Author: Ernesto Lopez

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

How can beginners earn MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) through app development? Recently, a blogger (Ernesto Lopez) shared a practical guide based on personal experience on how to develop and promote an app from scratch to achieve high MRR. Here are the details.

My first app earned $20,000 within 30 days of launch. The content I’m about to share may change your life. The reason I entered the B2C app space is that apps are the only business model that can truly generate passive income.

Build once, sell forever, no calls or annoying meetings, and it’s subscription-based. More importantly, owning an app feels really cool.

In the next five years, apps will create more millionaires than e-commerce. But opportunities are limited, and only a few will succeed. How to start developing a B2C app? It’s actually not that difficult.

The first app I launched, “Snapout,” earned $20,000 in 30 days with zero experience and just two viral videos.

Is it luck? Of course not; it’s based on a series of careful planning. If you follow the steps below, you can achieve similar results.

1. Validate Your App Idea (Don’t Waste Time)

Most people fail before they even start. Ideas are a double-edged sword; everyone wants to develop their "dream app." But the most important step before you start building an app is to choose a niche market and validate your app idea. Make sure this is something consumers really want.

Here’s the process I followed to develop 10 apps:

1. Find Pain Points: Identify problems that people struggle with daily, which you can solve with an app. Here are some validated app niches to consider:

(Niche app areas with over $100,000 in revenue over 34 months: quitting porn, quitting vaping, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, quitting marijuana, quitting caffeine, quitting overspending, quitting social media, withdrawal counters, detox counters, fasting, overcoming X issues, overcoming procrastination, building self-discipline, alleviating anxiety, depression, gym rankings, pregnancy tracking, weight loss, muscle gain, healthy eating, testosterone maximization, pregnancy tracking, male mental health, daily motivation, morning habits, nighttime habits, focus and deep work, learning habits, mindfulness and meditation, gratitude journals, self-love and confidence, relationships, stress relief)

2. Check the App Store: Ensure that someone is already paying in this field.

If there are apps making over $10,000 a month, that’s a good sign.

3. Download Top Competitors’ Apps: You need to study the strategies of your competitors (the most profitable ones) closely.

After downloading the apps, take screenshots of the onboarding process and core app loops. Analyze every detail carefully.

4. Search on TikTok/Instagram: Figure out their main growth strategies.

These usually boil down to four points:

• Influencer marketing
• Faceless slideshows (a content format combining images + text + voice + transitions)
• User-generated content (UGC) creators
• Paid advertising

Once you see competitors making money and creators consistently producing related content, your idea is validated, and you can start building.

2. Build the App + Tool Stack

Developing an app in 2026 has never been easier. The key is to build quickly.

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of all my apps usually looks quite ugly at first. Sometimes, a few weeks can equate to decades; other times, decades can feel like just a few weeks. For apps, it’s about completing decades of work in just a few weeks.

I typically use the following tool stack to build apps in 3-7 days:

• Rork and Cursor → Write code with AI
• ChatGPT → Write prompts
• Superwall → Create paywalls
• Firebase → Database (not always necessary)
• Pinterest and Dribbble → Design inspiration
• Xcode → Launch the app

The process is as follows:

1. Find Inspiration from Pinterest, Dribbble, and Competitors.

Once you find an app style you like, save the images and send them to ChatGPT along with the following prompt:

It will generate a prompt that you can send to Rork or Cursor to turn your design into a usable app.

Important Note: Be sure to include reference images in Rork or Cursor along with the prompt for the best results.

2. Borrow User Onboarding and Pricing

Once you have a satisfactory app design and style, borrow the onboarding process from your main competitors.

User onboarding accounts for 70% of the app. It’s the key to converting downloads into paying users. If your onboarding is poor, no one will pay for your app.

If their app makes over $10,000 a month, it means their onboarding has proven effective.

The main goal of user onboarding is to remind users why they downloaded the app in the first place, making them aware of a problem they have, and that your app is the solution.

Here’s the best user onboarding structure:

When I say “borrow user onboarding,” I don’t mean to copy it entirely, but to take inspiration from the structure they follow.

You can design the onboarding in your own style, of course, but the content within the app must also be unique.

The key is to build the onboarding based on the validated data collected by competitors.

Once the onboarding is complete, add an unavoidable paywall at the end.

Force users to pay upfront or start a free trial. This method has been repeatedly validated as the best way to maximize revenue.

Don’t be afraid to charge; use the same pricing and offers as your competitors. You can use Superwall or Revenue Cat to set up the paywall. I personally use Superwall.

3. Launch the App

To launch the app, you first need an Apple Developer License, which costs $99 per year. Apply as soon as possible; the review usually takes 3-5 days.

