How I grow my App's monthly revenue from $200 to $3K
12 months ago, I quit my $3K/m 9 to 5 job, and start build my App, it only got $200 a month after 4 months. At that time I am anxious and depress. And now the revenue of the apps surpass $3K. And I think I could share what I did to get this.
- Find traffic that really work.
I have tried lots of way to let people know my App, post here, post on twitter, send message or leave comment on other forum. I quickly find this not work. People don't like this kind of post, and these are too many people use Android but my App only work on iOS. I even tried Google Ads, 90% traffic are Android and from Indonesia. That's suck. Then I decided to focus on somewhere only iOS user, that is App Store.
I focus on ASO and App Store search ads (ASA), and that's really worked. More traffic indeed bring more download and revenue.
- Re-design my paywall.
My App has three subscription price, weekly $8.99, monthly $12.99, yearly $99.99. I found people tends to choose short-term plan when they subscribe, and I actually want them to choose long-term plan. On the one hand, long-term plan could bring me more revenue, on the other hands, long-term plan actually have bigger discount. So I decide to re-design my paywall, and put the paywall after onboarding because I saw someone post on Twitter and say it's really work. And it's indeed worked. Long-term subscriber growing with the new paywall, this make my revenue across $2K.
- Reducing refund.
Refund are sucks. It's not only means revenue loss, but also make me feel so frustrating. I even have nearly $1000 refund in June. So I decide to reducing it. I found a SaaS called RefundCat, it can let apple decline some user's refund request by response CONSUMPTION_REQUEST instantly. After I did some investigation, I paid $9.99 a month have a try, and it really worked. In July, 9 of 15 refund request was declined by Apple, most of them are yearly plan, that's mean I avoid nearly $900/mo revenue loss by a just $9.99 service. That's incredible. This make my revenue across $3K.
If you are an iOS developer, I highly recommend you use RefundCat.com to reduce refunds that because user's own fault. I have no vested interest, I just think it's genuinely useful and reasonably priced.
Wow, the RefundCat move was brilliant — most devs just eat the loss and never optimize for that.
And the paywall changes you made — super insightful. I think the annual plan strategy works especially well if you’re confident the user gets value over time, which clearly fits your case.
From a paid UA perspective (I run ASO & ASA for multiple apps), I often see confusion around this:
“If a user doesn’t convert within 7 days, the install wasn’t worth it.”
But for monthly plans, it’s OK if you don’t break even Day 1 — as long as you have a model in place that shows what ROAS on Day 30 (or 60) looks like. LTV modeling is your best friend.
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Also, loved that you leaned into App Store traffic directly (ASO + ASA). I’d just add something for anyone new to this:
Why ASO matters before you run ASA:
App Store algorithms look at your metadata (title, subtitle, keywords) to determine if your app is relevant to a search query. If you’ve done your ASO right and include high-intent keywords, Apple sees you as relevant → you’ll win more auctions and pay less per tap than a competitor without ASO.
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When I run ASA campaigns, I always:
• Use SKAG format (Single Keyword Ad Groups) for full control
• Pair each SKAG with its own Custom Product Page (CPP) → boosts relevance and TTR
• That leads to better CTRs, lower CPTs, and in many cases, 100% impression share on exact-match keywords
ASA works great when it’s clean and tight like that. Great job pushing through — you’re clearly learning fast and applying even faster 👏