From $2,000 of Failed Ads to Our First 300 Users

In February this year, I took on the arduous task of turning the shimmer of an idea I'd had for a very long time into an actual app. If you're curious about where the idea came from, I wrote about how Walk With Me came to be. But even while building it, I already knew the hard part wasn't going to be the code. The idea has potential, I genuinely believe that, but it is held back by one simple detail: it is a social app. A social app does not work if no one is using it. Whenever I try to explain this to people, I ask them to imagine signing up to Facebook expecting a good time, only to find out that... no one is on it? Why would you stay?

Month 1: $2,000 of Ads and a Slap in the Face

As soon as I shipped the app to both the App Store and Google Play, reality set in: yeah, okay, no one is going to use this. Like, at all. So I did what all the widespread advice says to do first. I hopped on social media, created a couple of ads, and sponsored them. I spent around $2,000, and the results were absolutely ABYSMAL. The videos racked up more than 300,000 views across TikTok and Instagram combined, and they produced essentially zero conversions. Zero. It was bad. Really bad. It was kind of a slap in the face, and I concluded very quickly that paid ads were not going to be the way this app grows.

Month 2: 500 Messages, 1 Reply

So I went online looking for advice, and it was unanimous: social apps have it the hardest. Every indie bootstrapped social app developer reported the same thing. The app simply gets buried in the beginning, and nobody wants anything to do with it. The recommended play was to find communities and pitch your app as the solution to a problem they're already facing. So for month two, I spent hours and hours on end reaching out to walking communities and social fitness groups. I made posts everywhere, left and right. I handed out premium subscriptions for free. I have absolutely sent more than 500 emails and messages to groups local, international, and everything in between, across social media and through formal channels.

This round was even more depressing. I received exactly one response, and they lost interest with time too. That was reality check number two. I was confused for a few weeks, with no idea where to look next, until I stumbled onto SEO and ASO and realized something wild: some people put more effort into search optimization than into building the app itself. I decided to give it an honest shot.

Month 3: Learning From a Giant

I created around ten store listing experiments across Google Play and the App Store, each one targeting a different keyword. Each listing had its own screenshots, and every screenshot reinforced a specific feature of the app. One listing was about finding a walking buddy, another about the fitness tracker, another about walking communities, another about safety while walking with people, another about dog walking, and the list goes on. None of it was perfect, but each one was diverse and strong enough to convey one message: this app is going to solve that particular problem you are trying to solve.

Then I started studying the competition, the apps that kind of solve what I'm solving, finding a walking partner and staying active together (*cough, cough* STRAVA *cough, cough*). I discovered these guys have more than 6,000 pages on their website, including over 5,000 blog posts covering every fitness topic imaginable, and each page solves one specific problem. I was shocked, truly, at how huge of an operation they're running. And here I am, a bootstrapped shmuck with $0 of marketing budget left, going up against that. So I got to work. I learned the patterns they follow, built landing pages mirroring my store listings, and poured a few weeks into documented, factual SEO practices. Then I got tired. Lowkey depressed that nothing seemed to be working. Life happened on the side, I got distracted, and I didn't check on the app again after May.

Then I Came Back to a Surprise

A few days ago I finally checked back in, and the app is... kind of taking off? Remember, this app is only three months old. It has $0 of budget, zero presence, zero hype. And it has quietly acquired around 300 users across the App Store and Google Play. Right now the website shows up in front of roughly 600 searchers every day, unpaid and unprompted. Around 30 to 50 of them click through, voluntarily and willingly. And then, on average, around 10 people sign up. Every single day. I'm honestly astonished that people get curious enough to download and install.

Store listing visits have been climbing steadily since April, with no ads running at all:

And the App Store has started showing the app on explore surfaces, which produced days like this one:

It means the SEO and ASO are working. Google trusts the pages enough to actually show them, and both stores have featured the app on their explore pages a few times. Three months of throwing money and messages at the wall produced almost nothing, and the one channel where I simply described what the app does, honestly and repeatedly, is the one that's compounding.

What's Next

I'm doubling down on what works: more pages that each solve one real problem, better store listings, and making the app itself worth staying for. If you're one of the 300 people who found us, thank you, genuinely. And if you're reading this and haven't tried it yet, Walk With Me is free on the App Store and Google Play. Come take a walk with us.