DISCLAIMER: THIS GUIDE IS NOT FOR HIGH EFFORT UGC ARMY BUILDERS MESSAGING 100 INFLUENCERS A DAY.
This guide is for people who want to spin up an app, find a winning ad, scale the hell out of it, and go back to bed.
You'll have seen tonnes of advice on X about scaling apps. Each mentioning UGC, organic and paid influencers.
This guide specifically AVOIDS ugc, organic or anything that requires actual ongoing effort. It covers exactly how I scaled to $10K MRR in one month with minimal input.
Here's exactly how I did it:
STEP 1: COPY PROVEN MODELS (FUNDAMENTAL)
There are tonnes of successful apps out there made by founders who've spent years failing time after time.
Feel free to do that yourself. OR you can just skip that part and copy their proven business model. (Highly recommended).
Here are some apps printing money right now that you should be studying:
- Cal AI (food scanning, $3M+/mo)
- UMax (face rating/looksmaxxing)
- Pray Screen (faith/prayer lock)
Every single one of these sells to a core human desire. Every single one has a viral feature built in. Download them all. Screenshot their onboarding. Study how their ads look on TikTok. This is your homework.
Every successful app founder you see on this app started by copying something that already worked. Stop pretending you're too good to do the same.
Creativity is the enemy of your first $10k. Be creative AFTER you're profitable.
STEP 2: SELL TO A CORE HUMAN DESIRE
Every billion dollar industry is built on the same thing: exploiting a core human desire:
- Beauty brands sell the fear of being ugly
- Insurance sells the fear of losing everything
- Dating apps sell the hope of not being alone
- Fitness brands sell the dream body you don't have yet
This is marketing 101. The only difference is now you can build an app in a weekend that does the exact same thing.
- Your app MUST target a deep emotional trigger. Not a "nice to have" feature. A genuine insecurity or desire that keeps people up at night.
- The deeper the insecurity the better. "Am I attractive?" will always convert better than "Am I productive?" Nobody is emotionally invested in their to-do list.
- If your app doesn't trigger an insecurity, no amount of ad spend will save it.
- The best app niches all tap into the same desires: attractiveness, health, wealth, sex, status, intelligence, identity, fear. These have been selling products for centuries. They'll sell your app too.
YOUR APP MUST HAVE A VIRAL FEATURE:
This is the CHEAT CODE. If you can screen record someone using your app, or show the 'aha moment' in a single visual, you have a winner. Face ratings, height predictors, food scanners all have a 'reveal' moment.
VIRAL FEATURE + CORE HUMAN DESIRE = $$$
STEP 3: ONBOARDING & PAYWALL
This is one of the MOST IMPORTANT parts of your funnel. And the best part? It's super f**king easy:
- Copy the onboarding flow and paywall structure from your competitors.
- HARD paywall at the end. No trial. No freemium. Users must PAY to get their desire satisfied.
- Pricing: $9.99/week + $39.99/year. Retention offer $29.99/year if they try to cancel.
- DO NOT SEND NOTIFICATIONS: Retention is a suckers game with B2C apps. The less you can "remind" your users that they're paying you weekly, the less they'll churn.
This sounds evil but it's not. Every SaaS on earth does this. They just don't tell you* (obviously).*
STEP 4: THE AD MACHINE (The Money Printer)
Everything above is setup. This is the part where you make money in your sleep.
Start with a Smart+ campaign on TikTok. Optimise for subscribe/purchase events, NOT installs. $50/day starting budget. USA only.
- Run 2-3 days before concluding results. You're buying data and investing in your winning ad.
- Keep ads rough, and native-looking. Trending sounds. Hook in the first 2 seconds. Show the viral feature. Trigger the insecurity.
- Your ad MUST look like a TikTok, not an ad. The moment someone thinks "this is an ad," you've lost them.
- Check your comments and delete negative ones like "it costs money" - these comments could potentially harm your ROI.
- Comment bait everything. TikTok's algorithm pushes videos with high engagement. Hide something in your ad that makes people comment. For my apps, I flash a camera roll with gay men kissing in it during the screen recording. People comment "did you see that" and "that was not the wind" and the algorithm loves it and serves me cheap CPMs. It doesn't matter what they're commenting about. Comments = engagement = cheaper reach.
You only need ONE winning creative. One. That's the whole game. Find it and throw money at it.
STEP 5: MANAGE YOUR ADS
After 2-3 days you'll know if you have a winner. Here are the only numbers that matter.
- CPI < $2.00
- CTR > 1.00%
- CPA < LTV
When you hit those: SCALE. Increase budget by +30% every 3 days maximum. Don't increase too quickly or the tiktok pixel will s**t itself.
Make variants of the winning ad (10-12 vids). Same hook, different person / 'story'.
If you don't hit those: kill the ad. Make a new creative. Test again. Don't touch campaign settings, the creative is almost always the problem.
With the pricing model I mentioned, your LTV will likely land around ~$25 per paying user. If CPA is under that, you're printing.
A winning ad can carry your business for MONTHS. I've been using my main winning ad for 4 months now. It's LAZYMAXXING to it's core.
BONUS: CHEAT CODES (FREE MONEY)
Make sure you're not leaving money on the table:
- TikTok matches your first $6,000 in ad spend. Auto-applies on new accounts. This turned my $6k spend into $12k in distribution and I made $17k overall from it.
- Apple's Small Business Program cuts their fee from 30% to 15%. Free to apply.
- Apple payouts take 45 days. Plan your cashflow. If you have $1,000, split it across 2 months. If you have nothing, prove profitability at $50/day then raise from friends and family *(that's what i did)*
The TikTok ad credit alone can refund your entire first month of spend. USE IT.
SUMMARY: LAZYMAXXING APPS 101
Once you're up and running, this is what you can expect in terms of ongoing work:
- Every few days: check your ads and kill losers.
- Once a week: make 2-3 new ad variants from your winning creative.
Compare that to:
- Managing 10 UGC creators
- DMing 100 influencers daily
- Posting 7 videos across 3 platforms
- Replying to comments
A full time job versus a 30-minute check-in. I know which I'd rather.
The goal isn't to work harder. It's to find the one ad that prints money and carries your business for months.