1. App Store Setup (Basic Requirements)

You only need the following:

• App name (must be clear)
• A catchy subtitle
• 3-5 screenshots
• A concise description

The subtitle + the first screenshot determines everything.

• Bad example: “AI-Powered Productivity Experience”
• Good example: “Block Distractions for Longer Focus”

Clearly state the app’s functionality without any fluff.

2. Screenshots that Drive Conversions

Screenshots are key to conversions; they should be clear, to the point, with large fonts, showing only one concept per screen, and a clean interface. Like Cal AI (an app making $3.6 million a month):

Ugly but clear screenshots > Pretty but confusing screenshots.

3. How to Avoid App Store Rejection

The App Store is notorious for rejecting apps, so here’s a pitfall avoidance guide:

4. Promote the App

Once you’ve published the “creative code” to the App Store, it’s time to start making money.

Attention brings wealth, so you need to be good at marketing. If you can master this part, you will one day become wealthy through your app.

You can leverage the following five channels to attract user attention to your app:

1. User-Generated Content (UGC) (Paid)

UGC stands for user-generated content. Hire creators specifically to open new TikTok/Instagram accounts for your app and post videos. Typically, they should publish 30-60 videos a month. They are great for generating ad ideas, and if one of your creators finds a viral content pattern, you can have other creators replicate that pattern. It’s common to reach 100 million views in 30 days.

I usually pay UGC creators $15 per video, with additional bonuses for viral videos:

• 100,000 views = $150
• 250,000 views = $300
• 500,000 views = $600
• 1,000,000 views = $800

A single video can earn up to $850, while the revenue from 1 million views far exceeds that amount.

Where can you find UGC creators? There are two methods:

• Find creators through platforms or agencies like Sideshift
• Scroll through TikTok and manually email creators

I personally do not recommend using agencies. My method is to hire relatives who are addicted to TikTok. Have them scroll daily and send 100 DMs and emails to creators.

To ensure that your recommendation page (account nurturing) is optimized, only show relevant creators.

Practical experience: Be sure to sign contracts and send them at least one message a day.

2. Influencers (Paid)

This is one of my favorite methods. A good influencer can make your app go viral quickly. I hired an influencer at a rate of $1 per 1,000 impressions. That is, 1,000 views = $1.

After this influencer posted their first video, they quickly went viral, bringing in $20,000 for my first app. All of this happened within 30 days.

You can use the same methods discussed in the "User-Generated Content" (UGC) section above to find influencers.

If you can strike a deal at $1 per 1,000 impressions, you have nothing to lose. Because if they don’t perform as expected, you won’t lose any money. And if they perform well, you can gain a significant amount of app sales.

Practical experience: Set a maximum cost per 1,000 impressions at $1,000.

3. Anonymous Content (Free)

This is the most underrated method, and most people don’t do it. These anonymous accounts usually present content in the following forms:

• Slideshow videos
• Screen recordings
• Screen text
• Material clips + subtitles
• Eye-catching app demonstrations

Using these accounts, you can post content 3-5 times a day for free.

If a certain format goes viral, you can immediately double down on it. Same eye-catching elements, same structure, but different text. This is the secret to anonymous accounts achieving millions of views.

The most important advice is to maintain consistency. Even for anonymous accounts, build a brand. If your anonymous account looks like a Pinterest feed, it’s over. Instead, keep a consistent style. Sometimes, you can even use a fixed character.

For example, the blue character in the image below has over 50 million views, all generated using CHATGPT.

Here’s another example of an account using slideshows that has reached millions of views:

Here’s an example of a poorly executed anonymous account:

It looks very casual and lacks consistency.

Summary:

4. Founders on Camera (Free)

If you have no content creation experience, this model can be hard to succeed with. But I still encourage everyone to try.

A great example of founder-led content is Cormac, whose Oasis Health App found a viral model and gained millions of views. Last month, his revenue exceeded $100,000.

I recently tried this as well, borrowing a content model that had 200,000 views, and my video reached 549,000 views. Even if you have money to invest in influencers, you should still create founder content. Because it helps you develop a sense for viral marketing. Then you can pass that sense on to your creators and operate like a true founder.

5. Paid Advertising (Requires Spending)

Paid advertising is severely underrated, but in my view, it is the best growth channel. Because it has scalability and predictability. Once you find the right customer acquisition cost (CPA) and have some successful creatives, you can truly scale infinitely.

Summary

Developing an app is like developing digital real estate. Treat the app like property and the users like tenants. Once you understand this formula, you can replicate it infinitely.

Recurring revenue is the only true business model, and apps are the perfect way to achieve this goal.

Related reading: Breaking Down X's New Algorithm: The Ultimate Guide to Content Mining in 2026

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