Article
how i took my first app to $18k/month in 2 months (the new distribution machine - full guide)
Salim
@rsalimx
·
2026-08-11
·
Updated 2026-08-11

my first app just did $24k in the last 28 days.

without ads, without ugc budget, just tiktok slideshows 

what i'm about to break down changed my life, so i'm giving all of it to you.

a couple of months ago i was sitting at $0. 

i'm 17, about to be 18. i've been trying to make something work online since i was 12, everything you can imagine except apps. none of it hit.

here's where it all started.

i started going to the gym for the first time. i was bad at it.

so i did what everyone does, i went to tiktok to learn.

and the more i watched, the more my feed filled up with these slideshow accounts in the gym niche (and bunch of other formats too). 

https://www.tiktok.com/@gymmadesimple
https://www.tiktok.com/@vdrophealth
https://www.tiktok.com/@captaingreek_

then it hit me.

i was consuming these slideshows more than i watched actual videos. i was saving them, sitting through every slide, engaging like crazy, and i didn't even notice i was doing it. 


most of these accounts were posting just for fun, or for content rewards. a small few were quietly selling ebooks and notion templates off the back of it.

and that's when something clicked.

i was drowning in slideshows. tiktok was pushing them harder every day. the engagement is insane. they're just effortless to consume, especially for utility stuff. and almost nobody was pointing that attention at a real product, just a few

that was the opportunity. right there.

so i did it in the exact opposite order everyone tells you to. i built the distribution system first, then i built the app to fit it.

i found a format in the niche that was already viral, easy to replicate, and exploitable across dozens of accounts. then, and only then, i built an app that dropped perfectly into it.

it was the perfect setup: slideshows are dirt cheap to make, they convert just as well as video, and they move an absurd amount of views compared to videos.

the rest was just execution.

revenue cat + tiktok analytics dashboard

enough yapping. this is the exact system i used, start to finish. 

what's inside
how to find a format that's already winning
why you build the app around the format, not the other way
the distribution engine (how i run a network of accounts)
1. HOW TO FIND A FORMAT THAT'S ALREADY WINNING 

here's the first thing you need to burn into your head: you are not going to invent a format. you're going to steal one that's already printing.

originality is a trap, at least at the start. you get more creative the more accounts you study and the more slideshows you actually make. the more patterns you see, the more you start mixing them, and that's exactly where the great stuff comes from. creativity isn't a lightning bolt, it's what happens after you've absorbed enough of what already works.

great artists steal. so speed it up: find something that's already winning, copy the structure, and adapt it to your own thing. build your taste by reps, not by thinking.

step 1 pick a niche with a pulse 

but before we get into all of this and reach that sweet spot of virality and conversion, you need to take a couple of steps first. 

you're reading this to grow your app, or to build one that actually gets users and moves the number on your revenuecat or superwall dashboard.

at the end, i'm giving away an idea i literally started building myself, and i'm dropping it in the next few hours. i'd rather someone here builds it in public. (first one to ship it wins). 

here's where it gets interesting. 

pick one of these 

most viral niches

then go to codex or chatgpt and expand it into a specific sub-niche. don't stay broad, broad is where you compete with everyone. narrow is where you win.

example:

mental wellness → women → mental state inside a relationship

and boom... you just went from a crowded category to a laser-focused angle almost nobody is serving.

now check if the demand is real. open tiktok search insights and type the actual searches inside that sub-niche.

one sub-niche. 30 search-backed content angles

i ran a few of these myself and it's genuinely insane.

tikTok search insights overview

millions of searches, climbing 190%+ only this week. there's no way you build an app pointed at demand like this and don't hit at least $10k a month.

and here's the part most people miss: there are very few niche apps actually serving this, and the ones that exist are printing.

for example:

vent now app - App Store

this app is pulling thousands every month, running dozens of slideshow accounts, doing exactly what i'm about to break down

Vent now app revenue on sensor tower

and that number is lowballed. sensor tower always shows way less than reality, i'd bet they're past $80k a month. you can verify that against any public founder's numbers.

