Hello,

I haven’t sent any e-mails to my newsletter in a while so you might be wondering who the hell is that. I was busy with other stuff so this newsletter was slightly neglected, but hey, I never promised to write regularly.

Nonetheless, I just wanted to share with you my take on the TikTok & Instagram mobile promo game, since many people keep asking me about it and I want to save this post on my blog page. I posted this on X a while ago, so some of you might have read it already.

Here are my conclusions and notes on how to approach a short-form marketing game:

• You can take two paths: either you keep creating content on your own and see what sticks, then you rinse and repeat, or you play the influencer game and reach out to hundreds of them and pay for their promotion. You can also combine both.

• It's a numbers game; guys who have success with it are relentless in posting and DMing. They work hard.

• Not every app has the potential to go viral; apps that solve existing, boring issues with a "wow effect" (mostly by adding AI features) have the highest chance of going viral.

• Now is a great time to produce those apps; we live in an X-hackers bubble, and most people are unaware of all the AI features popping up weekly. There is a lot of money to be made, but personally, I dislike apps that focus solely on generating revenue without producing any value (AI often hallucinates, and the results can be very inaccurate or even dangerous).

• TikTok/IG is a Gen-Z game; they spend the most time there, so inherently, apps that address their issues have the highest chance of going viral.

• What are those? Young people care more about their looks than older ones, either due to lower self-esteem or simply because they're looking for a partner (dating). That's why apps like Umax (look improvement), Cal AI (calorie tracking—weight loss or gain), and RizzGPT (help with dating) grew like crazy. It helps that their creators are Gen-Z themselves so they understand those issues first-hand.

• I think it's like this new marketing channel that pops up every few years and it's cheaper and more efficient than all the others because it's not saturated yet.

• My take is that everyone celebrates high revenue and big download numbers (short-term), but what's more important is the long-term game. The universal truth is that if you generate high enough traffic and convert it, you will make money, which has a place here for many apps. But another universal truth about B2C is that it has naturally high churn, so the question is if those apps will be able to survive long-term once the traffic goes down and more competition shows up.

Here is a link to my Short-form knowledge base where I gather links and tweets for my own research purposes:

Short-form media marketing knowledge base

swanky-stretch-643.notion.site/Viral-TikTok-Marketing-Knowledge-Base-14c59fc7986c80c2a9a9feb6c128fe28?pvs=4

A while ago I got this question in my DM’s

Several tools allow you to switch countries within your App Store app, for example:

Switchr

Switchr helps fellow iOS developers change between App Store countries easily. See if your App or Game is Featured in other territories.

switchr.imagility.io

‎Store Switch

‎Store Switch is the best way for developers to view their apps in multiple regions. Easily check for features, ranks and more. - Quickly switch regions to view ranks and features around the world. - Search for your own apps and bookmark them for quick access. - Favourite your most commonly used reg…

apps.apple.com/us/app/store-switch/id1484115435

Important: Switch back to your original country before purchasing testing on your device.

There's a bug that charges you even in sandbox mode. I've been charged multiple times before realizing this 🥲 

That’s it. Enjoy!

A while ago I asked a question

You can see on the chart that my impressions grew, but my conversion rate went down.

Some got it right, but many didn’t so I thought it might be a good subject for this post.

Explanation

What’s happening here is the algorithm is giving you more visibility. And by that, I mean that your app is ranking higher for some keywords. The algorithm tests whether your app is a good fit under those keywords or not.

Sometimes those keywords are new, even though you didn’t put them in your metadata field.

It assesses your metrics for each keyword individually. Trying to find a perfect match for you and your audience.

Since now your audience has expanded, your metadata (app icon, screenshots, title) might not cater to the audience as well as they did for your previous keywords, that’s why the conversion rate might go down.

🙂 

As usual, don’t mind to e-mail me back.

A while ago I was wondering, am I losing money by not having my App Store payouts in my country's currency (EUR)?

