How do I market an app with no money?

Written by Dante, who built Prep66, PrepAMT and Ancestorii

Spend time instead of money, in the places your buyers already are. Write one honest post in the community where they ask about the problem. Reply fast to everyone who comments. Write pages that answer the questions they type into Google and ChatGPT. Record where each signup came from. Prep66's first full price customer paid nine days after a free launch post, before a penny had been spent. Up to 18 September 2026, its whole marketing spend was about £25, all of it on one Reddit ad that ran from 27 August to 1 September 2026. Everything else was roughly an hour a day of the founder's time.

What the hour a day went on

Writing the launch post, and replying to every comment on it.
Replying in the aircraft engineering subreddits where its buyers ask questions.
Writing reference pages that answer what buyers search for before they buy.
Asking ChatGPT and the other assistants the questions a buyer would ask, finding the ones where Prep66 was missing, and writing the page for each one.
Emailing paying customers to ask for a review.

One post, told as your own story

Prep66's launch post in r/AircraftMechanics cost nothing. It told the founder's own story of sitting those exams, offered 25 free Pro accounts in return for honest feedback, and had no link in it. It brought the first real users, and in the end well over 40 free accounts were given away. The first full price customer paid nine days later. Posting on Reddit has the rules it followed.

Reply fast, never pretend, and keep what you promise. When the free places ran out, the founder said so in the thread and offered the early crowd half price. When someone asked for a version for the US exams, he said yes, in two weeks, and built PrepAMT.

Pages that answer what your buyers search

Search engines and AI assistants send you buyers for free, once your pages use the words those buyers type. Prep66 published reference pages about its exams and set up Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow. It had no backlinks. From 27 August 2026 to 3 September 2026, 6 of its 13 recorded signups came from ChatGPT and 5 from Google search. Getting named by ChatGPT explains the setup.

Search only brings buyers if buyers are searching. If nobody searches for what you built yet, search is not your first channel.

Reviews, asked for the same way every time

Prep66 emailed every paying customer a plain link to its review page three days after signup, with one reminder on day ten, and only to accounts on a paid plan. By 14 September 2026 it had 4 reviews, all five stars, shown on the landing page with a link to the public profile. Ask every real customer at the same point, not only the happy ones, and never pay or reward anyone for a review.

What free marketing cannot fix

None of this works for a product nobody needs today. Prep66 sold because someone with an exam booked has a deadline and a problem right now, and because its founder had been exactly that person. Ancestorii was nice to have, and its founder was selling to parents and grandparents, people he had never been. The posts, the pages and the reviews only work once that first part is true. Will it sell is where to check it.

Questions people ask

Can I get customers without spending anything?

Yes. Prep66 spent about £25 on marketing, all of it on one Reddit ad that brought one signup and no payment. Its first real users came from a free launch post, and most of the signups it recorded after that came from ChatGPT and Google search.

Is SEO worth it for a new app?

Only if your buyers search for what you sell. Most of Prep66's recorded signups came from ChatGPT and Google search, through pages written in the words its buyers type. Ancestorii also had SEO pages indexed by Google, as part of a mix of channels that brought almost nobody, because nobody searches for something they do not need yet.

Should I cold message people about my app?

Ancestorii's founder messaged genealogy creators five a day and got no replies at all. If companies buy your product it is different: the first customers usually come from the founder's own network, and then from a carefully chosen list of companies and job titles.

How much time does free marketing take?

On Prep66 it was roughly an hour a day: the launch post, the replies, the pages, checking the assistants, and the review emails.