Nick Ugre

Our first app just made $9,125 in the last 28 days. 🚀 5 months ago, @conoroh_dev and I started building Squirrlo, a budget planner that plans and tracks your finances for you. Here’s where we are now: 📈 +332% revenue growth in September 👥 5,000+ people signed up 👀 6M+ views on TikTok & Instagram through UGC marketing These aren’t the biggest numbers on X. But this is our first app, and it’s proof that there’s so much opportunity out there to build things! Over the next few weeks, we’ll share everything we’ve learned about product and marketing, so you can do the same.

This is what design details can do to your product.

I just subscribed to the $200 Claude 😭

If you turn off trial cancellation notifications.

The first thing I check in the morning is if my UGC video went viral. Spoiler alert, it didn’t.

I wish I had started making apps 2 years ago and marketed with UGC.

UGC will become the next paid ads by the end of 2026. Imagine you are TikTok and you see millions of dollars being spent without you profiting. What would you do?

If you’re stuck in 100-400 view jail on TikTok and your UGC content is good, do this 👇 Post only once a day, and make it a warm-up video without mentioning any brands. Copy big text from videos that recently went viral in your niche and place the text over a recording. Tell creators that you won’t pay bonuses on these videos since they won’t convert. Do this until you get 1,000+ views. After that, start posting content with your product again. Right now TikTok is stricter. You can warm up an account, post good content, and still get shadowbanned. I think they now understand when an account only posts about a product. That’s why warm-up videos are super important, even though they don’t convert. I’m planning to mix them in a couple of times throughout the week if reach drops.

UGC marketing sometimes feels like gambling. One video hits 10k views, then the next drops to 400. Is it the format? Shadowban? Quality? Maybe the brief was wrong. For us, conversion was never the problem. We already made around $2k, so I guess it works, but it comes with a lot of ups and downs. Right now, I think TikTok has become stricter, and we’re planning to do more warm-up videos. I’m a couple of months into this, and every week I realize I could have done better. So I still think it’s a skill issue. Still a lot to learn, and it’s not as simple as people make it sound on X. How has your experience been?

If you are doing UGC marketing and have not seen signups in the first 7 videos, you are doing something wrong. Don’t continue like that. Change the format, creator, or messaging. I wish I knew this before, it would have saved me $$$.

Hey, mobile app founders in Tbilisi, Georgia, let’s connect! No idea if anyone will see this. 🤣

Do this to 2x your user activation. Most people finish onboarding but never use the product and cancel their trial. By adding an activation checklist, we doubled the number of users engaging with our core feature. That led to higher trial conversion and more revenue.

🚨 Hiring US-Based Tech UGC Creators! 🇺🇸 💰 $400 monthly retainer 🎥 1 video per day for 30 days 📈 $100 bonus per 100K views 🏆 Earn up to $1,500 total ✨ Long-term opportunity Drop a comment and email your portfolio to [email protected] 📩 I’ll review every application! 👀 #UGC #UGCCreators #UGCHiring #ContentCreator #techugc #CreatorCommunity #PaidCollab

+50% trial starts with this 3-step paywall. 20% → 30% and still trending upward as we collect more data. 70% of people still never experience the app, likely the downside of using a hard paywall. Interesting to see how these small improvements compound. 👀

There is so much hype around AI UGC. Right now, it costs more than real human UGC, the quality is worse, and it takes more founder time to produce.

So funny and so sad at the same time 🤣😭

10 things we wish we knew before starting UGC app marketing. 1. Hire multiple creators. Some will get shadowbanned, some will ghost. 2. You need a format that works. Do not expect creators to figure it out for you. 3. Do not post more than 5 videos that do not work. It can get you shadowbanned. 4. Even 1,000-view videos can make $250–$500 a month with decent onboarding. 5. Bigger, slightly gimmicky UI often works better on video than perfect UX. 6. Do not just copy formats. Make them fit your app naturally. 7. Just showing a face and a feature usually is not enough. Make videos people actually enjoy watching. 8. Reddit is an easy place to find UGC creators. Post once and people will reach out. 9. You do not need a huge budget to start. 10. It takes time. Realistically, you will not make $100k in month one. Share your experience as well in the comments, or ask any questions.

Budgeting apps make $100k/mo, so @conoroh_dev and I thought: why not us? We built and marketed Squirrlo in 30 days. $500+ revenue. Small, but promising. An influencer video hit 650k+ views, but with subtle placement and not the right audience. Meanwhile our own TikToks at 1k views drove 50% of revenue. Views mean nothing if the product isn't what's pulling viewers in.