I Built a $100K/Month Android App

But right now, everybody and their grandma is vibe coding iOS apps. We even launched an iOS boot camp. But what if I told you that iOS is not the only place to be making money. Something I've realized is that most people are sleeping on the potential of Android. Meet Steve. He's a guy who built a simple mobile app that makes over $100,000 a month, but almost all of his revenue comes from Android. We tested both platforms and Android performed better every single time. Most people think iOS is the only place where you can make money building apps, but Steve proved the exact opposite. If you're bootstrapping like we are, Android is actually way better. So, I asked Steve to come on the channel to share everything. And in this video, we'll dive into his crazy simple app that makes over $100,000 a month. The six-step process he used to grow his app fast and why Android apps are still an untapped opportunity in 2026. All right, guys. This is one you cannot miss. I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story. All right, Steve, welcome to the channel. Tell me who you are, what you built, and what's your story. My name is Steve. I built a mobile app almost 18 months ago. And over the past year, we've bootstrapped it from less than $1,000 in revenue up to $100,000 per month. Today, I'm really excited to share how we grew this to over $100,000 a month primarily on Android. Before we dive into that Android, I'm really excited to talk about it. But before we do, what's the app that you built? And can you show me some of your revenue dashboards and things like that to show me that this is legit? Journalable is an AI calorie counter. It's kind of an all-in-one AI nutrition assistant. It tracks your calories, your macros. It tracks your weight loss over time. It gives you insights. So, this is our app. This is our Play Store listing. You can see the number of reviews, the downloads. This is almost at a million just on Android, which we're really excited about. So, this is our revenue cat dashboard. In the past 28 days, we've made $125,000 in revenue with an MR of around 80K, which brings us to just under 1 million ARR in annual terms and just over 30,000 active subscribers and around 40,000 total subscribers. So, our app is a premium subscription app. We have two month subscription packages, a monthly subscription and an annual subscription. And that's where all of our revenue comes from. around 80% of our users and around 80% of our revenue comes from Android and 20% of our users and revenue come from iOS. Okay, that's pretty crazy. 80% of your sales come from Android. We're going to talk all about that cuz I think you're going to have some cool stuff on that. But before we do, let's talk about how you even get here. How do you get to the point where you have an app that's used by millions of people? So the way we started working on this and the way this app came to be was that my co-founder and I have both been through our own weight loss journeys. Personally, I used to weigh 125 kilos and I currently weigh 80 kilos. So I dropped 45 kilos or 100 lb and I did this by tracking my calories religiously. During this period I tracked my calories. I used many different apps, many of our competitors. So I had a very good idea of these products of the space and we realized that the current state of the space is very complex. There is no simple solution to get you where you need to go. So the reason we started working on this app was to offer the same value to our users. The the bestin-class solution with way less complexity. The number one thing that we focus on is simplicity is the quick and easy experience that we offer. And so that's what we try and capture with our marketing content. We interviewed someone recently who talked about that as well is like building something very simple, very frictionless. A lot of developers watching this want to add a million features. I like the line which is keep it simple stupid even as you mentioned the time spent on your app was less than others but actually that's what made it valuable. I want to dive into the next topic here and you mentioned this a couple times which is what this hopefully video is about which is Android. A lot of people talk about building on iOS and how those users have more money to spend where Android is not as much the case. But you did it the exact opposite. So let's talk about the growth of this app. How did you get users? How did you build it? What was your focus? We are bootstrapped. We have spent only our own money since day one. So we didn't really have huge budgets to work with. iOS is way more expensive than Android, right? So the CPMs, the cost per thousand views or generally the cost per view is almost four times as high on iOS than it is on Android. So being bootstrapped and being capital constrained from day one, we knew that we needed a solution. So we decided to focus a bit on Android initially. So we started working on Android and you know obviously the conventional wisdom here says focus on iOS. That's where all the money is. That's where the success is in in business and in subscription apps. But we went against that for a few reasons including capital constraint. But also we got