I read these posts every single day. The guy on X who "retired his mom at 21" from app revenue. The dude claiming $73k a month from 12 apps. The screenshots of Stripe dashboards and App Store analytics. Ive studied dozens of them at this point and built 2 apps myself — an AI email outreach engine and ReadForge — and I can tell you most of whats out there is either heavily inflated or straight up fabricated to sell you something.
But heres the thing. The tactics buried underneath the hype? A lot of them are actually legit. So this is me separating the two.
Theres a guy going around right now claiming he makes $73k a month from 12 apps. Sounds crazy. Then somebody actually looked into it. His App Store developer account has 5 Spanish sports apps — all with zero ratings and zero reviews. The only app with any real traction is Prayer Lock, which his friend built. Hes an investor in it, not the builder. Everything else in his bio says "coming soon."
The tactics he shares — validate ideas by checking what competitors make, study onboardings, use Rork to build fast — those are all fine. But the $73k number is just a hook to get you to sign up for Rork through his link. Thats the business model. Not apps.
Then theres the Medvi story. Telehealth startup, $401M in revenue, "only 2 employees," built with AI. Sounds like the dream. But when you actually dig in — its a platform that sells compounded GLP-1 weight loss drugs (the cheap Ozempic alternatives) during a drug shortage. The doctors are outsourced. The pharmacies are outsourced. The whole operational layer is contracted out. And the FDA already sent warning letters to Medvi and 30+ similar companies for misleading marketing. The shortage that made the whole thing possible was officially resolved in early 2025.
Its not an AI company. Its regulatory arbitrage that happened to use AI for the storefront. Huge difference.
The best advice I've found on app marketing came from a Reddit post by a guy who promoted over 200 apps. Not some Twitter bro with a faceless profile — a guy who did it as a freelancer, built an agency out of it, and gave specific answers to specific questions. No affiliate links. No course.
His main points, condensed:
If youre in a competitive market, dont expect ASO (App Store Optimization) to save you at zero downloads. ASO works when you have data, reviews, and ratings. It will not work at launch. You need ads to get initial traction. Even $2 a day is enough to start collecting data.
Google Ads is better than Facebook for most app niches. Lower cost in tier 1 countries, better user quality if you target the right event. For Android-only apps its a no-brainer because your ads show on other apps, Play Store search, Google search, and YouTube all at once.
Dont show a paywall immediately after install. People uninstall instantly. Let them experience the app first. But once they see value — yeah, put up a hard paywall. The apps making real money do this. Free trial or pay upfront. Dont be scared to ask for money.
Focus on retention before revenue. You first need to understand if people are actually using the app. Add Firebase Analytics. Look at the data. Make changes based on what you see. Revenue comes after retention, not before.
I built ReadForge in Electron — joke generator, reading comprehension passages, talking points from news articles. And the AI email outreach engine — scans websites, scores prospects, writes unique cold emails.
Neither of these are making me $73k a month. But I built them, they work, and I learned more from building them than from any thread on X. What I know for sure:
Building is the easy part now. Seriously. Cursor, Rork, Claude — you can go from idea to working app in days. Thats real. The vibe coding stuff isnt hype, it actually works. MVP 1 of any app should be ugly. Decades happen in weeks if you just move.
Marketing is the hard part. And its always the hard part. Every person Ive watched succeed with apps — the real ones, not the screenshot guys — figured out distribution. They found a format that gets views and ran it into the ground. The app itself is almost secondary to the marketing machine around it.
The onboarding matters more than the product. This one surprised me but its true. The onboarding reminds users why they downloaded, makes them realize they have a problem, and positions your app as the solution. If that flow sucks, nobody gets to the paywall. Doesnt matter how good the app is underneath.
So yeah — be skeptical of the numbers but study the tactics. Most of the people posting income screenshots are selling you the dream so they can profit off your optimism. But the playbook underneath — validate, build fast, distribute aggressively, iterate on data — that part is real.
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