Strategies for Viral Apps on TikTok

There are apps that are getting millions of downloads because they've mastered TikTok. And it's kind of a black box for most of us. So I brought on Joseph Choi. This guy knows exactly the formula for how these apps are getting users. He breaks it down and you're going to love it. People charge $5,000 for this sort of thing, but I'm giving to you for free. All you got to do is listen and take notes. Enjoy the episode. All right, Joseph Choi on the pod. This guy doesn't want to talk about B2B marketing at all, and that's okay, because he's the guy to talk to when you want to blow up your consumer app. And today he, I mean, you tell us, Joseph, what do you want to talk about today? Yeah, let's talk about viral consumer apps. I've been seeing a lot of people making a lot of money on pretty much getting all their users from these really simple TikTok videos. So I want to go through a few things. Some quick wins, like that you can just copy these apps and get 10K MRR within a couple of months, probably. If you just copy the content, copy the app, do some slight differentiation. But I think there's also legit opportunity for people who are more ambitious, want to build bigger businesses. And the overall theme is, I think that TikTok organic is probably the biggest underpriced distribution channel right now. And yeah, just the cost of creating distributing content is just so low that I think all types of consumer apps can be using these strategies. Great. You know, yes. The answer is yes. We want to know more about that. We see, we've been seeing more of that on, on Twitter. People have been like sharing like how this company got, you know, 4 million, uh, 4 million downloads in like 90 days and are making $3 million a month with some AI app. So people, people want to know and they want to figure it out and, and let's, let's learn. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest trends that I've seen is that All these tactics are basically being stolen from the e-commerce space. So TikTok Shop got released, I think, in November of 2022. So it's only been two years since TikTok Shop came out. And so we've only had like two years of TikTok marketing innovation. So the space is still super new. But what I've seen is like, for example, Tabs Chocolate, they went from zero to 10 million. a year for an e-commerce product, this chocolate company. And they basically use these mass UGC creators, hiring tons of teenagers, putting them all in a Discord server, and then just mass producing content every single day. And the founder of that, Oliver, he pivoted from Tabs Chocolate to a micro SaaS that helps people do their homework in college. And it's really interesting because... they're basically using the same tactics in their marketing, but now it's a SaaS, it's a consumer SaaS business. So instead of e-commerce where you have like 20, 30% margins, it's now a micro SaaS and you get, you know, 90 plus percent margins and a higher exit multiple if you decide to sell the business. So I wanted to show you a couple of marketing trends that the e-commerce space is doing right now. And I think there's a lot of ideas that you can... take from the e-commerce space and then kind of build apps around the same marketing strategies. So one of them is Colostrum. So this is like an example of a video, POV you divorced bread. So this video got, I think something like 700,000 views. It starts, by the way, this is all AI. So this picture is mid journey. It's not even real food. Um, but it's POV you divorce bread. It's kind of a funny hook. And then it just goes through, by the way, the audio is, I think a Joe Rogan like clip or I don't know who this is. Maybe it's Hugh Ramon or someone, but, um, you know, common pain points, energy, brain fog, metabolism, by the way, also I use colostrum and you should go to miracle moon Amazon. So if this video gets, I don't know, uh, 700,000 views and. you know, 0.5% to 1% of the people actually. close their app, they go to Amazon, they check it out. Um, even if that conversion rate's pretty small, they're going viral with the same types of videos every single day. And this is not even the same. Uh, this is not even the only account. So they figured out this one content format that works and now they pump out these mid journey stories like every day. Um, but they're pushing all the traffic to, uh, to e-commerce, which is interesting because You know, you could do the same exact story, like theoretically, with similar pain points, but then solve the pain points with an app instead. So here's an example of the same thing, but for an app. So TikTok, a strong negative hook. Our guests hated the controversial rules we enforced at our wedding. And then it goes through the rules. Don't ask photographer for pictures. No kids at the wedding, no plus ones, don't post photos before us. And then the last slide is we had our guests use the POV app, which is a disposable camera app that they can use to take pictures at the wedding. And this account does the same thing. So they have all these slideshows and it looks like they're experimenting with some AI actors more recently. But they pretty much post these wedding. wedding angle stories for like, you know, every day. And this is also mid journey, the, the faces and stuff are getting really realistic. This is also kind of weird, but they have like, I think they, at some point they realized that the like cake on the face image as the first image, like gets views for some reason. So they just prompt the mid journey to do that same hook, um, every time. So I don't know, just weird stuff like that where you can never predict what consumers will respond to. So I think a lot of this game is just trying a bunch of random stuff and then seeing what works. But then once you figure out what works, you can just spam it every day. So the POV app is doing super well with this content format. So quick reactions so far. So one is that when people think TikTok... They think short form video. And the examples that you're showing is carousels. So that's just a surprise for me, I guess, is that it's, by the way, a happy surprise. Like it's way easier for me to create a photo on mid journey than it is to go and create a video just from a effort perspective. So just surprising that carousels are working so well. That's completely true. And I, what I've heard, um, from people in both the e-commerce and the app space is that, um, slides are generally lower converting, um, because there's less of that human feeling of an influencer talking to you, you know, with a talking head video. Um, but you know, there's a lot more scale and it's like the, the barrier to entry, like you said, is so much easier. So I have seen talking head and I wanted to get to that too. um, of influencers, you know, talking to the camera, um, selling various things. But if you're just getting started and you don't know how to hire influencers, you don't have the budget, then this is like super easy way to start out. Um, one issue that the industry has right now is this company called goalie. Um, basically they're a supplement company and they sell all sorts of supplements. including ashwagandha is like one of their most popular ones and they do these talking head videos um the so basically what tiktok shop is is it's a platform on top of tiktok where you can as an e-commerce brand you can upload your brand and your products to the site and then uh creators can sign up to affiliate for your product and they just make videos automatically So you don't have to hire them, sign contracts or anything. You just upload the products and they just start making videos. And then they take an automatic affiliate cut. So you can set your affiliate cut at whatever you want. 15, 20% is typical. And then people just start making videos. So TikTok shop was a huge gold rush in the past two years. But then over time, brands started to catch on. And Goalie was one of these brands. And now if you search Goalie creator prizes. They give away they're giving away like insane prizes to top affiliates to just. basically have a monopoly on all the creators. So for example, they have these like, if you sell $7,000 in GMV, you get a MacBook Pro. If you sell 45K, you get a Rolex. If you sell 250K, you get a BMW. 500K, you get a Tesla. And this is on top of the affiliate commissions. So you get the 20% commission and you get these prizes. And Goalie has said themselves that this is not profitable, but it just makes it... really hard to compete um for these talking head creators because they're just all making videos for for goalie um goal is not the only one there's a couple other supplement companies that are sort of monopolizing all these creators so that's another reason um to go to slideshows um it's just yeah the the competition is a lot less um but i also wanted to talk about an opportunity potentially to ride the goalie wave uh if you wanted to hear about that unless you had some more stuff to say about these yeah yeah let's let's do it so uh here's an interesting tool that i think not many people are looking at right now so if you go to the tiktok shop affiliate center you can find a lot of really good data on exactly what tiktok shop products are being sold in high volumes on TikTok. So you can sort it by industry too. So you can find creators that are selling all these different products. And the filters are really good. So for example, let's try to find supplement creators. Or let's do a different one. Let's say like skincare. So here's all the stuff that has to do with skincare. And you can sort by... performance