here are some of the accounts they're running:

Vent Now tiktok distribution account
Vent Now tiktok distribution account
Vent Now tiktok distribution account

so now you know how to pick a viral niche and split it into a focused sub-niche your app can own.

next: how to find the exact accounts already winning it.

step 2: find the accounts already winning.

this is the part that irritated me the most and was by far the hardest. so pay attention, there's a huge gift for you at the end of it.

once your sub-niche is locked, use codex to generate a batch of keywords to search on tiktok. then scroll, and open every top slideshow post you find, and save it. you're building a swipe file of formats, enough of them that patterns start clicking and your own creativity sparks from the mix.

but here's the mistake that keeps 99% of people stuck at 200 views, the one i made myself: don't save an account just because one post went viral. that one post might be the only hit in its entire history. copy it and you're copying luck, not a format.

so don't save everyone. you're hunting for one specific profile:

an active, repeatable format pattern (examples below)
posts daily
at least 100k views in the last 30 days, spread across posts, not from a single viral fluke

bonus: run by a normie, posting for fun or for content rewards, with no product behind it

that last one is the goldmine. an account pulling millions of views with nothing to sell is a distribution channel sitting there unclaimed. that's the exact gap your app drops into.

examples 👇

https://x.com/i/web/status/2086209462420046245
https://x.com/i/web/status/2085598818179919941
https://x.com/i/web/status/2084414805104869612

it takes time. it's worth it. once you have a handful of accounts that pass every one of those filters, you've found the format your app is going to run on. now you study it.

step 3: read why it works

open the top posts and study them like an autopsy. download them and paste them into claude code post by post if you want to move faster.

ask: what's the hook on slide 1? how many slides? where does the value land? what makes someone actually save it? that's how you reverse-engineer the DNA of the format so you can rebuild it with your product inside.

and if an account has constant bangers, not one, a wall of them, it will work for you too. it's just math.

example 👇

https://x.com/i/web/status/2082074201477742982

i've seen apps run a single format across dozens of accounts. because if it hits on one account consistently, it hits on the others too. over time people get used to it, they trust it, and from seeing that same format spammed everywhere, the brand becomes recognized. 

here's a real one: this app cloned depuff (an app grown almost entirely on slideshows) top to bottom. they took a format some random was running, adapted it to their app, and scaled it hard. a creator copied it 1:1, same exact format, and it just worked.

https://x.com/i/web/status/2083718043553644650
the gift i promised you

at first i was doing all of this by hand. searching, saving, burning entire days, chasing whatever looked viral with no clear system to repeat. i realized fast it wasn't scalable. i had two options if i wanted to grow: hire a VA to do it for me (still slow, still inconsistent), or build software.

i went with software. problem: tiktok has no api. i tried the social apis out there, they were sh*. so i had to build my own way around it.

that's how scroll show was born.

my output exploded. i went from saving accounts for hours to generating a massive volume of original, proven slideshow formats with repeating patterns i knew already worked. every single gem account i post on my profile, i found with scroll.show.

it runs on an MCP, so it plugs straight into claude code or codex. here's what that actually gives you:

it's built for one thing only: slideshows
it makes claude understand your product, your audience, and your niche (even better if you brief it yourself first)
it turns claude into the DNA of tiktok
you can say "give me 10 accounts averaging 30k views per post over the last 30 days, minimum 200k total" and it delivers exactly that
it only brings back accounts where your product fits naturally, because it knows what you're building
no product yet? tell claude the niche you want, and build your distribution machine before you even have the app (this is exactly what i did)
tell it to download the top posts from any set of accounts, filtered by views, likes, engagement, whatever, pull 5 from each, analyze them, and show you where your product fits. or ask it to hand you a software idea those posts are begging for.
scroll show download content from an account by filters

and that's just the surface. it gives claude genuine superpowers on slideshows.

and if you'd rather work by hand, it has a dashboard too, though the real power is running it through the MCP with claude code or codex. 

