Every indie app developer follows the same path: - Build an app - Make it freemium because you don't believe people will pay for it - Market it for free on Reddit, TikTok, IG, etc. - Get a bunch of users but barely any purchases - Switch from freemium to a hard paywall - Watch your download-to-paid conversion rate triple - Manually post dozens of times a day - Start making $500-$1,000 a month - Realize you can't scale because you're already posting as much as humanly possible - Try paid ads - Lose a bunch of money - Fix your onboarding, paywall, ad creatives, etc. - Try paid ads again - Get close to profitability - Run A/B tests and improve your creatives - Finally get your ads profitable - Scale your ad spend - Hit $10k a month - Realize you're only keeping $3k after ad spend and taxes - Accept that you'll be spending tens of thousands on ads every month for the rest of your life to maintain 30% margins - Move to Asia