How can I advertise my app?

Written by Dante, who built Prep66, PrepAMT and Ancestorii

Start with one free place where your buyers already gather, and run that channel on its own. If your product is bought on the page, pay for ads only after strangers have used it for free on their own. Then give one paid test about 5% of your whole marketing budget for one week. Shops and phone games are different: they are sold through paid ads from day one, and the test there is whether each sale pays back what the ad cost. In its first two months, Ancestorii advertised everywhere at once, spending more than £500 on Meta ads alone, and got four signups. Prep66 was launched with one Reddit post that cost nothing, and its first full price customer paid nine days later.

Where should I promote my app first?

In the one place where the people who pay for your product already gather, as long as reaching them there costs less than they pay you. Run that channel on its own. If it does not bring customers, do not jump to the next channel. Look at the product and the page first. Once a channel reaches the right people, the channel is almost never the problem.

Where that place is depends on who buys:

If your buyers gather online around the problem, as aircraft engineers do in a few subreddits, start with one honest post there. That is what Prep66 did.
If companies buy your product, LinkedIn may be exactly the place to start.
If local businesses buy it, Facebook groups and search ads around the shop may be.
If it is a phone product, people find it by searching the store, so the listing's name, subtitle and keywords come first.

Some things are not channels at all. They are the shop window every product of that kind needs: the store listing for a phone product, the Google Business profile for a local shop, your own network when companies buy. Have those in place. Then the channel is where you go to find people.

If you cannot name a place where your buyers gather and where you can reach them for free, that tells you something too. Buyers you can reach are one of the six things that decide whether a stranger pays.

What Ancestorii tried, all at once

Meta ads: more than £500 in the first two months live.
Reddit ads: £76.
Sponsoring a family history podcast: £70 for 2,000 downloads.
A post on a family history magazine's Facebook page: £120.
Its own podcast on Spotify, SEO pages indexed by Google, paid creator videos, and Google search and YouTube ads.
Cold messages to genealogy creators, five a day. Replies: zero.

After two months live it had four signups. Over the product's whole life about £4,000 was spent, part of it on printed memory books. Trying every channel at once does not tell you which channel works. It only tells you that none of them did, and it is the most expensive way to learn that.

What Prep66 did instead

One post in r/AircraftMechanics on 14 August 2026, written as the founder's own story about sitting the exams. It got about 3,200 views, 14 upvotes and 18 comments, and it brought the first real users. Posting on Reddit has the rules it followed.

A few other places were tried as well: a launch post on LinkedIn, the PPRuNe forum, and two Facebook posts for PrepAMT. None of them brought anyone, so they were dropped.

Where Product Hunt and Hacker News fit

A launch site is one more channel, and you judge it like any other. Use it only if your buyers are actually there, and only once your page already turns the visitors you have into customers. None of the four products behind this guide has ever launched on Product Hunt or Hacker News, so there is no number here to promise you.

Hacker News has its own rule (read on 17 September 2026): a Show HN post is for something you have made that other people can try, and pages that only collect signups are off topic. If people cannot try your product without signing up, Hacker News is not your way in.

When paid ads make sense

Paid ads only tell you faster whether strangers want your product. If strangers will not use it for free on their own, ads will not change that. You would be paying for visitors who leave. Once strangers do use it, a small paid test tells you quickly whether a channel can bring buyers at a price you can afford. Ads before your first customer covers how big the test should be and when to stop it.

Shops and phone games are the exception. They are sold through paid ads from day one, and the test there is whether each sale pays back what the ad cost, within a time you can afford to wait. For a phone game that can take a month or more, so you follow each week's new installs over time rather than judging them after one week. AquaPaws, a Shopify store, ran a video ad at £30 to £50 a day and made around ten sales to strangers. The ads worked. But one sale did not cover a day's ad spend, and the money ran out.

Questions people ask

What is the best place to advertise an app?

There is no best place in general. The best place is wherever your buyers already gather or search, as long as reaching them there costs less than they pay you. For Prep66 that was one subreddit of aircraft engineers.

Should I advertise on several platforms at once?

No. 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. Run one channel, judge it fairly, then decide.

How long should I give one channel?

Long enough for a sale to be possible. If your product is bought on the page, one week, as long as that week brings enough visitors for about three sales. If buying takes a trial or a call, as long as that first step honestly takes. Decide the length before you start, and stop when it is reached.

How much should I spend on advertising my app?

Decide your whole marketing budget first. One channel test gets a small slice of it, about 5%. Prep66's founder spent £5 a day on his one test, a figure he set from his own budget, not from the price of the product. The slice also has to be big enough to buy the visitors for about three sales on that channel. If it is not, the test cannot tell you anything.

Should I launch on Product Hunt?

Only if your buyers are there, and only once your page already turns the visitors you have into customers. It is one channel among others, and you judge it the same way. None of the four products behind this guide has launched on Product Hunt, so there is no number here to promise you.

Does advertising on LinkedIn or Facebook work?

It depends on who buys. A LinkedIn launch post for Prep66 and two Facebook posts for PrepAMT brought nobody, because exam candidates are not looking there. If companies buy your product, LinkedIn may be exactly the place to start. If local businesses buy it, Facebook groups may be.