote it. And we do have this service that we acquired called Indie Apps Santa, which is just Groupon for apps or AppSumo for apps. Now there was pushback because Apple was starting to email developers saying like, you're doing something funky. That's probably because we're getting a boost in downloads, we're getting a boost in free in app purchases, and we're getting a boost in reviews. So Apple's like, let's stop.

[Nick Loper]

Something abnormal is happening here.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, yeah. But we did a hundred thousand downloads for an AI app, created a lifetime offer. We did the ASO first. Right? We did the aso. We changed his paywall a little bit and then we added a ratings prompt during the first time user experience. So we did a hundred thousand downloads. Eight hundred new ratings, 200 in the US, 600 worldwide. If I had to eliminate one step, it would be this. I would ask for it a little bit later, like maybe day two or after they did something within the app, I would ask for the rating. So yes, we'll get less ratings, but we'll still get ratings out of.

[Nick Loper]

This is just kind of a notification or is this just part of like the user flow in the app that you would ask. You would ask Claude code to be like, put a little notification or a request to leave a review after this step or something?

[Steve Young]

Yeah, it is a built in iOS prompt. So it's just a default thing that pops up.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, it's something you can tell cloud code to do. So it made $7,000 right after that because the ASO started kicking in because now we have ratings. Now we have a fully optimized keyword and title. So the app was just making a few hundred bucks and it launched in 2023. Just make a few hundred bucks for a long time. And then within the first month we made it to 7,000, then to 6,000, to 5,000. The app went on to make 70,000 and ultimately 90,000 within the first year of us working with this particular app using that exact strategy. So Apple is starting to send emails because I believe because of these ratings boosts. So if you just wait on the ratings boost, I think you'll be fine and you'll get the benefits of that initial boost of doing that lifetime offer. You don't have to do this. It's just an option. If you're like, hey, keywords aren't sticking, Steve. You know, I followed this well. This is another like plan B to it all.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. To kind of give it a little marketing push and then hopefully it sticks in the rankings is kind of the goal. I mean, same similar to self publishing. Whereas I'm going to do this free launch or I'm going to do this discounted launch launch and just flex some marketing muscle and hopefully get the algorithm spinning in your favor after that.

[Steve Young]

See, I have a fancy little soundboard that I can use for that. That's a correct answer, Nick.

[Nick Loper]

Ding, ding, ding.

[Steve Young]

Nice. But here's an app that went just so you know, I wanted to give you more details. Like this is one app that just went from like $10 a day to a thousand dollars a month. So they're not always going to be $7,000 a month. And then, you know, like, here's some more niche apps that have done pretty well just kind of adopting this strategy here.

[Nick Loper]

Is there a world where somebody searches the app store for the problem that they're having, you know, PDF to JPEG converter. They download the thing, they get hit with this weekly paywall, and then they just go back to ChatGPT and say, can you turn this JPEG into a PDF for me?

[Steve Young]

Absolutely. But then my counter to that would be like, why do they even search for that? And I think, you know, when we're talking about these numbers, Nick, like, most people don't pay you, right? Like, the average, like, for one of our apps that's doing about 35,000 MRR, we get 12% of the people starting a free trial. Of the 12%, 60% are actually paying us. So they did not cancel the trial, which is pretty high.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah.

[Steve Young]

So to give you some benchmarks, 5 to 10% is pretty good for people starting a trial. That's good.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

So that means, in other words, 95 to 90% of people not paying you is good. Okay. Like, and then the people who activated trial to actually paying you about 30 to 40% is average for most apps. So that's why I like the niche ones, because you'll get a higher trial to paid. And if you do a hard paywall, which means no X on your paywall, either pay us or get out. We've seen almost double the trial activation rates for one of the apps that app we acquired. When we had a hard paywall, we saw 8 to 10,000. I'll show you this real quick because I'm a big proponent of hard paywalls and I'm a big proponent of data. The app was making about a thousand to $2,000 a month, which is 100 downloads. Hard paywall, with the increased pricing, went up all the way to over 10,000. What happened here? Soft paywall. We had to put the X. That little tiny X halved our sales. That little X on the paywall, and then we got the X back. No X again. We got it back up. And again no new features. Just pretty much that's why I would force them to pay, just to see if you got some traction.

[Nick Loper]

Is that just a split test that you ran or you were getting negative feedback or what was. Why would you have to close it out if it was working?