I was keen to find out, so I asked:

I’ll keep it short:

Based on different opinions and comments, the answer is probably no.

It turns out that App Store currency exchange is not the most favorable so you might be better off exchanging the money on your end.

The rule of thumb is that you want to have payouts in the currency that brings you the most money on the App Store.

In my case it’s USD, so I have payouts in USD.

Of course, we assume here that you can get better exchange rates on your own. It is in my case, but it might not be true for all countries, so ideally you should test it on your own.

As usual, don’t mind hitting reply to this e-mail. I read and respond to it all (although sometimes it lands in Spam and it takes longer for me to find it).

Here is a recent observation that I've made and that I'd like to share with you.

There is a common understanding that the App Store doesn't factor in descriptions when ranking apps in the App Store search, but Google Play does.

And this is true.

But there is a catch.

Once your app is good enough for Google, it's indexed in Google Search and SEO becomes important.

Like within Google Play, Google uses the app store description to rank the app for keywords in Google Search.

Exhibit A

So, in the end, it’s worth putting some extra effort into the description part.

Recently I've shifted my mindset from "getting to X" (i.e. 10k MRR) to "it's a journey".

What does it mean?

I've noticed two things:

• I enjoy entrepreneurship, it's mentally stimulating and clearly I'm addicted (funny enough, I find the same stimuli in board games as they incorporate strategy and forward-thinking)

• often it takes many (many many) attempts to be successful in business

Before, I was goal-oriented. And that goal was to get to ramen profitability. The goal approach is stressful and creates pressure.

Now, when I've reached this goal I allow myself to relax a little bit more (especially after recent burnout) and enjoy the journey instead of pushing it as hard as possible.

I allow myself to refocus and balance out my life to have strong fundamentals to keep going.

And I think the approach of "it's a journey" is a healthier way and the proper way long-term.

Otherwise, what's the point of killing yourself slowly for the sake of extra $?

Although, no one size fits all.

I don’t think this is the approach that is always true, and always correct.

Because as in business, it all depends and it’s all everchanging and flexible.

I can allow myself to switch to the journey-oriented approach because I’ve reached financial stability. That’s a huge achievement (for me) because I always strived to build a lifestyle business instead of making as much money as possible (although I won’t say no to that).

But, to get there I was goal-oriented and that motivated me to hustle and push myself as hard as I could. The journey-oriented approach is more relaxed and slow-paced.

@Juanjo has a good point:

I think in some time I’ll go back to being goal-oriented, but for now, I’ll take some time to slow down.

Why this is important?

Because if we push ourselves too hard, we might get burned out and our productivity will drop significantly. So it’s important to be mindful about it and manage it while you keep building your business.

Otherwise, just like I did a month ago, you will wake up with burnout and a lack of motivation.

Just thought I’d share my perspective.

As always, happy to chat and discuss through e-mail, hit me up.

Recently I started to read a book, “The Art and Business of Online Writing,” and what struck me is the repeating pattern I see among successful founders.

The author of this book, @Nicolascole77, took on the challenge of writing every day on Quora for a year. Some of his responses got a lot of views, some not. One time he hit the jackpot and reached millions of views. That further escalated his career to another level.

On another note, we see @levelsio building dozens of products and only a few are successful. @marc_louvion is another example.

I’ve experienced it personally too. I have built over 17 products in the last 12 months, and only a few were successful. Honestly, I would never expect those particular apps to grow so much. But if I didn’t try, I’d never know.

On the other side, over 10 apps that I’ve built were a waste of time. That’s why I always rush to build an MVP as fast as possible to save time. So yeah, don’t be a perfect programmer. Skip clean code architecture, and forget about unit tests. Just ship it.

Keep in mind that this pattern is not the only way to success; it’s like throwing darts. The more darts you throw, the higher the chance that you will hit something.

I know some will come here and say “yeah, but you need to put enough effort into one product to provide value to users.”

And this is true as well. But it’s a riskier approach, especially in the highly competitive landscape of the worldwide internet.