too. So you can find people that have between a hundred and 10,000 total GMV. So now basically I've selected all the skincare TikTok shop affiliates who do, uh, medium range, uh, GMV. So the opportunity that I see with this is all these TikTok shop creators. are being incentivized by these huge e-commerce companies to make all these videos. But they're just selling e-commerce products. And I feel like they could all be selling apps instead. So if you read my mind, like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? I almost, it's crazy that we're going to publish this episode. Because I think that so many people are going to listen to this. And I think it actually will change the dynamics of TikTok shop. I think so, too. I kind of held this in for a little bit because I run the community of consumer app founders. And I've been sharing this with the members. So I'm sorry to my members, but I'm going to leak the alpha. But I mean, this is just kind of. the game with TikTok. The tactics are always evolving. There's always going to be something new, some new edge. But this is something that I think the entire industry will benefit from. If everyone starts making videos for apps instead of e-commerce, then there'll be more content formats, more video trends to follow, and yeah, just a lot more innovation in the space. You can do this for so many different niches. It doesn't have skincare. For example, There's this app called What Colors and it's a color analysis app. So basically it's like people that want to know what type of clothes or what type of makeup works best with their hair color and their skin tone and their eye color. They can use color analysis and typically it's like a, it's a, you know, hype. high paid consultant who's you know doing the color analysis for you but now they've put it into an app and they use ai to analyze your you know the colors on your face and your hair and stuff like that um and this app promotes this video promotes this app so this video got almost a million likes so this app is doing very well um and it's yeah it's just another simple slideshow and then cta is you know, download the what colors from the app store. And do we know, do we know the business model of what colors like? How they charge? It's so a lot of these apps that are like single single utility apps are just paywall. So you onboard onto the app, you answer a few questions and then they hit you with the paywall. You pay weekly or annually and then you can scan your face. Typically, they have you scan your face first. So you're kind of brought in and then it does the paywall and then you pay subscriptions, which is. Also, by the way, subscriptions, I think one of the other reasons why the consumer apps are having such a boom is because of the double tap to pay. Like, I think that Apple pay that simple like UX change has changed people's perception of of iOS subscriptions. Like, if you look at the past five, 10 years of iOS subscriptions, the the revenue is just. blowing up. Like apps have always existed. You know, there was the 2000s, you know, app boom. And then but none of those apps were monetized. They're all free now. Like people are actually paying for apps. So this is yeah, this is one of these apps that you you pay for for as a subscription. Well, I can give a little more color to that. So as someone who was building apps during like when the App Store came out and. Back then, 2009, 2010, 2011, back then, the distribution, like how you got people, how you got millions of users into your app was the App Store. The App Store would feature you and you would get hundreds of thousands of downloads per week. And that worked until it didn't work. Now, what is the equivalent of... the app store to today it's tiktok it's instagram these are places where people discover content how many people are opening up the app store and and thinking oh give me a app to download today like that's just not how how it works anymore it worked when you were getting your first iphone and you needed you wanted apps to make your phone more functional just doesn't work anymore That's great. That's really great context. And, but the thing is also is like, once you get that top of funnel distribution through TikTok, then people start downloading your app, then you do rise in the ranks. And then now you have a search, uh, you know, ASO, um, app store optimization. Um, so you will, so you'll actually start getting organic downloads just from to, uh, from the app store. Um, if you get a kind of boost, so you do this TikTok stuff once and you benefit. forever. So yeah, great context with that. But yeah, the reason why I was bringing up what colors is like, if you go to these, like, if you think about what kind of app could you do for skincare, like you could do a skincare version of what colors where you analyze your face, and then you suggest skincare products, for example. And one of the hardest parts of going viral on TikTok is making videos that get views, but then also convert. So you want to sell, you want to actually sell a product. You don't just want, you know, the vanity metric of number of views. And typically the more, the harder you sell the product, the fewer views that you get. But these TikTok shop traders are the top 1%. 1%. of the people who know how to do that, right? Because they're getting organic views and they're selling high volumes of GMB. So I think this is actually the goldmine. Like find TikTok shop creators because they know how to make this style of video and then have them promote apps. To take it a level deeper, you could actually make an app that helps them sell the products that they're already selling. So if they're selling skincare products, e-commerce, you know, creams or whatever you can like, like for example, you could make a skincare app that analyzes your face and you could do a before and after video where you say, Hey, today I'm going to, you know, uh, try this skincare versus this skincare product. And then, uh, you know, look at the results after a week. And then you, you briefly show the app and you show the interface and you scan the, the influence like this. The influencer scans her face before and after and then shows the transformation. And it's about the e-commerce product. But then the app is being used as a utility to show that transformation. And you don't even need to mention the app or you could mention it very casually in a non-threatening way. And this is another it's just another scale thing. Like if you reach out to all these influencers, I bet they would use it, use the app in their TikTok shop affiliate videos for free because it actually helps them make content. So you could get. you could get the marketing completely for free and you could do this for any niche. Like it doesn't have to be skincare. So many niches like makeup, personal care, um, fashion, you know, electronics, sports, um, home improvement, um, collectibles, jewelry, home supplies. So whatever people are selling, just help them to sell the thing better. Yeah. I also think that What's cool about the app approach is it's way harder to get a stranger to drop $100 on some product from an influencer that they've never heard about. And way easier for them to just double click on, you know, download an app, double click again and spend five bucks, you know. So that's another interesting thing about digital products is, yes, the... price point might be a lot lower, but the actual volume might be a lot higher. That's so true. Yeah. Like some of the weekly prices on these apps is like $2 a week or $10 a week. Um, or the annual is like, you know, 30 to $60 a year. Um, but the cost of goods on that is basically zero. So if you just, it's, it's, you know, infinitely scalable. I have some like high revenue per user ideas that we could look at if that would be interesting. You're an angel. You're an absolute angel. So, okay, think about, okay, so I think there's a myth that TikTok users are all young. I think generally it's basically true, but there's still a wide range of demographics on. TikTok. And if you serve content to a niche of people on TikTok where there's not as many creators, your content is going to be underpriced and you're still going to be reaching these demographics. So who has a lot of money to pay for products? It's like one idea is golfers. And this idea has been circulating on Twitter for a little bit, but... If you search, like if you go on to TikTok Creative Center and you go on Keyword Insights, you can see what people are searching for on TikTok. And then you can find related videos to these things. So one idea that a couple of people are already jumping on right now is the golf swing analysis. And, you know, you could build an app that takes a live view. of your uses the camera to take a live view of your golf swing analyzes it the angle and the speed and everything and gives you tips on how to improve that and um it's like a golf it's like an ai golf coach basically um and if you look at the videos that exist in this niche for example improve your golf swing like these videos already exist So they're promoting these apps. This app, I think, is talking about... It's like a GPS tracker, so it shows you how far you hit the ball. But there's also this other swing analysis. If you go on Sensor Tower and you search golf swing, the top app, I think, has 10,000 downloads a month, and it's making $70,000 a month, which is pretty crazy. um revenue per download um ratio compared to some of these other apps um you know probably because you know this demographic is willing to pay a lot more for for things well also the alternative that's one piece and i actually uh i signed up for golf i'm i'm horrible at golf like horrible i've only golfed a few times in my life and i signed up for a golf swing analysis Um... Just like randomly, it's $125 for 60 minutes. And so I don't know what they're charging, but I already feel like uncomfortable like going and some like random person is going to analyze my crappy golf swing. And I have to go and like drive there and park and walk and like doing it out of the comfort of your own home. Like that's for like $20. Like I would do that all day. