Build an iOS App in 2026 (literal goldmine / beginner friendly)

What's going on, guys? This is Oliver, formerly from Response and a few other software tools that I've since exited. And now I'm running rosewell.dev, where I teach people how to build software and make money from it. Um, I also help people build their own apps um at roseorld.dev/build, and I'm running a few software tools like papers.com. In this video, I want to talk about building a profitable iOS app. Right, so this is with no coding experience. I haven't talked about iOS apps um and Android apps etc. um on this channel. Typically what I do is I use uh you know web apps, I build software tools, I build software apps, I build SAS. Uh there is a lot of money to be made. Um and I'm going to be explaining how to make that money inside the iOS sort of industry. So building apps that sort of, you know, solve a pain or provide some kind of little service for people, you can make a lot of money. And it's also very easy to market with Tik Tok and Instagram, that kind of thing. So, nobody needs to code anymore to put an app on the app store. That is a fact, right? So, I I have nothing obviously to sell here because I I I would recommend that you use something like Rock or Cursor, etc. to actually build these apps. And I'll explain these um explain these tools in a second. Tools now let you describe what you want in plain English and generate a functional iOS app from it. So this is the same with SAS, but this is especially true with functional iOS apps and we'll be using something called React Native. You can go from idea to a live product in 2 weeks and spend nothing on developers, right? But most people who try this fail and they fail for the same reasons. They spend two weeks building something no one wants. They launch it, they get no downloads, and then they just conclude that building iOS apps does not work to make money. The problem was never the build. was picking the wrong idea, skipping the onboarding, and then pricing it wrong or pricing it all out of whack. Now, this guide covers all of that in order. So, first is how to find an idea that'll actually make money. So, go to Tik Tok right now and search for app demos. Well, watch this video first. Search for app demos and then look at videos with over 500,000 views. So, if you watch what happens in the first 3 seconds, um, a tool that did this really, really well was Opal. Now, Opel um was a is a tool that um blocks social media basically. So, it keeps you from doom scrolling. Now, those ads are insane because they talk about all these different pains and like why doom scrolling is ruining your brain, etc., right? But in all of these videos, you look at what happens in the first 3 seconds. What does the app show the user? What emotion does it trigger? With Opel, it was showing you that you're wasting your life using social media. And the videos that go viral in this in this space almost always have one thing in common and it's a reveal, right? And in Opal's ads um for doom, you know, stopping doom scrolling, the reveal was how much time you typically, you know, sort of won back for your life spending time with your friends or your kids or spending time working on projects instead of just scrolling Tik Tok or Instagram, right? The app shows you something about yourself that you either didn't know or were not sure about. a face rating, a body scan, a calorie count from a photo, a height prediction, a personality score, an intelligence score, an IQ, anything, right? And all of these um all of these like ratings or numbers, etc. are based off of like a fear that you might have, a fear of being too stupid or too ugly or whatever it may be. Now, obviously with things like software, with SAS, you're building like things that solve problems for consumers or for businesses. Whereas with iOS, there are a lot of apps that make money doing dumb things. Like a height prediction thing, right, is like tells younger younger kids, so say like 15, it predicts based on your diet and based off of your genes and stuff like that, like how tall you're going to be, right? And it makes tens of thousands of dollars a month. There's loads of these apps, right? That's obviously ridiculous. Um, but this is what I mean. It's more about pain and more about that quick payoff than things like SAS Arc. Cuz SAS is more about building like a a business of longevity that provides services to another business. Whereas obviously iOS is a bit different. The reveal is not just a feature. It's your entire marketing strategy. So if someone can screen record 10 seconds of your app being used and post it and people stop scrolling to watch it, then you have a business. You have an iOS business. If your app doesn't have that moment, you're going to pay for every single download through ads and your margins will be tough. The apps printing serious money are all sort of like um tapping into the same short list of emotional triggers like we talked about. So, attractiveness, health, intelligence, status, fear of being left behind, desire for spiritual discipline, right? um being charismatic um being a better um you know being like a cooler I don't know what you would call it like talking to girls or or or or talking to boys whatever it may be like like being able to to ri and stuff like that. So these are not trends. They are permanent human insecurities and they've been selling products for centuries. But now it's obviously easier than ever to sell these products um through Tik Tok now. Obviously I don't really like how morally ambiguous these like tools are that help