[Steve Young]

Apple forced us to do it. Apple is very inconsistent with their reviews. So sometimes they're okay with hard paywalls like the 35,000 Mrr app that we have. And if they're okay with the hard pay wall, sometimes they're not. It was really finding the right reviewer. And one reviewer said no. One reviewer said yes, which is crazy.

[Nick Loper]

Is that just A factor of like it says free to download. Customer expectations. What's, what goes into?

[Steve Young]

That really depends on your reviewer. A lot of big popular apps really have a hard paywall and you're like, why did they get to do it and we don't? And for this app, look, I'm not even doing a hard paywall and we're able to generate, you know, $2,500 with this app and it's like, I don't need to, but like at the same time we've test, we a b tested this. Sometimes a hard paywall works better. This time I didn't want to do it because there are some repercussions off of this. That's why I would just do it in a brand new way of doing it, like a brand new app. Because like I want to see if just in the early stages if people are willing to pay or not.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if it, if it works, then we'll invest more money into split testing and building out the feature set and like doing everything else that makes sense. Any other best practices that we should know about when we're submitting the app for approval or even like into the testing phase, Kind of setting the thing up for success you mentioned? Well, I want to put the exact keyword that I'm targeting as the title of the app. I want to put it into the first screenshot that pulls up. I want to put somebody's face there to attract attention. Anything else we should know about to set ourselves up for success?

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[Steve Young]

So if you're just launching your first ever app, okay, one that frequency app, we were able to make a thousand dollars just with aso and the screenshots were butt ugly. I'm telling you the best practices, Nick, but I wanted to prove to everybody that I can make a thousand dollars with the ugliest screenshots. So they were literally screens of the app and that was it. So as the best practices, again, time is the most important variable. If you can't do screenshots, you'll be fine. Get distribution first. You're going to need terms and conditions and private policy. So you got to have that. And there's some like you can Google it or you can just have ChatGPT write it up for you, but those are things that you need to have before launching an app. Now you can just launch as a independent developer or a business, obviously business, you need a DUNS number and you need an LLC and all that stuff. But you can also just we started this as a personal and I transformed it into a business. It was a hassle. So if this is something you're gonna do, go ahead and start with personal, I've got clients that are doing like 20k a month just with the personal account. So it's not gonna make that big of a factor. And just know that you can always change it. So this started out as a personal because time. Right. And then we launched.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, now it's under Young Aces.

[Steve Young]

Yes, sir.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, got it. That's definitely something I would overthink. Be like, well, it's going to show up on the download page. What do I want people to see here? Like, do I need a separate LLC for each thing that's, like, branded to the keyword. Okay, don't. Don't overthink it.

[Steve Young]

That's part two, Nick. I'll. I'll come back for that. Okay. Once people have found success. But I do want to show you this one last thing. On the paywall, having the word free increase conversions by 11%. So you think, buy a hamburger, get free fries, right? You gotta buy it to get the free thing. But adding that word free in front of a feature, a premium feature, if they bought it, increase conversions by 11%.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

Now the word continue works the best on iOS. I know it's subscribe, but nobody wants to subscribe. I know you want to try, like, start free trial. Start free trial. Works better on Android because Android is, you know, people don't like to pay on Android. So if you had to launch on one platform, I would just launch on iOS. Most people make way more money on iOS than they do on Android. Okay.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

30% increase in conversions with the word continue versus subscribe versus anything else. It works better. Okay, the last thing is. Or second to last thing. No payment now right underneath. If you have a trial by adding that one word, increase the trial activations by 30% for another app that we worked with. So have no payment now right underneath your call to action, your continue button. The last thing is show some comparison. Yes, we can do math, but nobody wants to do math anymore. You have a paywall that shows a monthly plan as a yearly price, and then you have a weekly plan as a yearly price. When we showed it as a yearly price versus showing nothing and letting the users do the math. Right. It just says 99amonth or $60 a year. We saw a 38% increase in conversions when we just showed the prices in the same format. Make them comparable. Just make it easier for the end user to see the comparisons in the same length of time.

[Nick Loper]

Right, Right. Yeah. Just like fractions. I need a common denominator if I'm going to be able to make a decision here.

[Steve Young]

Yeah, exactly. You're way better at this than coming up. Common denominators unbundled, a very popular product. That's my takeaways from this.