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And then the app is just like so much more scalable than a bunch of coaches that you can get some good content ideas from TikTok itself, too. If you just search golf swing, like there's people that already sort of make this content where they analyze the angles of, you know, famous golfers swings. And another app that I like in this space is. uh ko uh their uh mma app so they help you train um uh like boxing and mixed martial arts so if you go to you know if you search ko watch some of these videos it's basically a product demo you know there's lessons in the app but then there's also this like wireframe skeleton thing i really like this concept i think this could be applied to so many other apps like tennis golf pickleball if you draw this wireframe over people and you kind of use that to analyze their movements um it works really well on tiktok because it looks it looks really cool it's like visually it has this kind of wow factor and you know the the content already sort of has this uh this analysis in the organic videos, it would be so easy to plug in an app on this and just have a little screen recording in the corner that shows the interface of, uh, the app analyzing the golf swing. Um, it's a super easy product integration. Um, I like it. I mean, I like it because I mean, it works. It's, it's, you know, tennis. pickleball like what are other like skiing you know i'm just trying to think of like what are high value like what are what are sports that people the lifetime value of a customer is high as well as that they're interested in analysis of of how you know of how they uh how they swing or play or whatever there's actually i forget the name of it but there's a camera that does this and it's specifically designed for tennis players and pickleball players have you heard about this i have a friend who does it he he like he sets it up every every time we play tennis he like puts it on the fence and then the camera and then i think there's an app component too so it's the camera and the app together totally and that's really i don't know if the camera's completely necessary though i feel like gpt vision is like good enough to kind of yeah like the the camera on the iphone is pretty damn good yeah um and you can just use the apis like the gpt this is super fresh by the way like gpt vision um just came out this year and you know all the other llm companies are building better and better versions of the uh the ai vision stuff so the opportunity is very fresh like there's not that many uh competitors in the space yet. Um, one more, um, uh, high LTV niche is, is poker. Um, I still have not seen a really, really good, um, like well monetized poker app, but when you think about it, poker players are probably the best customer that you can have when it comes to like sports and, you know, games and, um, people who would use apps um i mean typically these a lot of these poker videos and like content gets monetized via uh gambling sites because obviously they make a lot of money too but you could build uh you know an app that helps poker players analyze their their hand history like analyze the um the strategies did i make a mistake here or there um You could even position it more towards beginners and show them. tips on, hey, here's what you did this hand. Here's something that you might want to do next hand. And sort of have an educational component similar to KO. But a lot of these poker videos are unmonetized. Or at least under-monetized. They either sell a poker course where they say, hey, here's how they learn poker. Or they're sponsored by gambling. websites, but you could reach out to all these poker, poker creators and integrate the app into the, into the gameplay videos. Like for example, this video has like 90,000 views. It's like biggest tip for poker players. It clicks the wrong one, this one, how to play the straddle. And it's just. I think the person's probably talking voiceover. So for here, he calls. But imagine if you just put a little interface right here that said, okay, let's look at, you know, what are my pot odds? Like, what are my, you know, what's the range? What's my range right now? Like, how should I bet here? Should I fold? Should I check? You could put... the app interface right there, just flash it for two seconds and then continue on with the video. And then people in the comments are going to be like, oh, what was that app? How did you do that? And then you can just reply and people read the TikTok comments. So you're going to get a lot of people getting downloads from that. And there's tons of accounts that just post these poker videos every day and they're completely unmonitored. So this is a, I think it's a big opportunity. When I hear you talk, I just, I was, okay, I'll tell you a little bit. I had coffee with someone this morning who, he's a founder, he sold his last company for like $180 million. And he was kind of complaining to me that it's so hard to stand out now, it's so hard to come up with ideas for stuff. And I was like, dude, what are you smoking? Like, what are you smoking? Like there's the amount of opportunity right now. Like, and these aren't even like, you know, I call them super niches, which is like a niche of a niche. These are like large categories that you're, you're talking about. That's true. Yeah. You could get even more micro with these, but I just like TikTok is just, yeah, like I said, it's mostly monetized through e-commerce and. there's just not that many people that have figured out this content yet. Like one thing, one thing that I've noticed is that people also get stuck on like influencer marketing because everyone views influencer marketing through the lens of like the Instagram era, which was an influencer. You know, you pay an influencer, they have millions of followers. And, you know, people, the theory was that people follow people, not brands. And I think that's true. I think influencers, the access is a niche audience. But TikTok is different. It's different because people watch content on the For You page. They don't watch content from people that they actually follow. Like if you scroll through your For You page, 95% of the content is brand new accounts that you've never seen before. So because of that, you can't do influencer marketing in the same way. With influencer marketing, the creators that you hire are actually three different roles. It's like they're an actor, which most people think about, but then they're also a director. They're creating the video. A lot of times you give them a brief, but best practice is usually, hey, you get creative freedom. And then they're also, they have a... a built-in audience. But this, the director portion is often a huge mistake that a lot of brands make is that they either give too much creative freedom or not enough creative freedom. If you give too much, then the influencer is just going to make whatever video they want and not sell the product because influencers don't like selling stuff. They don't. like the feeling of selling out or you know shilling things so they they're artists like a lot of influencers they feel like artists they don't want to shill products and feel like a sellout. But then on the other hand, if you're over prescriptive and you say, okay, you actually have to mention these, here's the brand guidelines, then the video is not going to get any views because it's just, it'll feel like an ad. And this happens a lot. So because the TikTok algorithm is for you page-based, it's all about making good content. So you can skip, you can skip the audience part. So if you find, if you cut out the director role and the audience role, you can now hire creators just as actors, like just to be the talent in the video. So they can have zero followers. So when people say like, oh, influencers are overpriced. This is my response. Like, because you don't have to find people who have big audiences. You just have to find people that know how to make good videos. And if they have a thousand followers or 10,000 followers. they can just make a new brand account and make content on there. So for example, if you look up tabs, tabs, chocolate, this is their strategy, they just make all these brand accounts, and they hire a creator for each one. Same thing with all these other apps that I'm mentioning, like the what's what was the what was that app where people did it's like a widget on your phone and then you can listen to the music oh uh air buds is that what you're talking about yes so the air buds does the same thing it's like leila air buds stacy air buds will air buds so all of all of these accounts they're new they're brand new accounts that they found the creator and then they had them create a new account so this was this is very cheap to do. They just found small creators and then have them make new accounts. So I think it's still underpriced. I think if you do traditional influencer marketing, it's definitely going to be a little bit expensive, especially if you go after influencers with big follower accounts. But I think there's still lots of ways to do TikTok in a very underpriced way. I agree. Especially, you know, like we've both been saying, especially if you are creating digital products. I see you have Locks Club as an example here. Yeah. Yeah. Locks Club is great. Yeah. They're a member of my community. They are. I really like their content strategy. They do. So Locks Club is a exclusive dating app for. Jewish people with very high standards. So it's sort of like Raya, but more niched down. And they're starting to do this content series where it's like, how to find a nice Jewish boy at NYC. These are like Jewish inside jokes. Yeah. Yeah. So like if you find someone like this who knows the culture, knows, you know, how to talk to the target audience. um this can go viral on a brand new account account as well so i was just talking to them uh to the founder uh this week and like i noticed that this video was the most popular out of the most recent ones like 400 000 views so they could create a whole new account just dedicated to this type of like street content um so when you find a format that's working and scalable Does it make sense to create new accounts for it? