If you're comparing studios
A handful of studios now build creator-owned apps, and the idea behind all of them is a good one. If you're weighing a few, that's exactly what you should be doing. Here's an honest way to choose, and where we fit.
The studios in this category are more alike than different on the surface: most build the app, most take no money upfront, most give you some share of the revenue. The real differences are in the parts that don't fit in a headline. Three of them decide whether the deal works out years from now.
Building the app is the visible part. The part that actually determines whether you earn anything is the months after launch: support, updates, and the ongoing marketing that keeps new subscribers coming in long after your launch post. A studio that ships and hands off leaves the hardest work to you. Ask specifically: who runs the app a year from now, and at whose cost?
Some studios carry the downside with you and some don't. The question to ask is simple: if your audience doesn't take to the app, do you owe anything, and do you keep it? A studio willing to eat the entire build cost when it doesn't work is a studio that's betting on the same outcome you are.
Read the rights carefully. The cleanest deals take a share of one app's revenue and nothing else: no claim on your existing content, course, or method, and no exclusivity over the rest of your business. Anything broader than that is worth a hard conversation before you sign.
Where ten studios fits
We won't speak to anyone else's current terms — check those with them directly. Here are ours, plainly:
We cover
You keep
We never take rights to your existing content, course, or method beyond what we agree to put in the app, and there's no exclusivity over the rest of your business. If your audience doesn't take to the app, you owe nothing.