Transcription
If you've clicked on this video, chances are you're eager to dive into the world of mobile apps, but you're unsure of where to start. And this is where most founders get stuck. The idea, maybe you don't even have an idea yet, or maybe you have millions of ideas, but you have no idea which one is worth building. And here's the harsh truth. Most apps fail not because they're poorly built. They fail because the idea was never validated in the first place.
So, in this video, I'm going to break down my exact framework that I use to find and validate mobile app ideas that print. I have built and scaled apps to millions of downloads. My previous app, PuffCount, scaled to $44,000 per month in monthly recurring revenue before I sold the business. My new mobile app, Posted, is crossing $90,000 per month. I have successfully exited two companies, and I've worked with and alongside other founders doing the exact same. I have been able to consistently build successful mobile apps, not because I'm lucky, but because I chose the correct ideas to invest my time and money into. And I have developed a simple four-step framework that you can follow to do the same. Stop guessing. Build what people will actually pay for. Let's get into it. Boom. Here it is. The blueprint for finding and validating mobile app ideas broken down into a simple four-step process.
Step number one is figuring out the idea itself. Step number two is validating this idea. Step number three is taking a marketing mindset when picking our idea. And step number four, probably the most important, is making sure this idea is actually feasible to get done and build. We want to build quickly so we can get it to market and start making cash.
So step number one, we want to look for and solve real problems, not just some crazy weird idea that's never been built before. If your idea solves a painful problem, your life in the mobile app game will be so much easier. People are more willing to pay for an app that solves their problems. And marketing it is easy. Hey, here's a problem, a popular problem. Our app solves that problem. Boom. You got them. So, let's start with a problem. We want to find a very painful problem or desire. Generally speaking, those can be related to health, wealth, relationship, status, or convenience and freedom. And look, if we look in the top charts at the top grossing apps, we can ignore YouTube and all the massive companies out there, but boom, we have Tinder. What's that? Relationships. One of the top trending apps, X status, one of the top trending apps, Instagram status, Hinge, dating, LinkedIn status. And we can even go on Sensor Tower and we can break down different niches if we want to. We can see the top grossing apps in the health and wellness niche. My fitness pal, health, fitness. You can browse through the top apps and you can see which ideas are making the most money. We want to keep our problem simple, especially for the MVP. In the very beginning stages, we want to solve one painful problem with one solution. That's how Puff Count started. My app that I scaled to $44,000 per month and monthly recurring revenue. I had one feature that solved one problem. Quitting vaping. You track your puffs in the app. It was that simple. And up until the very end before I sold the company, that was the main selling feature. That's what I marketed. That's why people came to my app.
Controversy. Also very important to keep in mind. Puff count was a very controversial app. Vaping is a controversial topic. If your app has some sort of controversy involved, it will make the marketing go crazy. And trust me on that, I grew my Puff page to 120,000 followers and our content was getting millions and millions of views. Not because I'm some wizard at content, but because it was controversial. Look at all the top comments. 15,000 likes on this comment. Giving people money to buy new vapes. So, I wonder how many people took that money and then they buy another one. No one quit. People love to hate. They love to comment on stuff. We're going to use that to our advantage. So, again, you can look at what is trending right now. You can go to Sensor Tower. You can look at the top app app store charts. You can look at what is trending on social media. I knew Puff Count would be a killer idea because vaping was going mega viral across social media. I kept seeing Tik Toks about vaping, how unhealthy it was, how hard it was to quit. And on top of that, we can also look at Google Trends. Here's the Google trend for the keywords quit vaping. If you notice, it's up and to the right, almost at an all-time high in terms of interest over time. This is in the United States. If we go to worldwide, same story. This is a global problem that people are actively looking for. What's your idea? Type it into Google search. Is it going up into the right? If it is, that's a great sign. We can also look at app marketplaces. We can look at Flippa. We can look at Acquire. We can sort the Flippa listings by most profitable and we can see what apps are the most profitable. This meditation and yoga app selling for $800,000. They make $20,000 every single month. It's live here for you to see. Go on to Flippa. You can see exactly what apps are crushing it and how much money they're making. This is an absolute cheat code. Here's a VPN app making $17,000 a month. Here's a chat, flirt, and dating app making 15K a month. We can do the same thing on Acquire. We can go to Acquire and we can filter by mobile app and we can filter by annual revenue high to low. We're going to do mobile app. Apply. Annual revenue high to low. This company is making $10 million. It is a QR code reader. Simple idea. Painful problem. $10 million a month. Let's look at the next one. Teaches you how to do math homework. $6.4 $4 million a month. High growth app portfolio. Blue collar job and recruitment services. AI powered video editing. AI makeup app. This is a cheat code. If you are interested in or already building an app of your own and you want to connect with other founders in the space who are already doing 10, 50, upwards of $100,000 per month, you should join our app founder group call. The link to join the group call is in the description.