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, because the algorithm works in a way where if you think about like TikTok wants, if content is good, TikTok wants to show it to the right people. Like it's in their best interest to get more watch time. So if they know that a certain account has a lot of, so for example, if this, if this reached XYZ audience, then now TikTok or Instagram Reels, they know that this account, this content did well with this audience. So if you make another video that looks similar, has the same face, the same format, then it'll be a lot easier for the algorithm to serve that content to the same audience again. So if you see, if we go back to the colostrum videos. this account figured out that the food content works. So they just spam the same thing every day. So the algorithm knows and expects what audience to serve it to. It just helps with the algorithm. If you put too many faces in a single account, then it'll hurt your, your reach. The algorithm kind of gets confused. Like, who do I, who do I show this to? So it's, it's not so much about making the whole page look aesthetic. It's more because people don't really. look at the page anyway. It's more like optimizing it for the algorithm and making sure it knows who to serve the content to. That's good to know. You had one last thing I want to talk about on your list. I think it was something to do with cult movements. What do you mean by that? So one of the biggest names in this space is Blake Anderson. So Blake did the looks maxing app called YouMax. Basically, there's this movement of basically men who want to improve their physical appearance. It's pretty simple, but it does go very deep. Because when you think about what are people motivated by, it's like people want to look good. There's a lot of insecurities attached to physical appearance. And especially with young men these days, I think there's a lot of challenges with dating. And, you know, I mean, teenagers will always be insecure about something. So there's this app called YouMax and it scans your face so that it has this interface. So this this app, it scans your face and then it shows you your potential and all the scores about you. And then. Uh, and then it, you know, gives you tips on how to improve your jawline, how to fix your skincare, your hair, you know, these various things about your, about your face. Um, and this app makes a lot of money. Um, I don't remember what the revenue is, but it's several million a year. Um, and they mostly used TikTok as their distribution, but it's really interesting. Looks maxing. I don't know if everyone knows this, but looks maxing is sort of a really deep internet movement. Like it came from sort of these red pill slash incel kind of Reddit communities from several years ago. And it was sort of this very niche thing. And now it's gone mainstream, but it has deep roots in like people really believe like, you know, you need, it's almost an ideology. It's like you need to be. maximizing your physical appearance like you know looks maxing um so they like umax was one of the first apps that capitalized on this movement um so if you if you think about uh you know other movements um that haven't really that don't really have a product attached to them yet i think that's sort of the 10 million dollar you uh, business, uh, that can be started in all kinds of niches. Um, another one is, well, and a framework, I'm not gonna like, I, if I had the idea, I would build it. Um, but I can give a framework for like finding these ideas, uh, which is, you know, like what do, what do people want in general in life? It's, it's health, wealth, and relationships. And this, this one is relationships. It's like you improve your physical appearance, sort of health in a way, but it does have a lot to do with, you know, finding finding love and dating and things like that. And I guess self-improvement is pretty health as well. But if you think about health, wealth relationships, those are the three main things that people want. What are the movements that can be built around that wealth? Obviously, there's lots of cults related to wealth like. I don't know if you know, Crayo, this is a app. I think they have more than 5 million annual revenue right now. They basically partnered with this guy and a couple of other YouTubers and TikTokers who teach teenagers how to make money on TikTok and YouTube shorts. And they show them basically like, you know, find these streamers clips, clip up the videos and then mass post them on TikTok and YouTube shorts. And then they sell a course. So they monetize by selling a course on how to do it. It's like a, you know, several thousand dollar course. But then, you know, so they have this existing audience of all these people trying to make more money. And then Arab Khan is the guy who started this SaaS. He just created a Creo, which basically productizes the course. So instead of teaching a course on how to make these videos, you just make the videos with the software in a more automated way. So if you've seen these like Reddit, Minecraft, parkour videos that get mass posted on YouTube, now, instead of promoting his course, Daniel gets to promote the software instead. This is another sort of the cult of money, I guess you could. think of it um yeah cult of young money too right like it's could have gone after everyone but they focused on really teenagers i guess like them too you know like people who look like daniel like young i you know so interesting i think what you know what's interesting to me there is um it's it's cult like i'm always a believer in you know the best businesses are cult like and then someone's listening to this and being like well that's spammy or sleazy it's like well no like apple scaled as a cult-like business there's plenty of reputable businesses the best businesses in fact are always cult-based cult-like so um i think that uh that that's that that comes to mind um that's how i think i just have yeah yeah i was just gonna say the other thing i just have to say is your product has to be good baseline though You know what I mean? Like just because you have great distribution, if you're sending people to a product that isn't high quality, and I'm not talking about Creo, I'm just talking about in general, looks maxing, any of the stuff we're talking about, you know, the baseline is the product needs to resonate. So before you get millions of people, I guess this is a champagne problem, but before you get millions of people to try your app, make sure that it isn't a leaky product that is retaining, that there's some product-led growth, get those metrics right, and then layer on all the stuff that we talked about today. Totally. Yeah. I would say like the, and it'll help you, it'll help your marketing too, because once you figure out, okay, I got a thousand downloads and this many people paid, and then here's how many actually retained and stayed for another month because they valued the product. Now you can see. your LTV and your CAC, and then you can spend more on marketing and you can make your marketing better if you know your product is good. So I think if you don't know that your product is good and you're spending all this money on marketing, then yeah, you have a leaky bucket. You don't want a product that's not retentive. Then it's basically an e-commerce product all over again because you're just selling a product once in the funnel. The point of tech is that it's scalable and it's retentive. Okay, if you made it this far in the episode, I don't know about you all, but I'm obsessed with Joseph. I think he needs to come back on. So like, comment, subscribe. Let's get this video to go viral. Because I think that you're criminally underfollowed. And I'd love to get you more well-known. And I think that there's just so many. nuggets of insight in this video that I think is really going to help people avoid a lot of pain in actually building out their ideas. So I thank you for that. Joseph, where could people get to know you and some of the stuff that you're working on? You can find me on Twitter. I post content about the latest trends I'm seeing in TikTok and consumer apps. And I also have a community of consumer app founders. where we discuss the latest tactics. So check out my Twitter. Check his Twitter. All right, my man. I'll see you around. And, you know, this has been real. Catch you later, dude. It's been great. Thanks, Greg.

