The 7 Ways to Scale Your App

Rork made shipping apps easy, so today, anyone can build a mobile app now. So in this article, we will break down in detail the 7 ways to scale your app based on case studies of some of the most successful app founders in the space. Apps are the only business in the world that doesn’t require any fulfillment; you build it once, and you can sell it forever. So once your app is built, your sole focus should be 100% on marketing.

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#1. Scale with Faceless Content

A lot of people will tell you this is not effective, but I beg to differ. I know founders who have scaled to over $50k/mo+ with just faceless reels. A great example of this is seen in the looksmaxxing niche, where people are literally just making edits, or before and after content of other people, or guides, like in the example below. The slideshows usually include a CTA to their app to get a looksmaxxing score. This is how apps like UMAX scaled to over $100k/mo. And of course, this is not only credited to faceless content, but the founders of UMAX themselves said that their first $30k+ in revenue came from 2 faceless posts from Instagram theme pages. We have spoken to another founder in this niche doing over $50k/mo with an army of faceless content creators as well. And this can work across any vertical: cooking niche, looksmaxxing, gym apps. Easy to make and easy to scale.

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#2. Scale with Influencers

This one is super straightforward. It was one of the main methods Cal AI used to scale to 3.6M views, aside from paid ads. Find influencers that fit your niche, negotiate a good deal, and you will instantly be able to put your app in front of millions of eyeballs. For example, below is a cooking influencer who is averaging 200-300k views per video, plus the occasional banger with 4.4M views. This is the beauty of influencers: they are already viral. They already know what content works for their audience. And believe me, if you can get a video with an influencer that gets 4.4M views, you will literally make over $20k-$40k from that video alone, as long as the CTA is good. This is truly one of the best ways to scale your app if you have initial capital to invest. To find influencers:

• Create a branded account for your app
• Post at least 9 reels relative to your niche.
• Add what the app does in the description.
• Add a link to your app.
• Add a logo as the profile picture.
• DM 100 influencers per day across TikTok and Instagram (volume matters a lot).
• Ideally, your outreach account should have over 10,000 followers.
• If not, use your own personal account and get the verified badge on Instagram ($15/mo). This will make your DMs more visible. Otherwise, it’s like speaking to a wall.

You should lead with a DM template. A good DM you can send to influencers massively improves your chances of getting a response: Once they answer, try to negotiate with them on a $1 to$2 CPM, always capped at $1,000 USD. This protects you from a$10k invoice while you also maximize your results based on performance. Once they sign the contract, just ensure you stay in close daily communication with them and push them to get videos out. Sometimes influencers need a little push. Your job is to review every video and ensure it has a strong CTA, because if they go viral and the CTA is bad, you are just wasting your money. But if the CTA is good, you can 2-5x your investment.

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#3. UGC (User Generated Content)

This is honestly just as good as influencers, if not better. UGC is basically when you hire creators and have them create a new account on TikTok and Instagram, then do 30 to 60 videos a month per creator. The common pay structure is $10 to$15 per video, plus performance bonuses when the videos actually go viral:

• 100k views = $150
• 250k views = $250
• 500k views = $600
• 1M views = $1,000

There’s no CPM; the bonus is only unlocked once those view thresholds are hit. And yeah, a creator can make up to $1,015 on one video, but if your app is good and your onboarding cooks, 1M views will make you a whole lot more than$815. UGC is actually a lot more affordable than influencers. Now, unless you have the capital, I don’t recommend doing more than 1-3 UGC creators at once when you are starting out, because it’s hard to find a format that works, and most UGC campaigns end up not working out. That said, if you have a format that works for your niche, this is when it makes sense to have 10-20 UGC creators making content every day. Otherwise, hire 1-3 to help you find that format that works, and once you crack it, scale up the team. And since your bonus structure is cheaper and your cost per video is a lot lower, you can blow up your app with millions and millions of views at a fraction of the cost. This is the best case scenario for UGC, and it’s what some of the most successful apps in the space used to scale to over $400k/mo with their app.

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#4. Founder-Led Content

Founders have done this and generated millions of views. It’s really not that hard. You pick up the camera and film content yourself. It’s good if you have no budget starting out, and even if you do have the budget, it’s good to be at the forefront of all your creator campaigns. You can find viral formats quicker and feed those to them. You can start by replicating viral videos in your niche. The key when replicating a viral format is to really replicate everything: the music, the length of the video, the pacing, the vibe. Virality is not luck, it’s engineered, and every second of the video matters. The founders of Push Scroll, for example, have scaled their app to $100k/mo with founder-led content, plus running those videos as ads, and of course also using a combination of the other methods mentioned in this article. Founder-led content also builds the viral sense in you. When you are making content yourself, you start to understand what hooks work. And once you have that understanding, you can teach it to your UGC creators and influencers. You can write better briefs, give better feedback, and spot a bad video before it gets posted, which makes every other channel on this list work 10x better. This is how some of the best founders operate.

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#5. Paid Ads (TikTok and Meta)

Out of every channel on this list, paid ads are probably the most powerful. All the apps previously mentioned in this article run ads. If you want to scale, you cannot ignore ads. The reason is simple: once you find a creative that converts and locks in a profitable CPA (cost per acquisition), you literally have a money-printing machine. This is also why every other channel on this list matters so much. UGC, influencers, faceless, founder-led, all of those are essentially feeding the paid ads machine. If a video popped off organically, it has a very high chance of popping off on ads too. Paid ads are pretty much the only channel that can keep your app at a baseline. Say you scaled to $50k/mo because you had a good organic month, and next month you made$20k/mo because you had a bad organic month. Paid ads prevent this by keeping you above a baseline, and in many cases, help you scale way beyond that baseline. A good starting budget is $50-$100/day. Pour in as many creatives as possible and let the algo decide. Once you get a profitable CPA on your ads and make at least a 1.2x to 2x profit on your ad spend, increase your budget by 25% every week. That’s how you run profitable ads.

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#6. Reddit Marketing

Reddit is one of the most slept-on channels for app founders. People sleep on it because it’s harder to track, but the traffic is insanely high intent. The play is simple: find subreddits that match your niche and become a real member first. Don’t just spam your link day one, or you will get banned in 5 minutes. Comment, post, build some karma, then start dropping value posts that subtly mention your app or include it in the comments. Reddit loves a good founder story, especially in subs like r/SideProject, r/Entrepreneur, r/InternetIsBeautiful, and any niche-specific sub for your app. Another play is to answer questions on Reddit, where people are literally asking for the solution your app provides. Search “best app for X” inside Reddit, and you will find dozens of threads waiting for a link drop. Founders are pulling in thousands of free downloads per month from Reddit alone. Just don’t be salesy, Reddit hates that. Lead with value, always.

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#7. Partnerships

This is basically influencer marketing all over again, except your pitch is not to pay influencers per video, but to give them 20 to 50% of your app in return for them becoming partners of the app altogether and getting a share of the revenue. The only thing to be cautious of here is who you partner with. Jump on a call with them, weigh a couple of options. Who you partner with can make or break your app’s success.

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Putting It All Together

And that’s how you market your app after it’s live on the App Store! Feel free to drop any questions below, and follow @rork for more value every week! You can also build your app end-to-end and ship to the App Store at rork.com.