Step number two, let's make sure that this problem is actually trending. We need to validate this idea. Once we've found our idea, let's validate it. Let's do market research. My favorite market research tool in terms of finding viral social media content is going on to viraladlibrary.com. We can see all of the most viral videos. We can see how many views these videos have and we can see what app they're for. This tool is an absolute cheat code. You can see all of these other apps videos. You can do competitor research here and you can see who is crushing it and how. They have TikTok, they have Instagram, you can sort by paid ads, you can sort by organic content, you can sort by most views and you can search here. Viral ad library is the market research tool for figuring out what's going viral on social media. And again, we can also use Sensor Tower. We can go to the top app charts. We can see how much revenue they're making. Calorie counter My Fitness Pal making a boatload of money. Flow period cycle tracker making a boatload of money. Let's go to the lifestyle. Tinder making a boatload of money obviously. T dating advice $600,000 a month. Go on to Sensor Tower and again competition is good. Make sure that other apps in your space are making money. That is a good sign competition is healthy in the app game. Do not be afraid of the competition. And again, if the Google trend search volume is going up, the iOS app store search volume is going up. I can promise you that.
Now, we need to approach the idea with a marketing mindset. This is the most important part. Marketing is 95% of the success of a mobile app. Let's pretend for a second your app is the worst app on the planet. If you can market that app and you can get a million people to look at your app, it will succeed. A certain percentage will purchase their product. And on the flip side, let's pretend you have a really cool looking app and it's great and it's fully polished and you spent 2 years building it, but it's not marketable and you can't get people to the front door. Which business succeeds? The bad app with great marketing. Marketing is the most important part in mobile apps. Especially in today's day and age where anyone can build a mobile app with AI tools, freelancers, whatever it is, the barrier to entry is lowering. However, with that, the barrier to entry to marketing is getting higher and higher and higher. That is your moat. The one thing that separates the winners from the losers is a distribution strategy. So, make sure your app and your idea are marketable. So, how do we make sure it's marketable? Again, the validation stage up here will help a lot, but are people talking about it on social media? Are there TikTok videos about this? Are there Reddit threads about this? Are there Twitter posts about your idea, your problem, your niche in general? Take out your phone, go on to TikTok, type in your keywords, sort by most liked videos of all time, and if there are viral videos there, that is your market research. That is how you know if your idea is going to be marketable. Use those ideas to build content for your product. Social media is the instant demand check on whether your product is marketable or not. The more viral videos you have in that specific niche, the easier it will be for you.
Step number four, the most important part, feasibility. Can you actually build this app? Simplicity wins. I'll remind you the QR code reader that's making $10 million. Simplicity wins. Keep the app simple, especially for your MVP. You want to build, launch, and validate your app as fast as possible without wasting a ton of time and without wasting a ton of money. Don't worry about your app being simple or not polished or it has bugs or whatever. That's okay. News flash, there will always be new stuff for you to build. There will always be that one small bug. There's always going to be something for you to update. But that's okay because part of being a founder and part of being in the mobile app game is adapting. Adapting to change, getting feedback from your users, from your customers, and adapting to that change. Do not get stuck in this endless loop of building the perfect product. You will fail. Launch quickly, get feedback from real people using your product, and adapt. And lastly, don't be afraid to move fast, break things, and learn as you go. Because at the end of the day, yes, we're here to make amazing products. We're here to make some cash, but building mobile apps is fun, baby. Being an app founder is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. And it will give you time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom. And I can say that because I've done it myself. So, go validate that idea. Protect your time. Protect your money. Make sure that your product is marketable and you'll crush it. If you want to get in touch with me, if you want my opinion on your app idea or you want to work with me or you want to ask me a question or whatever, shoot me a DM on Instagram, Stephven Builds, and subscribe to the channel. I'm dropping sauce all the time. Hope you enjoyed. See you on the next one.