7 Honest Tactics That Grew App Sales
Published on
Noah Kagan
@noahkagan·Nov 10
7 ways we got software customers in the last 5 weeks. With the real numbers. 👇
1- Honest SEO pages.
29 PayPal sales, zero refunds.
19 vs and "best for" pages for my $20 Mac app.
2- Started running X ads.
MeetMouse new customers at $4.54 each on a ~$5 app. Pretty good.
When we pushed the budget more on Rhino, it jumped to ~$50. Still promising.
3- Giving out store credit instead of a discount.
$25 credit got 2.6x the first-time buyers of dollars-off.
People like free money more than a sale.
4- Let partners share their own link.
On pace for $25K in sales this month. Our goal was $7K.
Partners sell harder when their link generates extra sales.
5- Bundle the mid-tier.
8 AI tools at 10% off for one day. $59.9K in 28 hours, about 7x normal.
Bundles beat selling one tool at a time.
6- Save the refund.
Everyone who refunds gets an alternative deal. 717 emails, 52% opened, 8 buyers, $2,577.
7- A changelog page.
60 Google impressions to 3,437 in 3 weeks.
A page that changes every week gives Google a reason to come back.
What else is working or not for you?
Most “growth hacks” are either fake, fuzzy, or flat-out unprofitable. These 7 tactics are the opposite: simple, honest moves that actually brought in app sales (with real numbers attached). Use this as a cheat sheet to upgrade your own growth plan without turning into a hypey internet clown.
How to steal this for your own app
Don’t try all seven at once. Pick one “money now” move (bundle, refund saver, or partner push) and one “money later” move (SEO pages or changelog). Run them for 30 days, measure brutally, then either double down or kill fast. The magic isn’t in being clever; it’s in being honest about what actually moves the numbers.
7 honest tactics hiding in plain sight
- Turn boring SEO into money: comparison and “best for” pages quietly rack up intent-driven buyers with low refund rates.
- Treat X ads like a lab: test by product, kill losers fast, and scale only where acquisition cost hugs your price point.
- Offer store credit instead of discounts so purchases feel like spending free money, not losing cash.
- Let partners own their links and upside so they push harder than your own sales team.
- Bundle your mid-tier tools into a one-day no-brainer offer to create a giant, temporary spike in revenue.
- Treat refund requests as warm leads and pitch alternative deals before you say goodbye to the sale.
- Publish a living changelog so both users and Google see your app as active, improving, and worth returning to.
Real numbers behind these tactics
Noah Kagan’s honest SEO pages for his $20 Mac app produced 29 PayPal sales with zero refunds from 19 comparison and “best for” pages.
MeetMouse acquired new customers for about $4.54 each using X ads on a roughly $5 app, keeping acquisition costs tightly aligned with price.
Rhino saw customer acquisition costs jump to roughly $50 when the ad budget was pushed harder, showing why channel scaling needs tight tracking.
One software brand’s $25 store credit offer generated 2.6x more first-time buyers than a standard dollars-off discount on the same product.
A partner-link program went from a $7,000 target to being on pace for $25,000 in sales in a single month once partners could share their own links.
An 8-tool AI bundle priced 10 percent off for one day drove $59,900 in just 28 hours, roughly seven times the normal revenue pace.
A refund-saver sequence sent to 717 people who refunded achieved a 52 percent open rate and converted 8 buyers for an extra $2,577 in recovered revenue.
A public changelog page jumped from 60 to 3,437 Google impressions in three weeks, proving that fresh, consistent updates attract search traffic.
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