There are apps that are getting millions of downloads because they've mastered TikTok. And it's kind of a black box for most of us. So I brought on Joseph Choi.

This guy knows exactly the formula for how these apps are getting users. He breaks it down and you're going to love it. People charge $5,000 for this sort of thing, but I'm giving to you for free. All you got to do is listen and take notes. Enjoy the episode.

All right, Joseph Choi on the pod. This guy doesn't want to talk about B2B marketing at all, and that's okay, because he's the guy to talk to when you want to blow up your consumer app. And today he, I mean, you tell us, Joseph, what do you want to talk about today? Yeah, let's talk about viral consumer apps.

I've been seeing a lot of people making a lot of money on pretty much getting all their users from these really simple TikTok videos. So I want to go through a few things. Some quick wins, like that you can just copy these apps and get 10K MRR within a couple of months, probably. If you just copy the content, copy the app, do some slight differentiation. But I think there's also legit opportunity for people who are more ambitious, want to build bigger businesses.

And the overall theme is, I think that TikTok organic is probably the biggest underpriced distribution channel right now. And yeah, just the cost of creating distributing content is just so low that I think all types of consumer apps can be using these strategies. Great.

You know, yes. The answer is yes. We want to know more about that.

We see, we've been seeing more of that on, on Twitter. People have been like sharing like how this company got, you know, 4 million, uh, 4 million downloads in like 90 days and are making $3 million a month with some AI app. So people, people want to know and they want to figure it out and, and let's, let's learn. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest trends that I've seen is that All these tactics are basically being stolen from the e-commerce space. So TikTok Shop got released, I think, in November of 2022. So it's only been two years since TikTok Shop came out. And so we've only had like two years of TikTok marketing innovation. So the space is still super new.

But what I've seen is like, for example, Tabs Chocolate, they went from zero to 10 million. a year for an e-commerce product, this chocolate company. And they basically use these mass UGC creators, hiring tons of teenagers, putting them all in a Discord server, and then just mass producing content every single day. And the founder of that, Oliver, he pivoted from Tabs Chocolate to a micro SaaS that helps people do their homework in college.

And it's really interesting because... they're basically using the same tactics in their marketing, but now it's a SaaS, it's a consumer SaaS business. So instead of e-commerce where you have like 20, 30% margins, it's now a micro SaaS and you get, you know, 90 plus percent margins and a higher exit multiple if you decide to sell the business. So I wanted to show you a couple of marketing trends that the e-commerce space is doing right now.

And I think there's a lot of ideas that you can... take from the e-commerce space and then kind of build apps around the same marketing strategies. So one of them is Colostrum.

So this is like an example of a video, POV you divorced bread. So this video got, I think something like 700,000 views. It starts, by the way, this is all AI.

So this picture is mid journey. It's not even real food. Um, but it's POV you divorce bread. It's kind of a funny hook.

And then it just goes through, by the way, the audio is, I think a Joe Rogan like clip or I don't know who this is. Maybe it's Hugh Ramon or someone, but, um, you know, common pain points, energy, brain fog, metabolism, by the way, also I use colostrum and you should go to miracle moon Amazon. So if this video gets, I don't know, uh, 700,000 views and.

you know, 0.5% to 1% of the people actually. close their app, they go to Amazon, they check it out. Um, even if that conversion rate's pretty small, they're going viral with the same types of videos every single day.

And this is not even the same. Uh, this is not even the only account. So they figured out this one content format that works and now they pump out these mid journey stories like every day.

Um, but they're pushing all the traffic to, uh, to e-commerce, which is interesting because You know, you could do the same exact story, like theoretically, with similar pain points, but then solve the pain points with an app instead. So here's an example of the same thing, but for an app. So TikTok, a strong negative hook.

Our guests hated the controversial rules we enforced at our wedding. And then it goes through the rules. Don't ask photographer for pictures. No kids at the wedding, no plus ones, don't post photos before us. And then the last slide is we had our guests use the POV app, which is a disposable camera app that they can use to take pictures at the wedding.

And this account does the same thing. So they have all these slideshows and it looks like they're experimenting with some AI actors more recently. But they pretty much post these wedding.

wedding angle stories for like, you know, every day. And this is also mid journey, the, the faces and stuff are getting really realistic. This is also kind of weird, but they have like, I think they, at some point they realized that the like cake on the face image as the first image, like gets views for some reason.

So they just prompt the mid journey to do that same hook, um, every time. So I don't know, just weird stuff like that where you can never predict what consumers will respond to. So I think a lot of this game is just trying a bunch of random stuff and then seeing what works.

But then once you figure out what works, you can just spam it every day. So the POV app is doing super well with this content format. So quick reactions so far.

So one is that when people think TikTok... They think short form video. And the examples that you're showing is carousels.

So that's just a surprise for me, I guess, is that it's, by the way, a happy surprise. Like it's way easier for me to create a photo on mid journey than it is to go and create a video just from a effort perspective. So just surprising that carousels are working so well. That's completely true. And I, what I've heard, um, from people in both the e-commerce and the app space is that, um, slides are generally lower converting, um, because there's less of that human feeling of an influencer talking to you, you know, with a talking head video.

Um, but you know, there's a lot more scale and it's like the, the barrier to entry, like you said, is so much easier. So I have seen talking head and I wanted to get to that too. um, of influencers, you know, talking to the camera, um, selling various things. But if you're just getting started and you don't know how to hire influencers, you don't have the budget, then this is like super easy way to start out. Um, one issue that the industry has right now is this company called goalie.

Um, basically they're a supplement company and they sell all sorts of supplements. including ashwagandha is like one of their most popular ones and they do these talking head videos um the so basically what tiktok shop is is it's a platform on top of tiktok where you can as an e-commerce brand you can upload your brand and your products to the site and then uh creators can sign up to affiliate for your product and they just make videos automatically So you don't have to hire them, sign contracts or anything. You just upload the products and they just start making videos.

And then they take an automatic affiliate cut. So you can set your affiliate cut at whatever you want. 15, 20% is typical.

And then people just start making videos. So TikTok shop was a huge gold rush in the past two years. But then over time, brands started to catch on. And Goalie was one of these brands.

And now if you search Goalie creator prizes. They give away they're giving away like insane prizes to top affiliates to just. basically have a monopoly on all the creators. So for example, they have these like, if you sell $7,000 in GMV, you get a MacBook Pro. If you sell 45K, you get a Rolex.

If you sell 250K, you get a BMW. 500K, you get a Tesla. And this is on top of the affiliate commissions.

So you get the 20% commission and you get these prizes. And Goalie has said themselves that this is not profitable, but it just makes it... really hard to compete um for these talking head creators because they're just all making videos for for goalie um goal is not the only one there's a couple other supplement companies that are sort of monopolizing all these creators so that's another reason um to go to slideshows um it's just yeah the the competition is a lot less um but i also wanted to talk about an opportunity potentially to ride the goalie wave uh if you wanted to hear about that unless you had some more stuff to say about these yeah yeah let's let's do it so uh here's an interesting tool that i think not many people are looking at right now so if you go to the tiktok shop affiliate center you can find a lot of really good data on exactly what tiktok shop products are being sold in high volumes on TikTok. So you can sort it by industry too.

So you can find creators that are selling all these different products. And the filters are really good. So for example, let's try to find supplement creators. Or let's do a different one.

