How I grew my mobile app to 1.4 million downloads

I started developing the app in early 2017, well before the AI era, when mobile apps were at their peak popularity. My idea was to create an app for emotional and psychological support in the form of helpful articles and various quizzes, such as personality assessments and life satisfaction tests. I named the app "Emotional Intelligence" because this keyword showed good ASO potential for positioning at the top of mobile stores.

This proved to be accurate, and the app quickly gained traction in terms of downloads. A major problem I faced then was monetization. Unfortunately, in my country, it wasn't possible to sell through Google Play then, so I could only display ads. I started with Google AdMob, earning $2000 monthly after just a few months. The app then got about 1500 organic downloads daily and quickly surpassed 500,000.

Three years after launching the app, I decided it was time for branding to build recognition. By combining the words "sentiment" and "intelligence," I came up with "Sintelly." I then pushed the app toward a social network, which differed from the right move. Adding features like discussion forums for problems, likes, and comments would result in even more growth, but the opposite happened. The app started declining, and I began investing in advertising campaigns. I managed to maintain a balance between income and expenses but without any profit. Then COVID-19 hit, and everything went downhill. I had to give up development and find a job as a developer to ensure my livelihood.

Two years passed since I gave up, and that's when ChatGPT started gaining popularity. This immediately showed me how to steer the app towards active support for well-being questions. As I'm not an expert in psychology, I found several external psychotherapists who helped me put together CBT therapy, which I then implemented through a chatbot. This is how the new Sintelly app was born, with its main feature being a chatbot system composed of 17 AI agents that adapt to the user and guide them through a five-phase CBT therapy (I'll write a post about the technology). In addition to the agents, I added various exercises and tests to provide better personalization for the user.

Initially, I made all of this free, which was also a mistake. I followed the principle of first showing what the app can do and gathering enough new users before starting to charge. I started selling subscriptions at the beginning of July, and since then, the app has had stable growth.

Lessons learned:

• If things are working, don't touch them
• Start selling immediately upon app release; there's no need to wait
• Regularly test prices and types of subscriptions
• Onboarding is the most essential part of the app because most users buy subscriptions during onboarding
• It's essential to listen to user feedback.
• From day one, have a website and work on content to generate organic visits and redirect users from the web to the mobile app

Stats:

• Over 1.4 million downloads
• 4.4 rating
• Only 40,000 active users (I had a massive loss during the period when I gave up)
• 280 active subscribers
• $3000 monthly revenue

Next steps:

• Work on improving the Agent AI approach
• Setting up email campaigns and transactional emails
• Introducing in-app and push notifications
• Introducing gamification
• Potential for B2B

I hope you can extract useful information from my example and avoid repeating my mistakes. I'm interested in your thoughts and if you have any recommendations for the next steps. I'm always looking to learn and improve.