How Calm app makes $30M/month from Sleep & Relaxation
Calm is the world's leading mental wellness app focused on helping people sleep better, reduce anxiety and practice mindfulness.
Maker: Alex Tew, Michael Acton Smith
Revenue: $30M/month
Marketing Strategy
1. Paid Social Ads
Calm heavily tests paid ads on platforms like Instagram, targeting people struggling with stress, sleep, and relaxation.
2. Social Content
Instead of making every post feel like an advertisement, Calm creates relaxing and interactive content designed specifically for social media. The content itself gives people a small taste of the experience inside the app.
The lesson?
Calm isn't just selling meditation or sleep sounds.
They're selling a better feeling - less stress, better sleep, and a calmer mind. And their marketing follows the same idea.
Their ads and social content give people a small experience of what Calm feels like before asking them to subscribe.
You don't always need a completely new category. Sometimes the opportunity is to take an existing problem, build a great product around it and get extremely good at distribution.
I made a list of validated mobile app ideas with their estimated MRR and marketing strategies.
Check it out here: Clone The App
i added the link at the bottom of the post. you can check it out.
absolutely!
they are focusing on both paid ads and organic content.
my pleasure!
yeah
sleep category is growing.
it's growing so fast
thanks for sharing the store. i learned about the app and really like the app breakdown.
my pleasue.
I know it's founder. he is really inspiring
he is the million dollar web page guy
it's a good app. i use it
me too
the clone the app concept is really cool
i am glad that you like it
This is a really interesting approach. I’ve found that the hardest part of building a product isn’t always the technical implementation—it’s identifying which existing workflows are worth improving or rebuilding.
I’m currently building EmpireRank, and a lot of the process has been similar: studying how people discover and compare businesses, then trying to simplify that experience rather than just adding more features.
Curious to see where Clone the App goes. The idea of learning by rebuilding proven products is especially useful for indie hackers.
Yeah, the risk is really low.
I really like the simplicity of the webaite! Would be helpful to have more insights about the revenue and maybe about how quick they got their userbase. And something related to the acquisition channels.
Because I do the app, but I don't know where is best to promote it.
Okay. I will add those things bery soon.
Currently working on my own app in completely different space. Cloning is intriguing. Makes me wonder if you could clone this and quadruple down on one gender. Female, spend ads only on Pinterest. Male, spend ads only on Reddit and YouTube. Probably exists, but I do like your business model idea.
Thanks.
The point about selling a feeling really resonates with me. People don't necessarily buy “meditation” or “sleep sounds” — they buy the outcome they want to feel.I think this is especially interesting for indie makers because it applies far beyond wellness: the product can be great, but the marketing should communicate the transformation, not just the features. Really interesting breakdown!
Thanks.
i know the founder. he is the million dollar webpage guy.
Yeah. He is the guy.
I guess the founder can now sleep properly haha
I hope so.
30m/month. insane!
It's huge.