you like become more attractive and stuff. I personally find those kind of repulsive. Right? What I do like is tools that help you um get smarter or become more informed um or become more charismatic, that kind of thing. An example for me is like these is like brain training games. They do incredibly well. You've got brain training games making millions of dollars a month on the iOS store. Um you've got like um you know book summary apps, that kind of thing. That taps into a human insecurity which is that you're not smart enough, but it doesn't have that same like um sinister value to like you are too ugly or you are too fat, that kind of thing. So just consider that you can make lots of money with these kind of like um kind of like nasty apps, but I personally don't recommend that. Just just for your soul, I personally I recommend, you know, building something that like helps people but doesn't make them scared of how they look, how they feel, right? Your app your app needs to be a vehicle for one of these. So download the top five apps in a niche you are interested in. So go through each on boarding because it's free. Go through each onboarding as if you were a real user. So an example is um with um Headspace. Headspace is an app that helps you like meditate and feel better and um like relax, right? Go through that on boarding as if you were a real user and screenshot every screen that pay attention to when you feel pulled forward and when you feel like leaving. App store reviews tell you what people love and what they complain about. And that gap between what users love about an existing app that's making millions and what frustrates them is where your angle lives. So an example is um let's say that there's an app called prayer lock which um basically encourages you to read you know passages from the Bible every day right again I feel like that's kind of you know um as as I would say a sort of a pretty religious person I think like I don't know whether you should build an app that makes loads of money off of off of um religion but um an app so for example these other apps that help you you know um remember Bible verses and stuff, they might not keep you in the app long enough or you might feel like you're constantly losing your streak. So, what frustrates them about the original other Bible apps is that they're not logging in enough and they don't feel like they're close, you know, sort of like in touch with their um beliefs and these apps are going to keep you in and then, you know, encourage you to come back with notifications and stuff. So, that's where the angle lives like become in that sense it would be something like become um more in touch with your religion, right? more in touch with your beliefs. So again, that's the problem that it's solving is people being inconsistent with that. Now, you do not need to invent something new um to make money. You don't you need something that works u like prayer lock and then um build it for a more specific audience or with a stronger personality. So prayer lock was built off of the back of pray screen. Step lock came from combining walking apps with screen time tools. So step lock is basically you can't go on Instagram unless you do like a thousand steps, right? So it keeps people fit and it keeps them from doom scrolling. The originality is in the execution, not the concept itself. Now, one hard rule, build one app. Do not build two or five, just build one. Right? The people making serious money in this space did not get there by launching 10 things. Because on top of that, you'll never be able to get momentum with the marketing if you're doing random different projects. They got there by staying with one app long enough to figure out what was wrong with it and fix it. the financials of the app, how much it costs to get a download or, you know, or a paid subscriber. Every time you switch to a new app, you restart that learning curve because every um app is going to be different. Now, you can build these pretty quick. I think you could build prayer lock. Um that's, you know, nothing against prayerlock. They've even talked about how easy it was to build because they use AI tools to help them. Once you have your idea, you open rock and you describe your app in as much detail as you can. So, you do not say, "I want a fitness app." You say, "I want an iOS app." where the user answers six questions during onboarding about their fitness goals and current activity level, sees a personalized summary screen that mirrors their answers back to them, and then hits a hard pay wall before accessing a weekly workout plan. The more specific your prompt, the closer the first output will be to what you want. And you can expect to iterate five to 10 times before you have something that you're happy with. And the goal in the first week is not polish. It is to just get a complete flow from app launch to onboarding and answering those questions to payw wall that works without crashing. You don't add extra features. You don't try and make it beautiful. You ship the core feature, the onboarding and the pay wall. Nothing else. You can improve everything later once you know people actually want it, right? So, if you get someone come through, do the onboarding, and then pay $4, that's pretty exciting. or if they pay for an annual plan of $50, whatever it may be. Basically, to play this game and to build a business, you have to be an Apple developer, right? Which is not it's not stressful. You just pay $99, right? And that's it. Like, you pay $99 a year and you become an Apple developer and that's before you touch