inspired by the revenue cat state of subscription apps report in 2025. In that report it showed that despite iOS users being four times as expensive to advertise to, they only convert at around 20% better than Android. So it made sense for us to start working on Android and start getting some subscribers there. Okay, cool. I really like that. Instead of just seeing what everyone's doing on X and just taking random advice from people that talk on the internet, you guys looked at the data. That report is really telling. And then you looked at the data from your own ads. You're saying, "Okay, we can acquire users much cheaper and they generally convert the same." That's super smart for anyone watching this. Follow the data, follow the money. That's great. Intel. What did you do next once you sort of realized, oh, here's this opportunity? How did you get it off the ground and actually start getting users and getting the word out? We started by launching on Product Hunt. That was our uh day zero marketing and distribution strategy. We got featured on the front page of Product Hunt. It got us a couple hundred installs. Two of those installs converted to subscribers. At which point we knew we had validated the product. We knew that we had something that people were willing to pay for. We started working on meta ads and meta ad campaigns. We saw that we couldn't afford to run iOS campaigns because we're bootstrapped and because we're capital constrainted. So we naturally um reverted to just running Android campaigns in the states because we didn't have the money. Now when we ran the Android campaigns we saw that they had a conversion rate just as good as our iOS users. So we tested both. Eventually we tested iOS as well and found that you know Android was way more cost effective. We also realized that by running ads on Android we get some spill over into iOS. For all of these reasons, the fact that we got initial success on Android and we were getting a couple hits on iOS as a result meant that we just doubled down on on Android. We decided to ramp up our spend and really focus on this platform. All right. So ads, that's a pretty big strategy for you and for a lot of other people who have successful Android apps. Can you just explain what ads means for you? Is it SEO Google ads or is it Android ads? How does it work? This is effectively our all-time Google Ads dashboard. We have spent just under $500,000 on ads and we have made almost that exact same amount in revenue that is attributed to Google Ads. So revenue directly attributed to Google Ads is almost the same. So we are effectively 100% break even on this. Ideally, we would have a way lower return on ad spend and a way higher volume. But because we're bootstrapped, we're constrained by the performance of these campaigns. we need them to be profitable. Could you just show me an example of what an ad looks like? You can show me the campaign manager or potentially what it looks like if you're viewing an ad from the Play Store or something like that. I'm just curious what that looks like or how you set up the campaign and what keywords you target. So, you see this section here? This is us previewing the ads that we've generated and then it shows up across, as we mentioned, Google's digital real estate. So, in the display network, for example, in other ads or in websites, it can show up like this. It can show up in Google search. So if someone's on Google search on their mobile device, we also show up on YouTube. We've got a couple videos here which also lead people to the Play Store to install our app, on the discover network, on the discover page, and most importantly on the Play Store. So this is our highest performer, our Play Store ad. It obviously shows up in between other apps, especially if you search for one of the keywords like calorie counter or calorie tracker. If you have an Android device pat, and you search for a calorie tracker on the Play Store, there's a very high chance that we're going to be number one for this reason. So, this is our bread and butter, the Google Play Ads. Steve's approach to growth is genius. He found just one channel, Google, and used it to scale his app to over $100,000 a month. And what I love about mobile apps is that there are dozens of ways to grow just like this. So, we put together a free guide to help you find the strategies real founders are using today to grow their apps. From influencer marketing to building in public, the mobile app growth cheat sheet will break down seven different tactics you can use to start growing your app today. Just head to the first link in the description to grab it for free. All right, let's get back to the episode. Okay, this is super cool. Uh, you know, we talked to a lot of people who build apps and they're doing like UGC and all this Tik Tok stuff. What I like about yours is that you just run ads. there's one place where you can do it and then it goes to all of Google's digital real estate. This is one of the advantages of just focusing in on one platform like Android. You take advantage of Google's way bigger advertising network. I want you to dive a little deeper into that into the playbook for how to win on Android, how to win specifically with paid ads in the Google network. Could you walk me through this step by step? If you were to build another app in the consumer space, what would be your playbook if you were starting over in 2026? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll tell you exactly what we did and the formula that anyone can follow. The first thing we did and the first thing you should always do is to set up attribution and measurement. Right? What that means is being able to track the events that take place in your app and send them to Google Ads. What this does effectively is it lets Google ads know when a user installs the app most importantly when they hit let's say your payw wall and when they take any action either starting a free trial or purchasing your app and if they purchase the value of the transaction as well. So all of this data is and should be sent to Google ads. The value of this is that Google ads can then optimize the campaigns and optimize the delivery of the campaigns based on that data. Second, after attribution and measurement, you need to launch install campaigns. Google ads needs data, right? It needs data in order to optimize. First, what we need is install campaigns. You need to start feeding the algorithm. It needs to start to have a heartbeat. It knows how much an install costs. It knows what the CPM is in the country and it can grow from there. It's also good to get baseline and to have a frame of reference for all future campaigns you are going to run in whichever market you're targeting. Now, Google Ads app campaigns require 10 pieces of copy. So, five headlines, five descriptions, and then up to 20 images and 20 videos for this initial install campaign. Ideally, you have all of these assets. If you don't have the time or if you just want to run it as a proof of concept, then just use stock images. It's fine. Use stock images and stock videos. Yeah, highly recommend it. Just flood the campaign with assets and let Google's algorithm do the do do the heavy lifting. Then the third one is a function of time, right? And it is the asset optimization phase. Once you have an install campaign running, you need to give it some time. You're going to be learning, the algorithm is going to be learning what works, what messaging works, what doesn't. Start with some lowcost campaigns, maybe $10 a day, $15 a day, and start ramping up from there. And while you're doing that, you're going to be working on your assets. So if you started with stock images, start to build your own custom images. Maybe try something with some large text with your winning copy, but make sure to take big swings. Don't optimize little things like the color of one image or the font size or the font style. Take big swings. Like have incredibly different uh media, incredibly different assets, images, videos. And then eventually you're going to start to see patterns of what works and what doesn't work. And most importantly, update your Play Store assets. Right? So that's where most of the win is because Google App Campaigns use your Play Store assets. Your screenshots, your app title, your subtitle, your description. Make sure they're great. Once your assets are in a good place, that's when you know it's time for a TCPA campaign or a target CPA. Cost per acquisition. Once you've got the confidence in your assets, it's time to launch this campaign. In terms of budget for this campaign or the install campaigns, you're always going to need 10 times your CPI for the budget. So, if you're running a CPI campaign, you need 10 times your CPI. What does that mean? If a purchase in your app, or let's say if a free trial in your app costs you $15, you need $150 per day of budget in order to run a successful campaign. The reason for this is that Google's algorithm needs 10 of your target events per day in order to successfully optimize. Once you start getting some good data in them, after a month or two, you start to have some purchases in your app. You get baselined, you know, your CAC. That's when they start to scale these campaigns. Again, you you might need to raise money to do this from friends or family. Maybe you go the VCbacked route. Maybe not. Ideally, not increase your budgets over time. You need to keep scaling your budgets in accordance with Google's best practices. And very importantly, optimize your product. Your conversion rate needs to constantly be climbing. By conversion rate, I mean your subscription conversion rate. Maybe you optimize your payw wall. Maybe you optimize your business model, your pricing, you test your prices, optimize every single thing. As your conversion rate increases, increase your budgets of your campaigns. And the flywheel continues. And that's the playbook. Okay, cool. I mean, the thing that I notic about when you're talking about everything is it's always about the data. Looking at the data, we're talking about campaigns. We're talking about rorowaz. We're looking at data. This entire business was built on looking at the data, following the data, making decisions, changing things. And this is how you get to a place where you have an app that has millions of users on an uh on a platform that you didn't expect would be as big, Android. I think that's super cool. Let's talk about the opportunity in Android. A