Let's say like skincare. So here's all the stuff that has to do with skincare. And you can sort by...

performance too. So you can find people that have between a hundred and 10,000 total GMV. So now basically I've selected all the skincare TikTok shop affiliates who do, uh, medium range, uh, GMV.

So the opportunity that I see with this is all these TikTok shop creators. are being incentivized by these huge e-commerce companies to make all these videos. But they're just selling e-commerce products. And I feel like they could all be selling apps instead.

So if you read my mind, like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? I almost, it's crazy that we're going to publish this episode.

Because I think that so many people are going to listen to this. And I think it actually will change the dynamics of TikTok shop. I think so, too. I kind of held this in for a little bit because I run the community of consumer app founders. And I've been sharing this with the members.

So I'm sorry to my members, but I'm going to leak the alpha. But I mean, this is just kind of. the game with TikTok. The tactics are always evolving.

There's always going to be something new, some new edge. But this is something that I think the entire industry will benefit from. If everyone starts making videos for apps instead of e-commerce, then there'll be more content formats, more video trends to follow, and yeah, just a lot more innovation in the space. You can do this for so many different niches. It doesn't have skincare.

For example, There's this app called What Colors and it's a color analysis app. So basically it's like people that want to know what type of clothes or what type of makeup works best with their hair color and their skin tone and their eye color. They can use color analysis and typically it's like a, it's a, you know, hype.

high paid consultant who's you know doing the color analysis for you but now they've put it into an app and they use ai to analyze your you know the colors on your face and your hair and stuff like that um and this app promotes this video promotes this app so this video got almost a million likes so this app is doing very well um and it's yeah it's just another simple slideshow and then cta is you know, download the what colors from the app store. And do we know, do we know the business model of what colors like? How they charge?

It's so a lot of these apps that are like single single utility apps are just paywall. So you onboard onto the app, you answer a few questions and then they hit you with the paywall. You pay weekly or annually and then you can scan your face. Typically, they have you scan your face first.

So you're kind of brought in and then it does the paywall and then you pay subscriptions, which is. Also, by the way, subscriptions, I think one of the other reasons why the consumer apps are having such a boom is because of the double tap to pay. Like, I think that Apple pay that simple like UX change has changed people's perception of of iOS subscriptions. Like, if you look at the past five, 10 years of iOS subscriptions, the the revenue is just.

blowing up. Like apps have always existed. You know, there was the 2000s, you know, app boom. And then but none of those apps were monetized.

They're all free now. Like people are actually paying for apps. So this is yeah, this is one of these apps that you you pay for for as a subscription.

Well, I can give a little more color to that. So as someone who was building apps during like when the App Store came out and. Back then, 2009, 2010, 2011, back then, the distribution, like how you got people, how you got millions of users into your app was the App Store. The App Store would feature you and you would get hundreds of thousands of downloads per week. And that worked until it didn't work.

Now, what is the equivalent of... the app store to today it's tiktok it's instagram these are places where people discover content how many people are opening up the app store and and thinking oh give me a app to download today like that's just not how how it works anymore it worked when you were getting your first iphone and you needed you wanted apps to make your phone more functional just doesn't work anymore That's great. That's really great context. And, but the thing is also is like, once you get that top of funnel distribution through TikTok, then people start downloading your app, then you do rise in the ranks. And then now you have a search, uh, you know, ASO, um, app store optimization.

Um, so you will, so you'll actually start getting organic downloads just from to, uh, from the app store. Um, if you get a kind of boost, so you do this TikTok stuff once and you benefit. forever. So yeah, great context with that.

But yeah, the reason why I was bringing up what colors is like, if you go to these, like, if you think about what kind of app could you do for skincare, like you could do a skincare version of what colors where you analyze your face, and then you suggest skincare products, for example. And one of the hardest parts of going viral on TikTok is making videos that get views, but then also convert. So you want to sell, you want to actually sell a product.

You don't just want, you know, the vanity metric of number of views. And typically the more, the harder you sell the product, the fewer views that you get. But these TikTok shop traders are the top 1%.

1%. of the people who know how to do that, right? Because they're getting organic views and they're selling high volumes of GMB. So I think this is actually the goldmine. Like find TikTok shop creators because they know how to make this style of video and then have them promote apps.

To take it a level deeper, you could actually make an app that helps them sell the products that they're already selling. So if they're selling skincare products, e-commerce, you know, creams or whatever you can like, like for example, you could make a skincare app that analyzes your face and you could do a before and after video where you say, Hey, today I'm going to, you know, uh, try this skincare versus this skincare product. And then, uh, you know, look at the results after a week. And then you, you briefly show the app and you show the interface and you scan the, the influence like this.

The influencer scans her face before and after and then shows the transformation. And it's about the e-commerce product. But then the app is being used as a utility to show that transformation.

And you don't even need to mention the app or you could mention it very casually in a non-threatening way. And this is another it's just another scale thing. Like if you reach out to all these influencers, I bet they would use it, use the app in their TikTok shop affiliate videos for free because it actually helps them make content. So you could get.

you could get the marketing completely for free and you could do this for any niche. Like it doesn't have to be skincare. So many niches like makeup, personal care, um, fashion, you know, electronics, sports, um, home improvement, um, collectibles, jewelry, home supplies.

So whatever people are selling, just help them to sell the thing better. Yeah. I also think that What's cool about the app approach is it's way harder to get a stranger to drop $100 on some product from an influencer that they've never heard about.

And way easier for them to just double click on, you know, download an app, double click again and spend five bucks, you know. So that's another interesting thing about digital products is, yes, the... price point might be a lot lower, but the actual volume might be a lot higher.

That's so true. Yeah. Like some of the weekly prices on these apps is like $2 a week or $10 a week.

Um, or the annual is like, you know, 30 to $60 a year. Um, but the cost of goods on that is basically zero. So if you just, it's, it's, you know, infinitely scalable. I have some like high revenue per user ideas that we could look at if that would be interesting.

You're an angel. You're an absolute angel. So, okay, think about, okay, so I think there's a myth that TikTok users are all young. I think generally it's basically true, but there's still a wide range of demographics on. TikTok.

And if you serve content to a niche of people on TikTok where there's not as many creators, your content is going to be underpriced and you're still going to be reaching these demographics. So who has a lot of money to pay for products? It's like one idea is golfers.

And this idea has been circulating on Twitter for a little bit, but... If you search, like if you go on to TikTok Creative Center and you go on Keyword Insights, you can see what people are searching for on TikTok. And then you can find related videos to these things.

So one idea that a couple of people are already jumping on right now is the golf swing analysis. And, you know, you could build an app that takes a live view. of your uses the camera to take a live view of your golf swing analyzes it the angle and the speed and everything and gives you tips on how to improve that and um it's like a golf it's like an ai golf coach basically um and if you look at the videos that exist in this niche for example improve your golf swing like these videos already exist So they're promoting these apps.

This app, I think, is talking about... It's like a GPS tracker, so it shows you how far you hit the ball. But there's also this other swing analysis.

If you go on Sensor Tower and you search golf swing, the top app, I think, has 10,000 downloads a month, and it's making $70,000 a month, which is pretty crazy. um revenue per download um ratio compared to some of these other apps um you know probably because you know this demographic is willing to pay a lot more for for things well also the alternative that's one piece and i actually uh i signed up for golf i'm i'm horrible at golf like horrible i've only golfed a few times in my life and i signed up for a golf swing analysis Um... Just like randomly, it's $125 for 60 minutes.