2. why you build the app around the format, not the other way

let's kill the biggest myth in app building: that the product is what matters most.

the product matters. but distribution matters more. a great product nobody sees makes $0. a mediocre product in front of the right people prints. this isn't an opinion, it's just math.

but here's what every single founder does. they get an idea, they fall in love with it, they spend weeks building this cool app, they polish it, they ship it. and then they sit there and go:

"ok… now what?"

that's the moment. that silence right after launch. you built the thing and you have no idea how to get a single human to download it. creation was never the hard part. distribution is. and if you didn't build your distribution system first, you're now walking into a wall:

you burn thousands on UGC creators just to find a format that works
you fry your brain testing random ideas with no pattern to follow
you hit creative block after creative block, staring at a blank screen
and you end up exactly where 99% of apps go to die: the pile nobody ever saw

i've been in that pile. it's quiet and it's expensive.

now flip it. when you build the app around a format that's already winning, everything reverses. the format hands you your product decisions. it forces you to build one key feature, the exact thing that makes the slide stop the scroll, and once you have that, you can bend it to fit any other content format you want later.

you're not guessing anymore. you're building on top of something the market already voted for.

and slideshows are the perfect vehicle for this: dirt cheap to make, fast to produce, and they move more volume per dollar than anything else on the platform right now. you're not paying to find out if it works. you already know it does.

that's the whole shift. don't build a product and pray for distribution. find the distribution, then build the product it fits.

next: how i turn one winning format into a network of accounts that runs like a machine.

3. the distribution engine (how i run a network of accounts)

by now you've got the foundation:

an app in a viral niche you validated with tiktok search insights
a format that's already proven to work, pulled from accounts you studied
and you understand why the distribution system comes before the product, not after

so let's build the machine.

from here, the job is simple to describe and relentless to execute: you create slideshows, and you post them, every day, across a network of accounts.

and yeah, for now that means making them manually. i'll be straight with you: there is no tool that produces slideshows at human-level quality yet. the ones that exist just grab a pinterest image and slap text on top, and it shows. so the actual slides get made by hand. that's the work.

now, here's how you run the network. two ways, depending on where your users are.

1. if you're in the same country as your customers.

you can create up to 10 accounts per device before tiktok starts flagging you. so farm devices. cheap second-hand phones, one sim each, 10 accounts a piece.

then, for the actual posting volume, hire your 13-15 year old cousins (or anyone in that age range who lives on tiktok already) to pump out slideshows at scale. they already know the app better than you do, and they're cheap. that's your content engine.

2. if you're targeting a country you're not in.

this is the one i use. you need accounts that already look native to that market, so you don't build them, you borrow them.

i DM people on discord and offer to pay them to post my content on the accounts they've been running for years. the deal i run:

$100 at 100k views
$350 at 1M views
capped around $500 if it hits 2M
chat on discord

and here's the part that makes the economics stupid: this way the 0 → 100k is free, and 100k → 1M is basically free too. and on top of the payouts, i throw in extra bonuses on purpose, to keep the user motivated. it feels like free money to them, so they keep posting for me over and over. i'm buying loyalty and consistency, not just views.

it flexes per creator, and you always open low.

where i find them: public discord servers full of people already glued to tiktok. a few i pull from:

discord.gg/h7V3NBech
discord.gg/C3Ntr7Yk4
discord.gg/AuwqeNBwz
discord.gg/kwAWJaZ5p

DM 100+ a day. at minimum you'll land 20 who've got nothing better to do than say yes. but if you actually convince them, if you sound real and not like a scammer, way more bite, because everyone wants free money for posting a few pictures.

the other option is proxies, VPNs, spoofed locations. it works, but i don't touch it. too fragile, too much babysitting. the discord route gets you real accounts in the real market with none of the headache.

either way, the principle is the same: one proven format, many accounts, posting daily. that's the engine.

the ones who move win. everyone else just reads

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