By throwing more darts, you have a higher chance to learn. Perhaps you take this learning and pivot? Perhaps, you will discover a new market and find an even better opportunity?

You never know.

Today I wanted to share some of my observations and insights about new market trends.

Whenever something big happens (new law is introduced, iOS system update, ground-breaking tools like ChatGPT, a competitor raises prices), new opportunities show up.

Let’s look at a few examples

Exhibit A) A new law is introduced: GDPR

The European Parliament and Council of the European Union adopted the GDPR on 14 April 2016. This law changed the internet as we know it, especially for Europeans (everyone hates cookie consent popups). But, thanks to this law, new opportunities showed up.

For example, analytics.

Before that, Google Analytics was a king (still kind of is), but over time it became too complex, and with new GDPR laws in place every website that was using it had to display the cookie banner and comply with the privacy laws.

That gave a space for tools such as plausible.io, simpleanalytics.com, umami.is etc.

They position themselves as simple and private alternatives to Google Analytics.

This is a great argument against those who think that if there is a major player on the market there is no space for smaller ones.

Exhibit B) iOS System update

Even though widgets have been available for years on the Android system, iOS introduced them just a few years ago. And it changed a lot.

It gave rise to many popular apps that capitalized on a new trend.

Few examples:

1. Locket Widget

2. Widgetsmith

Exhibit C) The AI Revolution

This might be an obvious example, but I wanted to share how you can learn about new opportunities before they become mainstream.

You’ve probably heard about or even paid for AI Avatar. This trend became popular and then it died down. Yet, some capitalized on this trend.

I’ve been tracking this closely actually I was aware of this technology a few months before big names started to build their own “AI Wrappers”.

And I’ve learned about it from Reddit.

Particularly from r/StableDiffusion. People who hung out there really liked to play with new tools and they were generating their avatars for fun using self-made tools.

Only until someone has built an API service to process those images and return the result it go mainstream. Back then the image processing cost a few $ per run. Quite expensive.

Key learning?

Go and check places where passionates are hanging around and look for potential opportunities.

The avatar thing wasn’t new. On the App Store apps like this were available a long time ago (search for “cartoon me”). The recent AI advancements only made it look better.

Exhibit D) A competitor raises prices

As you already know, even if there is a big player on the market, there is a place for a small fish.

We could have been observing this recently with Typeform. They’ve raised prices to the extent that many people started to churn as they were paying top $ for a simple tool that’s essentially a beautiful form.

It didn’t take much time for competitors to show up and offer the same thing but for much, much lower prices.

As always, I’m happy to chat, so don’t hesitate to e-mail me back with questions or if you have something to add.

A few days ago I was researching “spotify stats” market.

It caught my attention because I saw one of the apps in the top results in the Music category in the US.

According to SensorTower data, stats.fm makes $300k per month with 200k downloads. The search intent behind “spotify stats” is not so high, so I’ve looked into TikTok to see if they leverage it to promote the app, and indeed:

There seem to be 3 leaders in this market

must.FM is built by some studio that has a large portfolio of different apps.

Trackify on the other side is done by a 17-year-old (we’ve talked briefly on Twitter under my tweet about this market).

What’s interesting about Trackify, is that it reached the 3rd spot rather quickly (the app was released recently in April), which would indicate that competition is low here and there is a space for another player, but…

The technical side

So the way those apps work is a combination of Spotify API + export feature.

You can get basic data from Spotify API - which is what most apps display for free. And then, if you want more detailed data such as how many hours you’ve listened to songs etc. you need to export your data from Spotify (which takes days) and then load them into the app.

That’s a technical limitation from the Spotify side, but it doesn’t seem like users are bothered by it. They mostly complain that the stats are not always reliable.

This type of app targets a more price-sensitive young demographic who is not always willing to pay for the offering.

