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

Steven Cravotta

• Builds viral mobile apps and has reached over 12 million total downloads across his apps.
• Built Puff Count, a mobile app doing about $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
• Had no coding experience and does not design or develop the apps himself.
• Focuses on ideas, team building, marketing, and iteration.

Puff Count

• Helps people quit vaping.
• Generated $43,000 in sales over the last 30 days shown in the episode.
• Generated just over $112,000 in sales over the last 90 days shown in the episode.
• Took about four years to become meaningful revenue, with most of the revenue coming in the last six or seven months.

Why Mobile Apps

• Offer unlimited scale because the product can be built once and sold many times.
• Are easier to start than many people think because of no-code tools, templates, and freelance developers.
• Remain relatively untapped because many founders assume apps are too hard to build.
• Reward founders who can solve a real problem and market the solution well.

Idea And Validation

• Starts with problems Steven experiences in day-to-day life.
• Treats himself as the ideal user when he is solving his own problem.
• Looks for products that create a transformation, such as weight loss, dieting, quitting vaping, or quitting drinking.
• Validated Puff Count through market research.
  • Studied quit drinking and quit smoking apps in Sensor Tower.
  • Checked Google Trends and saw vaping was rising.
  • Looked on TikTok and saw vape videos going viral.
• Believes founders often give up too quickly before marketing has been figured out.

Product Development Process

• Brain dumps all app ideas, features, and competitors into Google Docs.
• Sketches the app on paper with pencil.
• Studies competitors’ features, onboarding, and UI to understand what a good app looks like.
• Uses 99designs to turn sketches into professional UI concepts.
• Uses Upwork to hire developers and turn the design into an app.
• Prefers Eastern European developers for quality code at lower cost.
• Pays developers per completed project after the app is live and bug-free.
• Says a straightforward MVP can be built for less than $5,000, and some apps can be built for less than $1,000 with templates.

Marketing

• Says marketing is about 95% of the success of a mobile app.
• Uses organic TikTok as the main marketing channel.
• Studies viral TikTok videos in the niche and saves them in a spreadsheet.
• Looks at hooks, value, and filming style to understand why content works.
• Makes content entertainment-first and adds only a short call to action at the end.
• Uses organic performance as a signal for paid ad creative.
• Runs winning creatives on paid channels such as Facebook ads and TikTok ads.
• Tests influencer content but finds it difficult because many influencers want high upfront payments.

Monetization

• Used ads in earlier game apps because users spent more time inside those apps.
• Uses in-app purchases for tool-focused apps like Puff Count because users are not expected to stay inside the app for long sessions.
• Uses a free app with onboarding followed by a hard paywall.
• Saw the business change overnight after switching Puff Count to a hard paywall with a free trial.
• Reached conversion rates around 20% to 25% after the hard paywall change.
• A/B tests pricing from $4 to $12 and optimizes for the highest lifetime value.

Onboarding And Analytics

• Uses onboarding to make users think through the problem the app solves.
• Asks many questions before the paywall, even though some users may find it annoying.
• Uses Superwall to remotely configure and A/B test paywalls.
• Uses RevenueCat for analytics and lifetime value data.
• Uses AppsFlyer as the mobile measurement partner connecting the app to ad platforms.
• Uses Mixpanel and Amplitude for deeper product analytics while staying on free plans when possible.

Advice For App Builders

• Focuses on health-related apps because helping people improve themselves can be lucrative.
• Encourages founders to outsource skills they lack and build a trusted team.
• Recommends launching a simple MVP, talking to users, gathering data, and iterating.
• Warns founders not to spend months on unvalidated features before releasing.
• Believes projects can take months or years to work, so founders need commitment and willingness to learn.

Life And Work

• Was traveling as a nomad in Europe during the episode.
• Starts work later in the day, around 1 p.m., after coffee, gym, and personal time.
• Works into the evening and sometimes later depending on what needs to get done.
• Uses travel to create space for inspiration and focused building.