I built an app that makes $2K PER DAY

Business Summary

Rusty Turiak built Vaultaire, an iPhone app for storing files and photos in encrypted vaults, in about three weeks—despite never having built an iOS app before.

The app focuses on one clear use case: private, on-device storage. It uses no servers or shared keys, so neither the founder nor Apple can access users’ vaults. The trade-off is that lost vault data cannot be restored.

Growth came primarily from organic search and focused content marketing, rather than paid ads or social-media virality. After earning $66 in its first month, Vaultaire reached $41,000 in monthly revenue after about six months. Daily revenue was later described as roughly $2,000–$3,000.

Business Model and Metrics

• Downloads: More than 60,000 total.
• Pricing: $1.99 weekly, $19.99 annually, or $39.99 lifetime.
• Purchasing behavior: Lifetime plans account for about 60% of purchases and more than 80% of revenue.
• Revenue pattern: The founder said monthly recurring revenue looks relatively low because many customers choose lifetime plans.
• Conversion over time: Paid-download conversion was reported at 5.47% on day one and increases over time. The founder said conversion is highest around day 60; the interview also cited an increase around day 35.
• Website conversion: Rusty reported about 10% conversion from internet traffic.
• Acquisition: Most traffic was attributed to the website and organic search. The founders also suggested that referrals and word of mouth may contribute, though they are difficult to measure.

Growth Playbook: Organic Search and Content

• Target search intent: Rusty compiled keywords that indicate people want the same outcome as the app—for example, searches about saving photos on an iPhone.
• Find content gaps: An automated process checks Google keyword data and identifies terms where Vaultaire gets impressions but few or no clicks. One example was a keyword with 16,000 impressions but no clicks, apparently because the site ranked poorly.
• Publish one useful guide per day: The system creates and publishes a guide for a selected keyword. Rusty emphasized quality and usefulness over mass-producing low-quality AI articles.
• Strengthen internal links: New guides receive links from existing, higher-traffic pages to help search engines discover and prioritize them.
• Build conversion into the content: Calls to action appear where readers are likely to want to use the app, connecting informational searches to app downloads.
• Allow time for indexing: Rusty said Google typically takes three to four days to register a new guide.
• Avoid dependence on paid or viral channels: He said he does not buy ads or pay creators to make content, and the strategy does not rely on TikTok.

Product and Operating Approach

• Keep the product narrow and easy to explain: Vaultaire’s core function is encrypted file storage, rather than a large collection of features.
• Use AI coding tools to move quickly: Rusty credited coding agents with helping him build his first iOS app. The app is written in Swift with UIKit and uses iCloud features.
• Automate repeatable marketing tasks: Rusty described using Codex or Claude with a custom library called Gum—a set of open-source command-line tools with MCP connections to Google services, including Search and Keyword Planner. The workflow checks keywords, generates guides, and publishes them.
• Keep the operating stack lean: He uses PostHog for measurement and described most ongoing work as having an agent run the guide workflow each morning.
• Make the privacy promise real: In an example involving an FBI inquiry, Rusty said he could not determine whether a particular person had stored anything in the app. The inability to recover or inspect vault contents is both a product limitation and a central part of its privacy proposition.

Founder Background and Lessons

Rusty previously worked at Google, including on Gmail, and founded several companies. One company was acquired by Amazon. He also described a music-focused copyright venture, Pics, that was sold the year before the interview. Despite that experience, he said he had little background in consumer iOS apps.

His advice was to ship projects rather than endlessly plan them. He said he had completed at least two dozen projects that went nowhere, emphasizing that a project does not exist for users until it is launched. He recommended staying open-minded and making steady progress—being a little better each day.

Presenters and Sources

• Presenters: Pat Walls and Gus, Starter Story
• Founder interviewed: Rusty Turiak
• Company/product discussed: Vaultaire (the subtitles also render the name as “Voltaire”)