From ReadReviews.dev

Here is what AI sentimental analysis says:

My take

The competition is not so high in this market, but the demographic is rather young so the LTV might not be the highest. The competition is leveraging external marketing to bring most of the traffic, so it could be a good idea to position themselves under their branded keywords, such as “stats.fm” (49 popularity in the US) or “must.fm” (only 8 popularity).

As always, it’s important to ask yourself a question, “am I able to build a better offering than the competition?”

Before you go

I’m always listening to the feedback, let me know how do you like my content so far. Do you find reports like this helpful or not really? Would you like to see more of those, or are you interested in some other topics?

I've been collecting a list of potential ideas I could use to build an app for years.

Then one day I thought I might share or sell it, so I tweeted about it:

The tweet blew up, reaching almost 20k views. Some people even reached out to me later asking if the list is ready.

I tried to prepare it, but after a while, I got discouraged thinking that's not enough, especially since it's all available out there in the app store.

I won’t give you a list, but I thought I might share how I look for new markets and new app ideas.

Change your mindset

First of all, you need to get rid of the idea in your head that you have to be unique. It’s hard to be unique nowadays. With so many people on Earth, most of the ideas were already invented at some point in the past.

Whenever you find a market, consider asking questions such as:

• "OK, I see there is a bunch of competition here, can I build something better? Can I compete with something that's already existing on the market?"

  • This can be done in various ways. For example, this developer found an opening in the market by targeting a Spanish-speaking audience. There was already high competition in the Bible market in English, but not in Spanish.

• “Based on my experience and knowledge, can I tackle this problem from a different angle? Can I add something that users demand and competition doesn’t have?”

• “Is this market worth entering? Is it profitable enough? Are users willing to pay for the particular offering?”

  • For example, you can build another dog whistle or tarot app, but people don’t want to pay for those things, so the LTV will be lower than for example video captions app, which they often use for work, so they justify the payment.

How to find different markets?

Simply, go to the App Store and start browsing.

1. Check the Search tab daily. App Store shows a list of 6 keywords that people often search for.

2. Then, check each app. Check the developer portfolio and see if something interests you. Make notes. You can go into this rabbit hole for weeks.

3. Now, when you have a list of potential markets, start researching. Google the topic. Browse Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook groups. Read app store reviews (you can use ReadReviews.dev). Those are a goldmine of good insights straight from users.

4. And then, only when you identify a potential opening, proceed with building.

A small note.

I’ve changed the newsletter name from The Market Wrap to Filip’s Take. One of your e-mails made me realize that what you want me to write about is more general and the initial name wasn’t right. Thank you for the feedback!

That being said, don’t mind e-mailing me back. I’m happy to learn, why you subscribed, what would you like to learn about from me, or if you just want to say hi.

Hi,

@filippkowalski here.

There is a high chance that you will ask yourself “Where the hell this e-mail came from? When did I subscribe to it?”

You might think that, because I’ve never e-mailed anything before. This is my first.

You probably came here from Twitter.

Or you’ve stumbled upon my tweets or you subscribed through my website filippkowalski.com 

Nonetheless.

Today I’m starting this newsletter.

I’m going to write about the market

• market research

• market trends

• market ideas

• app digests

• potential opportunities

• etc

I hope that you will benefit from it

• perhaps, I’ll inspire you to build something new

• perhaps you will learn something that will let you improve your product

• perhaps, you won’t build or improve anything, but still, you will find the information useful

I want to test a new concept. I’m going to treat this newsletter like Twitter.

I’m not promising regular e-mails every Sunday.

I’m not promising long and detailed articles (maybe sometimes).

Because no one has time to read them, and I also believe that quite often this content is forced and if something is forced then its value diminishes.

So, I’ll e-mail you whenever I find something valuable and something that might be of benefit to you.

The newsletter is free. Am I going to monetize it one day in the future? Probably.

Oh, btw. I’m new to this newsletter thing, but apparently, if you don’t want to find my e-mails in the “Promotions” folder it would be good to respond to this e-mail with anything, like “hi”.

Until the next one!