Original Summary

If you prefer to watch/listen instead of reading, I made a video with the full story and all the dashboards (RevenueCat, ad managers, everything). There is a lot more detail there. Short version below. I launched a no-snooze alarm clock app on June 22. Pricing is $5.99/mo, $29.99/yr with a 7-day trial, $99.99 lifetime. Since launch I tested basically every acquisition channel people recommend, and I want to share real numbers because I wish somebody showed me how it really happens for the first-time founders. What I spent: Reddit ads: $1,070. Yes, I started here, on purpose. The logic was that CPC is cheaper than Meta, the ad platform is newer, less competition, and the audience seemed right. Tried multiple creatives, subreddit targeting, straight to the store, web funnels. Zero buyers. When I dug into the click data I found that a big chunk of my "clicks" were people tapping the ad thinking it's a normal post, then closing the browser before the page even loaded. Also good to know: the $500 credit Reddit offers only unlocks after you spend your first $500, and honestly the promise of that credit kept me spending longer than I should have. Meta ads: $1,276. I never sent this traffic to the App Store, everything went to web. Landing page funnels ending on my web paywall completely flopped (maybe my funnel's fault, I could not make any version of it work). The same ads pointed at a $37 PDF were overall ROAS-neutral (~1), more on that below. Apple Search Ads: $2,115. Started negative, currently my only profitable channel pointing at the app itself. I changed nothing in the campaigns, same keywords, same bids. What changed was the app (below). Content creators: $2,138. Not influencers, none of them had a following, and each one posted from a brand new account, so the bet was purely on the content spreading. 12 creators, 5 trial videos each at $20/video (posted to TikTok, IG, Shorts and Facebook), then $938 more on the best 4 long-term. The trial round was as much about testing the people as the videos, who communicates well, who actually follows the brief. Best result: one Short with 22k views. ROAS basically zero. My real mistake here: I briefed them by copying my competitors' viral videos instead of making some videos myself first, so I was handing them someone else's formula without knowing my own angle or conversion baseline. I still think this channel compounds long-term, I just can't afford months of runway waiting for it. The biggest single thing I found was a bug in my paywall. On mid-size iPhones the yearly price was just not there on the screen. I had tested on my 16 Pro Max and on an iPhone 8 as the small screen check, but the regular 15/16/17s sit between those two sizes, and exactly there the price got cut off. About half of the people who saw the paywall tapped "buy" without ever seeing a price, and it converted at 10–12% (apparently a lot of people saw the price for the first time on Apple's

  • 情报分类：硬件与数码
  • 分类依据：内容涉及硬件、数码产品或通信卡
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SideProject
  • 发布时间：2026/9/16 20:54:53