lot of people are watching this, maybe they're already building an app and they maybe didn't think Android was the way to go. What can you share about that from what you've learned through building this? Something that's happened over the past couple years is with the emergence of AI and the lowering of the barrier to entry for anyone to release apps. We've seen an explosion in the number of apps that's that have been released, especially on iOS. So, in the past couple years, five times as many iOS apps have been released on the App Store compared to only two times as many Android apps. So on the one hand the barrier to entry is way lower. On the second hand most people who are vibe coding apps and most new apps which are being released are on iOS. So if there is saturation in the market, you know it's definitely on iOS. So the opportunities on Android really are generally the apps that we know are successful on iOS that don't have an equivalent on Android. That's the opportunity. The second opportunity is the niche problems that individuals have that previously have not been worth someone building an app to solve. Because of the lowering of the barrier to entry, because of the low cost of software development these days, the real opportunities are going to be in the niche overlap of problems or features that no apps currently solve. So really for anyone who's thinking about building an app, I would highly recommend seeing the problems that you face in your day-to-day with the current state of the apps that you use with the incumbents and find a niche. Find a very very small problem set or overlap of problems that no one has solved. Solve it. Find the other users and find the people who face these same sets of problems and you will find some good revenues in doing that. Yeah. So I I mean I think that's super true. There's a lot of things I notice about what you've built. It's just about growing markets. Android and then also there's some interesting stuff you shared around countries. You're building this. You're localizing it to different countries. That is just the emerging massive growing customer base of worldwide customers. We talked to a lot of founders who are shipping apps specifically in France or South America. There's there's a lot of opportunity there too. One thing that I do want to see is I want to see your app. Can you show me the app that has millions of users and is making over a million dollars a year? It's very simple. For example, you can type in what you ate. If I type something in like yogurt, granola, blueberries, and almonds, it'll take a second and come back with the calorie count, the macros split by ingredients, and then a total of this meal at the bottom. You can also type in your exercise. For example, I did 1 hour of venyasa yoga. And it also tracks your calories that you've burnt and keeps the totals in the bar at the top. Furthermore, you can try with pictures. I can select a picture from my gallery. And what the app is going to do is it's going to transcribe first what it sees in the picture, identify the ingredients, the portion sizes, and then it's going to come back to us with the calories and macros of each ingredient, and then a total of the entire meal. And you can just see at the top you've got your weekly view. You can see which days you've tracked this week. You've got your daily streak. You can track your weight over time. So yeah, that's basically it. Like I said, very simple, very easy to use. No complexity, no searching in multiple databases. Just type in what you've eaten, take a picture of your plate, and the rest is history. Okay, cool. I mean, super cool, super simple app, as you said. Keep it simple, stupid. Let's talk about tech stack for a second. What's the stack behind this million-dollar app? We are very heavily in the Google ecosystem, right? We use Firebase and G4 for our back end. We use BigQuery, GCP, Google Play. Obviously, we advertise on Google Ads. We effectively work for Google at this point. Apart from Google, we use RevenueCad for subscription management and we use Open AI for our back-end AI usage for most of it. We have quite a few tools we use for operations. We use Claude Code and Claude Co-work incredible tool $100 a month. Open AAI premium for general purpose usage $20 per month. We use GitHub Copilot $39 a month. We use Code Rabbit that cost us $30 a month. Fixer for AI email support, incredible tool, $30 a month. N8N for operations automation, $24 a month. Appl for ASO, app store optimization, that costs us $180 a month. And we use Web Flow for our website, our landing page, which costs us $18 a month. Uh, thanks for sharing all that. last question that we ask everyone who comes onto the channel. If you could go back in time and stand on young Steve's shoulders and give them some advice or give some advice for anyone on here that wants to build a million-doll app, what would it be? One thing which I would definitely do differently is that I would start creating content. I would start documenting my journey and get good at making content. After living off of social media for almost a decade, I'm I've kind of fallen behind almost everyone in the world when it comes to this and it uh is a skill we're missing in the