[Nick Loper]

And I mean, this is gold. Like, you know, just the language of continue. It feels like I'm just going to the next step in the logical next step. Like, oh, sure, I can continue. No payment today. Okay, I can continue. I was going to ask because you mentioned syndicating this similar functionality app to Google Play to the Android Store, but you mentioned Android people don't want to pay. Like, why is that just a stereotype? What's the reputation there?

[Steve Young]

Probably a stereotype, but also true. Android has way more users, but they have all these phones too. And so they can defer, they can change from like, I have this Android phone that I use for testing. It's 150, right? But this iPhone that we all have, you know, it's like a thousand bucks. And so what we've just found is more people are willing to pay on iOS than they are on Android. But more people. You have a bigger reach with Android.

[Nick Loper]

That's really interesting. I would have assumed, you know, copy and paste or just ask cloud code. Hey, can you generate the Android version of this with the same functionality, the same interstitial screens, the same paywall, like lather, rinse, repeat, and essentially reach double the audience. But maybe not, maybe not quite the case.

[Steve Young]

You will reach a bigger audience. It's just that audience is not going to pay you. So, like, even some of our big clients that are doing like six figures a month, they've sort of ignored the Android version. They're like, yeah, but you know, it's fine. It's just there for those who want to use it. But we don't really focus. A lot of their marketing efforts are not focused on the Android version.

[Nick Loper]

How passive is this stuff once it's up and running? Like, to what extent are you tweaking the software or tweaking the keywords or like doing any of this stuff on a monthly basis or a weekly basis?

[Steve Young]

Honestly, if I could just do this, the app side of things, that's what I would do. And you know, we have multiple sides of our business and it is pretty massive. Like that paraphrase, I can maybe work on it, you know, an hour or two a week. And so I want to get back to running just more app stuff because we have an agency too.

[Nick Loper]

Is that optimization or is that customer support? Like, where does the time go?

[Steve Young]

It's more optimization, man. I, I mean I focus so much on distribution and monetization, customer support for these apps. The good stuff about apps is if people want a refund, you don't have to do anything. Apple handles everything. So Apple, that 15, 30% that you have to give up, you just say, like the app that we acquired, we, we get people being like, hey, I forgot to cancel trial, like, can I get a refund? Like I just sent them the same templated email, like, hey, go to Apple. But we get those very rarely. Like it's maybe one or two a week, we get those emails.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

So it's not very common and most people understand how to do stuff within the app. So it's you, you. Yeah, the support is just not that much as you would think.

[Nick Loper]

Do you set up a separate domain and help email for everything? Like here, you know, if you want something for the PDF converter thing, you got to email this. Or it's like it's all under, you know, app Masters and all under the young aces, like media brand.

[Steve Young]

I would just keep it under the same one because most people are not going to email you. Like I've seen people not even have websites for their apps and just like a Facebook page or an Instagram page. Apple allow that. So again, back to my whole, like, time is the most important variable. Whatever gets you to launch and distribution the quickest because that fixes everything. Nick. If you get downloads, you can fix your monetization, you can fix your retention, you can fix all this stuff. But if you don't have downloads, you don't have crap. So it's sort of like that's why I just lean towards getting downloads. Number one.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, you mentioned buying apps, mentioned selling apps. So it seems like there's a robust ecosystem around these as their own little mini businesses, mini assets. Especially if it has recurring revenue and has like traction, I could see how that would be an attractive asset. Is there a marketplace that you like? Like, what's a typical multiple? Like, how are these things valued?

[Steve Young]

I've acquired and sold a bunch of different apps. The way I think about it, I'm going to use this analogy. I love baseball, I love softball. You know, I still play in a slow pitch men's league. And I started thinking, like, I'm not a home run hitter, nick. Like I'm five seven. Like I'm just, I'm like a buck 50 soaking wet. So like I'm just not going to hit home runs, right? Every time I try to, I pop up. And so I'm just a Great single sitter. I will always get on base. Like, I legit hit like 700 on a slow pitch, right?

[Nick Loper]

So nice, nice.

[Steve Young]

So I started thinking, like, all right, let's use this philosophy when it comes to building businesses. Let's just hit a bunch of singles. Let's hit a bunch of singles and doubles. And we can make apps and we can sell them. Flippa is the easiest. Okay, we just sold an app for you asked me some arrange and I'll tell you the range, but let's just say five figures under $50,000. I sold an app there, but above 10, right? And it was on Flip Up. The app that we acquired, it was through a broker that I know very well, Evelyn Herrera. And she's like, steve, I've got this app that's exclusive to you. Before I even make it public, I want to see if you want it. And I was like, evelyn, I want this app. Because, Nick, I already knew the keywords existed for this app, and the app was already doing half a million.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. You're looking at it like. And your eyes get wide and be like, oh, there's already, like, three things I could do to double what it's doing.

