I hacked the ASO with this trick

In 24h: 9k downloads, 600+ new ratings, 4.8 average

Hey, listen!

I had a shitty app with less than 1k downloads in a year.

It went free for 24h and skyrocketed.

This is how you can do it.

I’ve never had so many downloads in my life

The other day, while binging on YouTube (as usual) I came across this video by Steve Young.

I cannot recommend enough this guy, his videos are pure gold for indie devs selling on the App Store.

In this video, he tells how he grew an app from making less than $100/mo to $60k/year.

He passed from barely having downloads to… 100k!

The trick is easy: listing your app for free for 24h

This is how to do it:

1. List your app in platforms like AppAdvice or Indie App Santa. I went with AppAdvice because it’s free, and they answered quite fast to give me a slot. To do so, follow the instructions here (at the very bottom)

2. Create a lifetime product. This is important because you will have more downloads if it’s a lifetime than a year for free, for example. If you can’t really afford lifetime, because your API costs are expensive for instance, go for a yearly offer.

3. Set up the price at $0. I use RevenueCat, so I can change products in realtime from the dashboard. Therefore, I created a new product “Lifetime Gift” at $0, and changed it at the proper time. If you don’t use RC, just schedule a price change in the App Store Connect.

4. Request reviews! If you don’t do it yet, prompt the request review during the onboarding process. Set another review request just right after the purchase, so you leverage the user’s dopamine of getting one thing for free. Don’t worry, if they already rated during the onboarding, the second request won’t appear.

5. Leverage the ASO boost! You will obtain thousands of downloads and hundreds of ratings and you will climb up a lot on App Store rankings. Thus, it’s time to pay attention to your onboarding funnel, do A/B tests, collect user feedback, etc…

I tried it this week with PhotoCaption AI and I got 600+ ratings with a 4.8 average. Pretty insane! 🔥

I use Astro to track keywords and ratings

I will report you back in a few weeks to tell how is it going, if I manage to keep the download boost stable and increment the sales.

See you next week!

Juanjo

Get an AI Identifier app directly on the App Store and start monetizing 👇