• Steven Cravotta
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  • I Got My First 1,000 Paying App Users For $0. Here’s How:

I Got My First 1,000 Paying App Users For $0. Here’s How:

April 08, 2025

Hey bro,

One of the most common things I hear from new app builders is:

“Steven, I don’t have a big marketing budget to advertise my app.”

And honestly? You don’t need one.

I started PuffCount with zero ad spend in the early days. So I know that you can get to 5-10k MRR without spending anything.

Here’s what I did in the beginning to get my first paying users:

Step 1: Open TikTok and search for keywords 

Type in whatever problem your app solves.

For me, it was “quit vaping.”

Find out what kind of content is already hitting.

Step 2: Save viral videos from your competition 

Scroll through and bookmark videos with the most views.

Pay attention to what they’re doing—hooks, frameworks, visuals, captions, call-to-actions.

Reverse engineer it all.

Step 3: Recreate those viral videos yourself 

Don’t copy. Recreate. Put your own spin on it.

Make them feel native, not like an ad. Don't sell, tell a story.

Step 4: Post 30+ and see what works 

Volume game. Most of your videos will flop. But who cares?

You only need one to hit.

One of my videos hit 2.6M views overnight and brought in thousands of downloads for PuffCount.

Step 5: Find a winner based on conversion 

Don’t just look at views. Track which videos actually lead to downloads.

You want videos where people take action—download your app and become paying subscribers.

Step 6: Scale the winner with paid ads 

Once you’ve got your banger and your app is making money, start running paid ads behind it.

Because it’s already proven to convert organically, it’ll do even better with budget behind it.

That’s it.

No huge budget.
No marketing team.
Just your phone, TikTok, and a little hustle.

This is exactly how I built my app from zero to $45k MRR before selling it for a juicy exit.

You can do this too.

If you’re already building and want help scaling to $10k/month, you can apply to work 1-on-1 with me here:

Limited spots. Only for founders who are serious about scaling their app.

Peace,
Steven