[Steve Young]

Well, I just knew that the keyword existed. And I was like, what? They're already making half a million without

[Nick Loper]

even getting the traffic that they could be getting.

[Steve Young]

They were already getting decent traffic. And so that this was the benefit. Okay? So when I saw it, I was like, okay, I knew that keyword. I knew that category. It's in the health and fitness space. And then it was already doing good revenues, so even better, like, you know, half a million to zero, it's going to take me a lot longer to get to zero. But a thousand, two thousand, it's pretty quick. Like, one algorithm change, you might. Your revenues might be screwed. Right? So I already knew that, too. And then I looked at the app and I was like, okay, I can change the paywall. The onboarding isn't that good. And then, no offense, I know we're talking about vive coding, but I was like, it's harder for a vibe coded app to come into the space, in the health and fitness space, because you need a trainer. You need real humans to do this stuff. So that's what I saw.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. I'm thinking of, what is your moat going to be if you get something? Because there's the next people, there's the people listening to this now, doing their own reverse engineering research. Be like, well, this seems to be pretty popular. Maybe I could spit up My own version of this in a week and, and see what happens.

[Steve Young]

My opinion is distribution. If you can figure out a distribution channel. So why I acquire this app too is only ASO and Apple ads. That was the only two marketing channels from a distribution perspective that they were utilizing to get to that point. So the. Which means the opportunity is still huge. You know, I've been doing this for 17 plus years and the opportunity is still there. And I'm still excited about this category. But I was like, okay, if I add on Facebook meta ads, there's these new campaigns called Web to app which are essentially mean you get people to buy on the web. You have your whole onboarding and your whole purchase on the web, but you get. Then they download the app. So that's why it's called Web2App. They download the app and so you offset Apple's like 15% and you get to use Stripe or Paddle to. You pay them the 3 or 4%. So a lot better margins for you. But the distribution is now purely probably has to be all paid. So you can use Google Ads, you can use Facebook ads to drive distribution. And that's where I saw the bigger opportunity for this app. So to sell an app, you always want to leave a little bit more room for growth. Right. You don't want to be like fully saturated. Hey, I've taken it everywhere I could. There's no room for growth. To sell an app, you have to show growth potential. And then for me as an inquirer, like I got to see that growth potential because then what's the point of me acquiring this asset? Is it just cash flow? Is it just to, you know, make my numbers bigger?

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. Would it be typically like 2 to 4x annual earnings or something?

[Steve Young]

Yeah, it's. It's roughly around 2 to 4x.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Steve Young]

We've sold a bunch for two. We acquired a bunch for two. And then this one that we just recently acquired, pretty good chunk of change, but it was around 2.5 is where we landed. Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

What's your take on the in App Store ad like to promote your app? Like is that worthwhile for a new developer if you've got some level of organic traction? You know, you mentioned earlier, like I don't want to spend money. I want to, I want to get the downloads for free.

[Steve Young]

With Apple ads, which is what you are calling in app ads, they are essentially like Google AdWords but in the App Store. And so all you need are keywords. We've already done the keyword research. Right. And Apple to Back to your passiveness. The Apple has this new campaign structure that we're really, we're seeing really good results on. It's called max conversions. And you can just start that. And that's just Apple saying, like, I got you, Nick. Tell us how much you want to spend and tell much how many, what's the cost per install that you want and I'll take care of the rest. We're actually seeing pretty good numbers. Roas return on ad spend perspective just running those ads. So if you have to spend money, I'd start with Apple ads. Or if you're doing Google even though we told you not to, I would do Google Ads. Android, I'll do Google Ads. Because Google Ads, you can get a lot of cheap downloads, but they just might not pay you. Whereas Apple, you might be more expensive, but they're more likely to pay you. You literally just need keywords and you do exact match, right? And start with that. Or you can do max conversions and you can say, hey, Apple, I'm willing to spend, you know, $10, $20 a day. And Apple does not need, you know, certain metrics to make it smart because you're just telling it what to bid on. So you say, hey, I'm willing to spend 10, $20 a day. I only want a dollar to $2. You might not spend it though. But Apple is starting to get really smart with that stuff.