anything else. So, you can build the app on Rock or on Cursor. that's fine with React Native, but um it'll slow you down if you aren't already a developer because if you build the app and then apply to become a developer as long as you pay, you can become a developer. There's not like a wait list or anything like that. But you have to have your Apple ID ready and be prepared for an identity verification step that can take like a day or two, right? So, just remember that if you're looking to move quick, you've got to be an Apple developer. Once you are approved, you'll manage everything through App Store Connect. And this is where you submit your app for reviews, set your pricing, create subscription products, that kind of thing. Track downloads, whatever it may be. Spend half an hour clicking around it before you need to use it under pressure. Um, and it's not very intuitive. Like, sometimes it can be pretty pretty confusing to um to manage. One thing you must do immediately is apply for Apple's small business program. It reduces Apple's cut of your revenue from 30 to 15%, right? And that's for apps doing under a million a year. The application is free and on an app charging like $60 per year. That's a 15 point difference. Um, and it's real money at any volume. Right now, let's talk about onboarding, which arguably is the most important thing inside the business, right? The business of iOS apps. Most founders, they treat on boarding as something to knock out quickly so user can just get to the actual app. But some people, me included, believe that your onboarding is your product, right? It's where conversions happen or don't happen. It's where people can feel the pain or can't feel the pain. There is a fasting app I know that has a 67st step I swear to God a 67st step on boarding right now. That's insane cuz I bet if you downloaded it now you would think I'm not I'm not answering 67 questions. But you see how people will if they really care. So this is a fasting app. So, it's an app that helps people get more healthy because fasting is really good for you. And that's what they're doing. They are building they are building that on boarding to get you absolutely boiling hot and then they just show you the payw wall and they say we'll pay to get on board. Get this wrong right and nothing else matters. Now, to see good on boarding flows, you can go to Mobin. Um so Mobin is this um website that shows you the on boardings of big apps like Airbnb or like Mercury or like Headspace, whatever it may be. And this is Headspace on the right actually. Um and it shows you how they're making money. Now, excuse me. Act one is to establish the problem. Your first few screens should make the user feel the weight of whatever your app addresses, right? So Headspace for example, it helps people um get like in touch with meditation and be more consistent with meditation and just feel better about their everyday lives, right? So you don't tell them they have a problem. You ask them questions that make them say it themselves. So there's apps that help you quit um I won't say it on the video, but they help you quit um uh certain types of videos online. You know, uh 18 plus videos, so to speak. There's hundreds of these apps. There's apps that help you quit that. There's apps that help you quit smoking. That kind of thing, right? And you have to ask them questions that make them say they have a problem themselves. So, an example would be, "How often do you do that per week?" And if they say they do it every day, that's a problem. You then ask them, "How long do you spend doing that every day?" So if it's every day and they spend an hour, that's obviously 300 hours per year, 365 hours per year, an hour a day. And that is a lot of your life, right? So it's not manipulation. It's just making the user reflect. So when someone selects, I feel self-conscious about my appearance or I struggle to maintain a consistent prayer habit, they've now said that out loud, right? And that changes everything about how they approach the payw wall at the end because the payw wall is what unlocks the solution to that problem. Now this is obviously um again this is from Headspace. So what's your mindfulness style? What's your experience with mindfulness? They say I'm brand new and then they it says thinking carefully about which course is right for you. And then they say your style is the calm explorer. Right? So these kinds of things they're all very easy to code. They're just like basically these um they're like a flow that you can just get into and it's very very simple. But you see how what they're doing is they're setting you up to admit you have a problem or setting up to admit that you want to solve an issue in your life and then they're labeling you as something and then they are giving you the option to fix it. Same thing applies to um Headway which is just an app that helps you like um learn stuff from there. It's like how old are you? What are your goals? I want to have a successful career and become confident, boost intelligence. And then you unlock achievements and it says, "Look, we're we're here to help you achieve your goals." Right now, your on boarding is your product in the sense that after every three or four questions, you mirror their answers back. So something like based on what you've shared, your biggest challenge is staying consistent without accountability or without people pushing you. It doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to feel personal. And this is why users do not bounce during long on boardings is that with the fasting on boarding, the 