How do I get customers for my app?

Written by Dante, who built Prep66, PrepAMT and Ancestorii

Run one channel: the one where the people who need your product already gather. Fix what your page says before you spend money on anything else. When nobody buys, check four things, in this order: whether the people arriving actually have the problem, whether the page says what the product does, who it is for and what it costs, whether the price makes sense next to what the problem costs them, and where people drop off. Prep66's first full price customer paid nine days after one free post on Reddit. Ancestorii spent about £4,000 on every channel at once and on printed memory books, and never had a paying customer.

Start with one channel, not every channel

Ancestorii tried everything at the same time: paid creator videos, Google search ads, YouTube ads, Meta ads, Reddit ads, a podcast sponsorship, a paid post through a magazine, a podcast of its own, SEO pages and cold messages to creators. After two months live it had four signups. Not forty. Four.

The rule that came out of it: pick one channel, the one where the people who pay for your product already are and where reaching them costs less than they pay you, and run it alone. If it does not work, do not go looking for another channel. Look at your product and your page instead. Once a channel reaches the right people, the channel is almost never the problem. How to choose where to advertise goes through it channel by channel.

When nobody buys, check these four things in order

The people. Are the people arriving the ones who actually have the problem?
The page. Does it say what the product does, who it is for and what it costs, in the words those people search for?
The price. Do people compare it with what their problem costs them, or with other products?
The drop off. Where do people leave: on the landing page, or after they click the button, inside sign up and onboarding?

Check them in that order, and fix the first one that fails before you look at the next. If the first check fails, the fix is a channel where your buyers really are. After that, no new channel will fix anything. Nobody signing up takes each check in turn, and signups that never pay covers the case where people sign up and leave without paying.

What the first customers looked like on Prep66

Prep66 sells exam preparation to aircraft engineers. Its first full price payment came on about 23 August 2026, nine days after one launch post on Reddit, with no discount code. The next ones came the same way. The first three all paid within minutes of landing on the page, before they had used the product at all.

They did not need convincing, because they had an exam booked. A deadline, an expensive failure if they got it wrong, and a problem nobody had to explain to them did the selling. Those are three of the six things that decide whether a stranger pays, and they matter more than any channel.

What not to do first

A new feature. If not one stranger has used what you already built, a new feature is not the answer. Ancestorii was printing memory books while not a single stranger had uploaded a memory to the site.
A new channel. Once a channel reaches the people who pay, the channel is almost never the problem. Look at the product and the page first.
More ad money. Paid traffic only tells you faster whether strangers want the product. It does not make anyone need it. Ads before your first customer says when a test is worth running and how big it should be.

Where the signups came from

The free launch post brought Prep66 its first users. From 27 August 2026 it recorded where each signup came from, and by 3 September 2026 it had recorded 13: 6 from ChatGPT, 5 from Google search, one from a paid Reddit ad and one direct. It had no backlinks. Pages that answer what buyers search for, and the assistants that read those pages, did that work. Getting named by ChatGPT explains how.

Every question in this guide

I just built my first app. How do I get signups? The page first, then one honest post where your buyers already talk.
Nobody is signing up to my app. What do I do? The four checks in order: the people, the page, the price, the drop off.
People sign up to my app but nobody pays. Why? Why a signup is not a customer, and what a free plan that never converted showed.
How can I advertise my app? One channel where your buyers already are, and paid ads only after strangers use it for free.
How do I market an app with no money? What an hour a day did for Prep66, which spent about £25 on marketing.
Should I run ads before anyone has paid? Paid ads only tell you faster: how big a test should be, and when to stop it.
How do I promote my app on Reddit without getting removed? The post rules the Prep66 launch post followed, and how to reply.
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my app? Which index each assistant reads, the setup, the right words, and how to find the gaps.
Will my app make money, and when should I stop? The six things that decide whether a stranger pays, painkiller or vitamin, and when to stop.

Questions people ask

How long does it take to get the first customer?

There is no honest average. Prep66's first full price payment came nine days after its launch post, from a stranger who paid within minutes of landing on the page. Ancestorii never had one, whatever it spent. What decides it is whether someone needs the product today, not how long you wait.

How many marketing channels should I try at once?

One. In its first two months, Ancestorii ran Meta ads, Reddit ads, a podcast sponsorship, a magazine post, its own podcast, SEO pages and cold messages all at the same time, and got four signups. When one channel fails, look at the product and the page before you pick another.

Are signups a good sign?

Only when money follows them. Ancestorii has 177 signups and has never had a paying customer. Count signups and payments by where they came from, and put what each one cost you next to them.

Should I build more features before I look for customers?

Not while no stranger has used what you already built. If nobody has done the core thing for free, there is nothing to build on yet.

Do I need a marketing budget to get my first customers?

Not if your product is something people buy alone on the page. Prep66 had paying customers within weeks and spent about £25 on marketing, all of it on one Reddit ad that ran from 27 August to 1 September 2026. The rest of its marketing was roughly an hour a day of the founder's time. A shop or a phone game is different: it is sold through paid ads from day one. Marketing with no money shows where that hour went.