How I Built a $10K/Month iOS app
Frederick James tells Starter Story how a plain habit tracker app with premium design, launched about 3 months ago, peaked near $13K a month, mostly through Apple Ads and TikTok Ads.
The gist
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He designs mockups in Figma, reworks Pinterest assets with GPT Image, then hands everything to ChatGPT, his $100-a-month coding agent, to build the app.
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His first $5K a month came from Apple Ads, bidding exact competitor names with search match off and tracking results through RevenueCat.
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He started TikTok by remaking five already-viral niche videos as ads with about $50 each, and says never raise budgets over 20% every few days.
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TikTok Ads took him from 5K to 10K in about a week once a target cost per acquisition pushed daily spend from $200 to $1K.
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He warns paid ads were unprofitable his first couple weeks, margins run about 30%, and urges joining the App Store Small Business Program.
"Stage one is to make the mock UI in Figma first. I think this always leads to a way better final product. If you draw like a wireframe even of what you want the UI to look like, the agent will have a much higher chance of one-shotting it rather than you having to go back and f..."
▶ Play at 4:3227 creators recommend it, including Ali Abdaal, Claire Vo, and Jordi Hays.
See all on the Figma page"For all the assets in my app, I go to Pinterest and I download a whole load of those, and then I make them my own with GPT Image 2. It's actually 2.5 now as well. This is free with an OpenAI subscription as well. People love images, right? ... It can really help to make your a..."
▶ Play at 5:352 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown.
See all on the GPT Image page"I then give all of my mock-ups to ChatGPT, who then builds out the whole flow and the UI. ... ChatGPT for my coding agent. I pay $100 a month for that."
▶ Play at 5:51147 creators recommend it, including John Coogan, Peter Yang, and Riley Brown.
See all on the ChatGPT page"I got started with Apple Ads. This is my breakthrough on the app. You get $100 free to start. You don't need like a crazy budget. ... We're going to turn search match off and use the exact keywords only. And the keywords are going to be the names of your big competitors."
▶ Play at 7:36"And then I'm using RevenueCat for the tracking, for the monetization and the remote paywalls. ... It's a few lines of code in your app, and then a few clicks on your RevenueCat dashboard."
▶ Play at 6:3510 creators recommend it, including Ben Leavitt, Cedric Roberge, and Christian.
See all on the RevenueCat page"That hockey stick growth came with TikTok Ads, and it came in about a week. ... This is the real inflection point for me: I used goal-based budget increase and I set a target cost per acquisition. ... My campaign was running about $200 per day, but once I turned this on, it ju..."
▶ Play at 9:353 creators recommend it, including Lino Leighton and Will Mayer.
See all on the TikTok Ads page"Get rid of the App Store 15%. If you're not already on the Small Business Program, you should sign up for that, otherwise you're paying 5% for nothing."
▶ Play at 10:58What they recommend · 7 picks
Software & apps
4 picks · Frederick James ·Frederick's software & apps →
"Stage one is to make the mock UI in Figma first. I think this always leads to a way better final product. If you draw like a wireframe even of what you want the UI to look like,..."
"I got started with Apple Ads. This is my breakthrough on the app. You get $100 free to start. You don't need like a crazy budget. ... We're going to turn search match off and us..."
"That hockey stick growth came with TikTok Ads, and it came in about a week. ... This is the real inflection point for me: I used goal-based budget increase and I set a target co..."
AI tools
2 picks · Frederick James ·Frederick's AI tools →
"For all the assets in my app, I go to Pinterest and I download a whole load of those, and then I make them my own with GPT Image 2. It's actually 2.5 now as well. This is free w..."
Other picks
1 pick · Frederick James
"Get rid of the App Store 15%. If you're not already on the Small Business Program, you should sign up for that, otherwise you're paying 5% for nothing."
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