67st step fasting on boarding, they're constantly being um constantly being sort of like um uh sort of mirrored and saying, "Look, this is how much you weigh and this is how much you could weigh if you follow this program for 3 months." They feel like the app in the on boarding is built specifically for them. Now, act two is let them use the core feature, right? So do not describe what the app does. you make the user do it. So if your app rates faces, let them take a photo during the onboarding. Again, I don't really I don't really like those apps that do, you know, like sort of like prey on appearance and prey on insecurity, but again, if you think about it, it's all insecurity. Um, you becoming more intelligent is is insecurity. Training your brain is insecurity because you think you have a low IQ. If your app scans food, let them scan something. If your app tracks prayer habits, let them set up their first reminder. That kind of thing. The moment they experience the core feature is the moment they understand the value. Okay? And everything before it is set up. Everything after it is momentum. This is also when you show the review prompt. So right after the core feature experience when the user is at peak excitement, you ask them for a review. Not after they pay, not 3 days later, now. Right? Most users who download your app will not subscribe. And but but they can leave a review, right? And it's also like a trained human behavior to leave a fivestar review. I would obviously um by the time this video releases, it's hard to say if Apple um will actually like still allow you to do this, but you can still a lot of people I know still put a fivestar review request on the on boarding. A four-star app with 500 reviews will outperform a smaller five-star app with less reviews. Right now, act three is the payw wall. So by the time the user reaches your payw wall, they should have spent at least 8 to 12 minutes in your onboarding. That investment matters psychologically because people do not like abandoning something they've already put time into. And it's called um the um sunk cost fallacy, right? A user who has answered 20 questions, seen their data reflected back and mirrored back and then experienced your core feature will think twice before leaving at the pay wall. This is not a trick. It's just how humans work. It's the same reason if you're buying like a pair of shoes and uh the saleserson's been talking to you for 25 minutes, you feel like their time is worth something, then maybe you should just buy the shoe. Right now, the payw wall itself should be a hard payroll, ideally, no free trial. A trial pulls in users who will never pay and inflates your download numbers while your revenue stays flat. You want people to make a real decision at the payw wall, not defer it by 3 days. This is also an interesting thing for the value of your app. So, if people are willing to pay that $5 or that $30 or that $10, whatever it may be, then you have a business that says this is going to be worth that and people will pay. Right? If people defer it with a trial and then just cancel, you've got a problem because is the app actually valuable now. How to price it for success. So, excuse me, me drinking too much water and talking too fast. Right. So, I'm on the I'm in the UK. So, prices um are going to be a bit different for me, but the same thing applies to the US, etc. Price higher than feels comfortable, right? This is the most consistent advice from every founder who has done this successfully, and it's almost always the opposite of what new founders do. The pricing that is working right now for a lot of consumer subscription apps in this space is like £9 a week or $9 a week and then $49 per year, right? And you put both options on your pay wall. The annual plan is what you actually want people to take and the weekly plan makes it look reasonable by comparison. And the psychology here is straightforward. The person who downloaded your app after seeing a Tik Tok video is not casually browsing. They responded to something emotional um and came looking for a solution and the solution is your app. By the time they hit your payw wall after a long on boarding 5 10 you know 510 12 minutes whatever it may be they are far more motivated than any typical app user. They will pay the £10 a week for something that speaks to a real insecurity or desire. And you shouldn't underestimate that. A lot of people say oh people won't pay for this trash. Right guys, there's literally just thousands of apps making hundreds of thousands of dollars per month um doing random stuff. You know, there's apps that like help you scan fish and it tells you what kind of fish it is. Millions a year. Like I'm not actually joking. Um if you go to Sensor Tower, so s e n s o r t o w e r. Sensor Tower is an app that lets you search the um the estimated revenue of these apps, right? And there's some dumb apps making millions. When a user tries to cancel, you show them a retention offer. So, this is a one-time discounted annual subscription, typically around $34 to $44 or pounds, shown only when they initiate the cancellation flow. Apple permits this specific implementation. You set it up correctly and every churning subscriber you save is pure profit you would otherwise have lost entirely. Your lifetime value per paying user with this pricing structure should land somewhere above £30. And that number is what everything else in your business gets measured against. And this is where it comes in for ads. Right? Before you spend a penny on ads, you need to make content yourself. And this