[Nick Loper]

Is that a viable way to test your paywall? To test like, okay, I could spend two weeks driving some traffic here if I wasn't ranking organically. I could see, does anybody want this thing? Is anybody willing to pay for this?

[Steve Young]

The way I do it is do keyword research and then building and change. If I can get it to rank first and foremost. And then doing this growth hack, this lifetime free stuff that we talked about, like step two, that didn't work. Plan B is this growth hack. And then plan C would be run ads and then see what's going on. Because I'm cheap, Nick.

[Nick Loper]

And step D, step four, go back to the drawing board. It still didn't work. Go come up with a new app idea.

[Steve Young]

Dude, what I say is, look, we, you know, we're giving you the numbers and I want to be very transparent with everybody. Like these apps, I'm showing you the ones that are making money, but we also have like a bunch. So my hit rate from, if we're talking baddie average, softball, 7, 700. But with ABS, it's about 400. Like, I need to launch 10 to get 4 right to generate money. So we have like a tattoo generator, tattoo app, and it's not making that much money. And so you guys can see as you check out Paraphrase and all these other apps, like there are other apps that we've tried that we vibe coded and we thought there was keyword volume, but sometimes those keywords just aren't going to be sticky as much as the other keywords. So I'm about 40% hit rate betting 400.

[Nick Loper]

From an app perspective, that's super helpful to know and appreciate that level of transparency. Not everything we touch turns to gold, but if we touch enough things, there's going to be enough gold. That's really cool, Steve. I've taken a ton of notes. I'm excited to dive back into Claude code and see if I can get a couple of these things shipped because I think that would be a lot of fun. What's next for you? What's got you excited for App Masters this year?

[Steve Young]

Just really get back to apps building apps. I think there's a huge opportunity still with these web2app and with this vibe coding, like, I think literally, Nick, like, anybody can be an entrepreneur these days.

[Nick Loper]

All good. Well, appmasters.com, you can find Steve over there. Be sure to check out App Masters on YouTube, tons of cool tutorials and the kind of deeper dive stuff on everything we've been talking about today. And I want to hear what apps you guys build, listeners build as a result from this episode. I think you we've opened up the playbook a little bit and hopefully demystified some of the stuff that that you can go put out into the world and see what kind of traction that it gets. Steve, let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation 2026 edition. And then we'll do a little rewind the clock back to 2017. I'll tell you what you came up with then.

[Steve Young]

Oh, that would be cool. I would say distribution, Nick. I would say think about distribution with any business. How are you going to get eyeballs? If you can figure out how to get eyeballs, you can figure out the rest. And I'm a living proof because I had eyeballs with the podcast first. That turned into an agency that in turn to me being able to acquire different apps. And so it led me to this great life that we have. But distribution would be my number one. Like, figure that part out.

[Nick Loper]

Absolutely. You remember what you told me in 2017?

[Steve Young]

No idea, bro.

[Nick Loper]

All right. It was connect with people and the best way to do it is to interview people that you admire. That whole episode we did was about turning the App Masters podcast, which maybe at that time was like the app marketing show or something, into multiple streams of income into, you know, we had sponsorships and you had live events and you had the agency. It was like, it was really cool. Like, oh, we had seven or eight different income streams on the back of that podcast. And like you said, well, it led to the distribution piece. Piece of the pie here today. A couple takeaways for me. Obviously we talked about following demand rather than trying to get create demand for yourself. So looking at different market research, product research, keyword research, type of tools before you go out and build anything and then thinking really simple functionality like don't try and recreate the world's most complex tools like solve a single problem and go from there. And like Steve said, it might take a handful of swings before you find one that hits. Now, if you're wondering what to listen to next, go check out Steve's old episode from way back when in the archives. I think it holds up pretty well. Other than that, of course, you're free to, you know, choose your own adventure in the archives. I think you'll find most of the 700 plus episodes that we've done are pretty evergreen. But if you want a more curated approach, I want to invite you to try my little playlist generator quiz at Hustle Show. Just answer a few short multiple choice questions and it'll build you a personalized playlist based of some of our greatest hits episodes based on your answers. So again, that's Hustle show totally free. Give it a try today. Big thanks to Steve for sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Side hustlenation.comdeals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Fire off that text message to that friend of yours who needs to hear this. Or maybe they've been dabbling with Claude Code a little bit already. Until next time am let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle Show. Hustle on the.