business. So yeah, the piece of advice would be to start documenting your journey and get good at making content. Having some documentation of the journey and seeing how much I've grown over time and maybe even publicly sharing some of that is something I wish I'd done earlier and I'm planning on starting now. So I miss a lot of the skills. I miss a lot of the gauge and calibration towards social media and content creation which almost all of my peers and almost everyone else in the world has. So, it's a huge weakness of mine and uh yeah, I would change that. Well, that's great advice. Document the journey. That's what we believe here at Starter Story. And this is maybe the beginning or a great uh milestone in that journey of you documenting. Thanks for coming on and sharing all this amazing million-dollar Android app. I think this video is going to be awesome and the channel's going to love it. Let us know what you think in the comments and thanks for coming on, Steve. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. Congrats to you as well. Okay, Gus, uh, producer of Starter Story. What did you think? I've said this a few in a few of their videos, but the best people that we talked to or the people that are like crushing it, they all have like this system, you know, whether it's creating content or, you know, whatever the building process. For Steve, it was this goo all this Google Google ads, you know, system. So that's my biggest takeaway is like or my first takeaway I should say. I was so impressed with like his system and just how methodical and data driven. I feel like you you value that quite a bit at least in as I've got to know you and that obviously makes Star Story and you successful. So I don't know that's kind of standing out to me as like this like data driven. He's not guessing. He's following the numbers and that's like I' we've seen that a few different times. Yeah. This is what I always see with founders who I know who are crushing it. Obviously he's crushing it. He has a million-dollar app and you got to get started. But then once you get started, you need to look at the data and make changes based on that data. I think a lot of people will want to watch more videos like that are on our channel to find other, you know, ideas. And that's great to find ideas online and to see what others are doing and get inspiration, but 80% of the decisions that you make should be based on your own data. If users aren't using your app, that is a piece of data that you need to go change your app. If your app is not converting, you have that data. Look at that, analyze it, maybe put it into AI, get some action items that you can do and make the changes and then look at the data. It's this constant day, hour over hour, day over day looking at the data and making decisions. This is what all the very very successful founders do. You have this data. It is this go you have this gold mine right in front of you. whether it's your Google ads or your Tik Tok performance or whatever it is, use that and make changes and eventually you'll be successful. Second thing was obviously the whole like iOS versus Android thing. I don't want to say versus, but like the difference. I loved what he was saying about like what do you say like iOS has like whatever quadrupled and the number of apps submitted versus Android is only like it's a lot slower. And if you look on X, which I'm on all the time, everyone's talking about iOS apps. And we we even did a boot camp, you know, iOS boot camp that I led, you know, shameless blood. But I was just like, wow, that's crazy. The numbers he rattled off about like how much less is going into Android. That's what you should do. That's anyone watching should go like be like, screw iOS. Let me go build an Android app and just follow this. Yeah. There's a famous story about the founders of WhatsApp. Everyone was building iOS apps and but they wanted to build a like a messaging app that everyone would use because if everyone's using the app then it becomes the most popular. So yeah, they built the iOS app but they also made sure this is years ago. It doesn't apply now but it's a similar principle. They decided oh we're going to make sure that it works on every device on like Blackberries on like random like weird OSs. They made it work on every single one. Even though the conventional wisdom was build an iPhone app at the time because everyone has iPhones. As mentioned, there are billions of Android devices out there. That's all that you need to know about how there's money to be made there. Sure, maybe on average iOS users spend more, but the world is so big. It's important to open up your mind into how you don't need to build the best thing or the most optimized thing. You just need to build something that captures value and you can have a million dollar app. So, if you guys enjoyed this video, thank you for watching. Let us know what you thought in the comments. Would you like us to bring on more Android devs and talk about this, or would you like us to go deeper into anything that he shared? I read every comment, and what you put in there will turn into future videos and future playbooks. So, thank you guys for watching this one, and we'll see you in the next one. Peace.