isn't optional. Even if you have money to invest, you should start with free content. Making content yourself teaches you what actually resonates with your audience. And you need to know that before you start paying ad platforms or other people to make content for you. And obviously, if you guys want to pause that, there's a good um post about how Tik Tok views work and how they're put into different tiers and like how you can either go viral or um or just, you know, how how the videos die from Sarah Leger. Now, post on Tik Tok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, right? Cross post the same video to all three and aim for seven posts per day across those platform combined which is roughly two to three original videos cross-osted every day. Right? Volume matters more than quality at this stage. So you are just looking for consistent feedback on the best angles and the best kind of like formats. Right? And to do this I recommend an app called Real Farm. The format that works best for getting an app off the ground is a reaction clip with a demo stitch to it. Right? You've you've definitely seen these. You buy a short reaction clip from a creator or you use AI because there's just loads of these like AI avatars you can use. You stitch your app demo to it. The demo should be no longer than 8 seconds. The hook, meaning the text overlay on the first two seconds, is the most important part of the video. And you spend more time on the hook than the actual footage. Look at what your competitors are posting. Find their videos with the most views. Right? copy the hook style, the pacing, the way they end the video, not the content itself, but the structure. And this is how content works. Every successful format gets replicated until something beats it. Do not touch your app based on what happens during this phase. Do not add features, change the colors, tweak the onboarding. None of that matters when you have 100 downloads. The only variable worth changing right now is your content, and you keep posting until something hits. Now, with paid ads, when and how? Only move to paid ads once you have organic content as proven it can get people to download. If you run ads before that you are paying to discover information you could have found for free using Tik Tok organic or YouTube organic. Start on Tik Tok with ads. Create a smart plus campaign and optimize for subscribe or purchase events, not installs because installs do not make you money. Set a budget of around $50 per day and target the US only. run it for two to three days before drawing any conclusions. The creative you use in your ad should come directly from your organic content. So take the videos that perform best organically and run them as ads. Add a clear call to action and the ad should look like a regular Tik Tok, not some polished HD brand video. The moment someone thinks this is an ad, you've lost them. Now, there are three numbers that tell if you have tell you if you have a winning ad. cost per install, click-through rate, and cost per acquisition. Now, they're general numbers on the screen of this screen. You know, $2 for uh cost per install, clickthrough rate should be above 1%, your cost per acquisition needs to be below your lifetime value per user. If all three are in range, then you can scale the budget by 30% every 3 days, for example. Do not increase faster than that or Tik Tok's algorithm will reset and your performance will tank. If the numbers are not working after 2 to 3 days, kill the creative and make new ones. Do not change the campaign structure. The problem is almost always the creative, not the targeting. One thing worth noting, Tik Tok matches your first $6,000 in ad spend on new accounts. And this essentially doubles your first month of testing budget. So use it. Now, what happens after you launch? Once you are getting 300 or more downloads per day, go back to your onboarding and start iterating on it properly. Look where users are dropping off. You tie in every screen that is not earning its place. You test different payroll copy. You try a different order for your questions. The goal is to get your download to trial conversion rate to at least 10% or you know um uh obviously it'd be much lower for pay. But below that paid ads becomes very hard to make profitable. Do not add new features to your app until the numbers force you to. Most of the time when founders feel the urge to build something new, what they actually need is better distribution. New features do not fix a distribution problem, guys. They just give you something to hide behind while you avoid doing the hard work of getting customers, getting people download. Check your app store reviews regularly. Users will tell you exactly what is wrong and the same complaint shows up more than five times, fix it. When the same praise shows up more than five times, double down on it. That is the video. iOS apps are extremely profitable if you can get a good idea that is built off of pain. you get people to do a long onboarding and then you get people to do a hard payw wall or if you have to a trial from there. As long as the numbers add up, you can pretty much scale really high with paid acquisition and organic content. And then obviously when you have a bit more money, you can um spend money on influencers. But this is a very very cheap thing to do. Um and it's a very very cool way of learning marketing and understanding how these things work. If you guys have any questions, let me know. And if you want me to build your app for you, just go to rosell.dev/build. And I'll see you in the next video.