Founder Playbook · Starter Story
8 tactics from Ericas
My Apps Make $4.5M/Year With $0 Marketing
Watch the full episode“I had a screenshot of my not yet published app It was just a design and it kind of blew up There was more than 100 likes and a lot of comments asking you know where can I don't download this app because they thought that it's already live”
Validate With a Design Screenshot in Communities Before Writing Any Code
Ericas validated Kaching Bundles by joining Discord communities of drop shippers and e-commerce Facebook groups before building anything. He posted a screenshot of just the app design — no working product — and it generated over 100 likes with people asking where to download it. That reaction was his signal the product was needed.
“I have a clear image of how my app could look like so that I could fairly say that it's objectively better than my competitors”
Build Only What You Can Claim Is Objectively Better Than Competitors on UX
Ericas starts every new app by auditing competitors, noting what he likes and dislikes about their experience. His goal before writing a line of code is to arrive at a clear design vision he can objectively claim is better. This focused benchmark — not feature parity — defines the minimum he ships.
“I always launch it for free because it reduces friction of installs and as soon as I start getting organic installs I grandfather all of the users that already using our app so that they wouldn't need to pay and I monetize only the new users”
Launch Free to Collect Reviews Before Turning on Monetization
Every new Kaching app launches with no paywall, letting installs accumulate and reviews build up on the Shopify App Store. Once organic search rankings kick in, Ericas locks in early users at free forever and starts charging only new installs. This sequencing — distribution first, monetization second — has worked across all five of his apps.
“the thing I noticed about the app developers is that there's like solo developers indie hackers and I thought that they lack great user experience All of their apps are kind of technical and a bit complex for regular users And the other type of apps was VC backed or like huge corporations The user experience were was great But the problem about them was that they actually move pretty slow”
Target the Gap Between Indie Hackers and Slow Enterprise Software
Ericas identified a structural gap in the Shopify app marketplace: indie developers shipped fast but had poor UX, while large companies had great UX but moved slowly. By combining a designer's eye for experience with a small team's speed, he found a lane neither competitor could occupy. This positioning let him compete against both categories and win.
“I introduced a gamified bonus system to our customer support team and right now we're tracking who gets more reviews We have the monthly leaderboard and we have all of these different raffles and actually my favorite bonus is a persuader of the month and what we do is we basically calculate the conversion rate of how many times you ask for a review and how many reviews you get”
Gamify Customer Support With Leaderboards to Drive Five-Star Review Conversion
With 95% of reviews coming from customer support interactions, Ericas built a leaderboard and raffle system that treats review conversion rate as a tracked KPI per agent. This turns every resolved support ticket into a ranking opportunity on the Shopify App Store. The system incentivizes agents financially while directly feeding the algorithmic signals that drive organic discovery.
“I made the app free and this way you can get more installs and of course more installs then convert to more reviews and of course it drives more revenue then and it helps you know to improve your product further because you get all of this feedback”
Use Free Installs to Build a Reviews Flywheel That Drives Organic Revenue
When Kaching Bundles had zero reviews and sat at the bottom of Shopify app store listings, Ericas manually reached out to clients, friends, and community members and offered the app for free. The logic was a deliberate chain reaction: free installs produce reviews, reviews drive organic ranking, ranking drives revenue. This free-first onboarding approach seeded the flywheel that eventually scaled to $400K MRR.
“every month we're sending a monthly email in which we show how much revenue this app brought to you and in that email we also ask for review”
Send Monthly Revenue Emails That Prove Your Value and Ask for Reviews
Rather than generic check-in emails, Ericas ties his retention outreach directly to concrete merchant outcomes — showing each user exactly how much additional revenue the app generated for their store. This frames the review ask as a natural thank-you moment rather than a cold request. He credits customer support touchpoints for roughly 95% of all reviews, with these monthly value-proof emails as a key driver.
“at start two people are enough You just have a designer who does all of the product stuff you have a tech guy and you're good to go because you will be doing all of the customer support yourself to know what your clients are struggling with”
Start With Just Two People and Do Customer Support Yourself First
Ericas kept his structure minimal from day one — a designer and a developer, nothing else. Handling customer support personally in the early days was not just a cost-saving measure; it was how he learned what features to build next. He only hired support staff once ticket volume forced it, preserving the 90% margin the business maintains today.