And so I don't know what they're charging, but I already feel like uncomfortable like going and some like random person is going to analyze my crappy golf swing. And I have to go and like drive there and park and walk and like doing it out of the comfort of your own home. Like that's for like $20.

Like I would do that all day. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And then the app is just like so much more scalable than a bunch of coaches that you can get some good content ideas from TikTok itself, too.

If you just search golf swing, like there's people that already sort of make this content where they analyze the angles of, you know, famous golfers swings. And another app that I like in this space is. uh ko uh their uh mma app so they help you train um uh like boxing and mixed martial arts so if you go to you know if you search ko watch some of these videos it's basically a product demo you know there's lessons in the app but then there's also this like wireframe skeleton thing i really like this concept i think this could be applied to so many other apps like tennis golf pickleball if you draw this wireframe over people and you kind of use that to analyze their movements um it works really well on tiktok because it looks it looks really cool it's like visually it has this kind of wow factor and you know the the content already sort of has this uh this analysis in the organic videos, it would be so easy to plug in an app on this and just have a little screen recording in the corner that shows the interface of, uh, the app analyzing the golf swing. Um, it's a super easy product integration.

Um, I like it. I mean, I like it because I mean, it works. It's, it's, you know, tennis.

pickleball like what are other like skiing you know i'm just trying to think of like what are high value like what are what are sports that people the lifetime value of a customer is high as well as that they're interested in analysis of of how you know of how they uh how they swing or play or whatever there's actually i forget the name of it but there's a camera that does this and it's specifically designed for tennis players and pickleball players have you heard about this i have a friend who does it he he like he sets it up every every time we play tennis he like puts it on the fence and then the camera and then i think there's an app component too so it's the camera and the app together totally and that's really i don't know if the camera's completely necessary though i feel like gpt vision is like good enough to kind of yeah like the the camera on the iphone is pretty damn good yeah um and you can just use the apis like the gpt this is super fresh by the way like gpt vision um just came out this year and you know all the other llm companies are building better and better versions of the uh the ai vision stuff so the opportunity is very fresh like there's not that many uh competitors in the space yet. Um, one more, um, uh, high LTV niche is, is poker. Um, I still have not seen a really, really good, um, like well monetized poker app, but when you think about it, poker players are probably the best customer that you can have when it comes to like sports and, you know, games and, um, people who would use apps um i mean typically these a lot of these poker videos and like content gets monetized via uh gambling sites because obviously they make a lot of money too but you could build uh you know an app that helps poker players analyze their their hand history like analyze the um the strategies did i make a mistake here or there um You could even position it more towards beginners and show them.

tips on, hey, here's what you did this hand. Here's something that you might want to do next hand. And sort of have an educational component similar to KO. But a lot of these poker videos are unmonetized.

Or at least under-monetized. They either sell a poker course where they say, hey, here's how they learn poker. Or they're sponsored by gambling.

websites, but you could reach out to all these poker, poker creators and integrate the app into the, into the gameplay videos. Like for example, this video has like 90,000 views. It's like biggest tip for poker players. It clicks the wrong one, this one, how to play the straddle.

And it's just. I think the person's probably talking voiceover. So for here, he calls. But imagine if you just put a little interface right here that said, okay, let's look at, you know, what are my pot odds?

Like, what are my, you know, what's the range? What's my range right now? Like, how should I bet here?

Should I fold? Should I check? You could put...

the app interface right there, just flash it for two seconds and then continue on with the video. And then people in the comments are going to be like, oh, what was that app? How did you do that?

And then you can just reply and people read the TikTok comments. So you're going to get a lot of people getting downloads from that. And there's tons of accounts that just post these poker videos every day and they're completely unmonitored. So this is a, I think it's a big opportunity.

When I hear you talk, I just, I was, okay, I'll tell you a little bit. I had coffee with someone this morning who, he's a founder, he sold his last company for like $180 million. And he was kind of complaining to me that it's so hard to stand out now, it's so hard to come up with ideas for stuff.

And I was like, dude, what are you smoking? Like, what are you smoking? Like there's the amount of opportunity right now.

Like, and these aren't even like, you know, I call them super niches, which is like a niche of a niche. These are like large categories that you're, you're talking about. That's true.

Yeah. You could get even more micro with these, but I just like TikTok is just, yeah, like I said, it's mostly monetized through e-commerce and. there's just not that many people that have figured out this content yet. Like one thing, one thing that I've noticed is that people also get stuck on like influencer marketing because everyone views influencer marketing through the lens of like the Instagram era, which was an influencer.

You know, you pay an influencer, they have millions of followers. And, you know, people, the theory was that people follow people, not brands. And I think that's true. I think influencers, the access is a niche audience. But TikTok is different.

It's different because people watch content on the For You page. They don't watch content from people that they actually follow. Like if you scroll through your For You page, 95% of the content is brand new accounts that you've never seen before. So because of that, you can't do influencer marketing in the same way. With influencer marketing, the creators that you hire are actually three different roles.

It's like they're an actor, which most people think about, but then they're also a director. They're creating the video. A lot of times you give them a brief, but best practice is usually, hey, you get creative freedom.

And then they're also, they have a... a built-in audience. But this, the director portion is often a huge mistake that a lot of brands make is that they either give too much creative freedom or not enough creative freedom.

If you give too much, then the influencer is just going to make whatever video they want and not sell the product because influencers don't like selling stuff. They don't. like the feeling of selling out or you know shilling things so they they're artists like a lot of influencers they feel like artists they don't want to shill products and feel like a sellout.

But then on the other hand, if you're over prescriptive and you say, okay, you actually have to mention these, here's the brand guidelines, then the video is not going to get any views because it's just, it'll feel like an ad. And this happens a lot. So because the TikTok algorithm is for you page-based, it's all about making good content. So you can skip, you can skip the audience part.

So if you find, if you cut out the director role and the audience role, you can now hire creators just as actors, like just to be the talent in the video. So they can have zero followers. So when people say like, oh, influencers are overpriced.

This is my response. Like, because you don't have to find people who have big audiences. You just have to find people that know how to make good videos.

And if they have a thousand followers or 10,000 followers. they can just make a new brand account and make content on there. So for example, if you look up tabs, tabs, chocolate, this is their strategy, they just make all these brand accounts, and they hire a creator for each one. Same thing with all these other apps that I'm mentioning, like the what's what was the what was that app where people did it's like a widget on your phone and then you can listen to the music oh uh air buds is that what you're talking about yes so the air buds does the same thing it's like leila air buds stacy air buds will air buds so all of all of these accounts they're new they're brand new accounts that they found the creator and then they had them create a new account so this was this is very cheap to do. They just found small creators and then have them make new accounts.

So I think it's still underpriced. I think if you do traditional influencer marketing, it's definitely going to be a little bit expensive, especially if you go after influencers with big follower accounts. But I think there's still lots of ways to do TikTok in a very underpriced way. I agree. Especially, you know, like we've both been saying, especially if you are creating digital products.

I see you have Locks Club as an example here. Yeah. Yeah.

Locks Club is great. Yeah. They're a member of my community. They are.

I really like their content strategy. They do. So Locks Club is a exclusive dating app for.

Jewish people with very high standards. So it's sort of like Raya, but more niched down. And they're starting to do this content series where it's like, how to find a nice Jewish boy at NYC.

These are like Jewish inside jokes. Yeah. Yeah.

So like if you find someone like this who knows the culture, knows, you know, how to talk to the target audience. um this can go viral on a brand new account account as well so i was just talking to them uh to the founder uh this week and like i noticed that this video was the most popular out of the most recent ones like 400 000 views so they could create a whole new account just dedicated to this type of like street content um so when you find a format that's working and scalable Does it make sense to create new accounts for it? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, it does.

Yeah, because the algorithm works in a way where if you think about like TikTok wants, if content is good, TikTok wants to show it to the right people. Like it's in their best interest to get more watch time. So if they know that a certain account has a lot of, so for example, if this, if this reached XYZ audience, then now TikTok or Instagram Reels, they know that this account, this content did well with this audience.

So if you make another video that looks similar, has the same face, the same format, then it'll be a lot easier for the algorithm to serve that content to the same audience again. So if you see, if we go back to the colostrum videos. this account figured out that the food content works. So they just spam the same thing every day.

So the algorithm knows and expects what audience to serve it to. It just helps with the algorithm. If you put too many faces in a single account, then it'll hurt your, your reach. The algorithm kind of gets confused. Like, who do I, who do I show this to?

So it's, it's not so much about making the whole page look aesthetic. It's more because people don't really. look at the page anyway.

It's more like optimizing it for the algorithm and making sure it knows who to serve the content to. That's good to know. You had one last thing I want to talk about on your list.

I think it was something to do with cult movements. What do you mean by that? So one of the biggest names in this space is Blake Anderson.

So Blake did the looks maxing app called YouMax. Basically, there's this movement of basically men who want to improve their physical appearance. It's pretty simple, but it does go very deep. Because when you think about what are people motivated by, it's like people want to look good.

There's a lot of insecurities attached to physical appearance. And especially with young men these days, I think there's a lot of challenges with dating. And, you know, I mean, teenagers will always be insecure about something. So there's this app called YouMax and it scans your face so that it has this interface.

So this this app, it scans your face and then it shows you your potential and all the scores about you. And then. Uh, and then it, you know, gives you tips on how to improve your jawline, how to fix your skincare, your hair, you know, these various things about your, about your face. Um, and this app makes a lot of money.

Um, I don't remember what the revenue is, but it's several million a year. Um, and they mostly used TikTok as their distribution, but it's really interesting. Looks maxing.

I don't know if everyone knows this, but looks maxing is sort of a really deep internet movement. Like it came from sort of these red pill slash incel kind of Reddit communities from several years ago. And it was sort of this very niche thing. And now it's gone mainstream, but it has deep roots in like people really believe like, you know, you need, it's almost an ideology.

It's like you need to be. maximizing your physical appearance like you know looks maxing um so they like umax was one of the first apps that capitalized on this movement um so if you if you think about uh you know other movements um that haven't really that don't really have a product attached to them yet i think that's sort of the 10 million dollar you uh, business, uh, that can be started in all kinds of niches. Um, another one is, well, and a framework, I'm not gonna like, I, if I had the idea, I would build it.

Um, but I can give a framework for like finding these ideas, uh, which is, you know, like what do, what do people want in general in life? It's, it's health, wealth, and relationships. And this, this one is relationships.

It's like you improve your physical appearance, sort of health in a way, but it does have a lot to do with, you know, finding finding love and dating and things like that. And I guess self-improvement is pretty health as well. But if you think about health, wealth relationships, those are the three main things that people want. What are the movements that can be built around that wealth?

Obviously, there's lots of cults related to wealth like. I don't know if you know, Crayo, this is a app. I think they have more than 5 million annual revenue right now. They basically partnered with this guy and a couple of other YouTubers and TikTokers who teach teenagers how to make money on TikTok and YouTube shorts. And they show them basically like, you know, find these streamers clips, clip up the videos and then mass post them on TikTok and YouTube shorts.

And then they sell a course. So they monetize by selling a course on how to do it. It's like a, you know, several thousand dollar course. But then, you know, so they have this existing audience of all these people trying to make more money.

And then Arab Khan is the guy who started this SaaS. He just created a Creo, which basically productizes the course. So instead of teaching a course on how to make these videos, you just make the videos with the software in a more automated way. So if you've seen these like Reddit, Minecraft, parkour videos that get mass posted on YouTube, now, instead of promoting his course, Daniel gets to promote the software instead. This is another sort of the cult of money, I guess you could.

think of it um yeah cult of young money too right like it's could have gone after everyone but they focused on really teenagers i guess like them too you know like people who look like daniel like young i you know so interesting i think what you know what's interesting to me there is um it's it's cult like i'm always a believer in you know the best businesses are cult like and then someone's listening to this and being like well that's spammy or sleazy it's like well no like apple scaled as a cult-like business there's plenty of reputable businesses the best businesses in fact are always cult-based cult-like so um i think that uh that that's that that comes to mind um that's how i think i just have yeah yeah i was just gonna say the other thing i just have to say is your product has to be good baseline though You know what I mean? Like just because you have great distribution, if you're sending people to a product that isn't high quality, and I'm not talking about Creo, I'm just talking about in general, looks maxing, any of the stuff we're talking about, you know, the baseline is the product needs to resonate. So before you get millions of people, I guess this is a champagne problem, but before you get millions of people to try your app, make sure that it isn't a leaky product that is retaining, that there's some product-led growth, get those metrics right, and then layer on all the stuff that we talked about today.

Totally. Yeah. I would say like the, and it'll help you, it'll help your marketing too, because once you figure out, okay, I got a thousand downloads and this many people paid, and then here's how many actually retained and stayed for another month because they valued the product. Now you can see. your LTV and your CAC, and then you can spend more on marketing and you can make your marketing better if you know your product is good.

So I think if you don't know that your product is good and you're spending all this money on marketing, then yeah, you have a leaky bucket. You don't want a product that's not retentive. Then it's basically an e-commerce product all over again because you're just selling a product once in the funnel.

The point of tech is that it's scalable and it's retentive. Okay, if you made it this far in the episode, I don't know about you all, but I'm obsessed with Joseph. I think he needs to come back on.

So like, comment, subscribe. Let's get this video to go viral. Because I think that you're criminally underfollowed.

And I'd love to get you more well-known. And I think that there's just so many. nuggets of insight in this video that I think is really going to help people avoid a lot of pain in actually building out their ideas.

So I thank you for that. Joseph, where could people get to know you and some of the stuff that you're working on? You can find me on Twitter. I post content about the latest trends I'm seeing in TikTok and consumer apps.

And I also have a community of consumer app founders. where we discuss the latest tactics. So check out my Twitter. Check his Twitter.

All right, my man. I'll see you around. And, you know, this has been real. Catch you later, dude. It's been great.

Thanks, Greg.

Transcript for:Strategies for Viral Apps on TikTok

Transcript for:
Strategies for Viral Apps on TikTok