How to promote your App Store app for free with Kickstart Exchange

Advertising your app is expensive, and most indie developers don’t have the budget to spend on user acquisition for new apps. Kickstart Exchange is a free alternative: show ads for other indie apps, and they’ll show ads for yours. It’s completely free to join, there’s no user tracking, and it works on all Apple platforms – you even get 100 ad views just for creating an account.

In this post I want to explain how the system works, explain why I made it, and answer the most common questions I’ve been asked. Let’s get to it…

How it works

Back in the 90s the web had a collection of popular, free ad networks called link exchanges – every website agreed to show a smaller banner advert for other websites on the network, and in exchange their own advert would appear elsewhere.

Kickstart Exchange is that same concept re-imagined for apps: you place a small banner advert somewhere in your app, and other apps will show adverts for you – it’s a fantastic way to reach new users with literally zero cost, and also gives you scope to offer a “Remove Ads” in-app purchase any time you want.

Integration is done using one SwiftUI view from the KickstartSDK package on GitHub:

ExchangeBannerAdView(apiKey: "ks_live_REPLACE_WITH_API_KEY")

There are a handful of modifiers to customize the way the advert looks, such as adjusting the corners, the stroke, and the colors, so you can ensure the banner sits comfortably in your app.

You can try it immediately, even without making a Kickstart Exchange account – just use “preview” as your API key, and you’ll get a sample response from the server.

The ad banners have been designed to be compliant with Apple’s App Store guidelines, and have been carefully designed to look great on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and even watchOS – the same code works everywhere.

Even better, Kickstart Exchange adverts have been optimized for Apple’s accessibility systems such as Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, and Voice Control, so they can drop into every app in just a minute or two of work.

Here’s the basic banner ad style, scaled up for easier reading:

(opens in a new tab)

When you’re ready to go live, add your app in the Kickstart Exchange dashboard using its App Store link. The first app from your developer ID needs a one-time ownership check, and then a human (me!) approves every app before it can appear. That’s deliberate: nobody wants mystery adverts in their carefully crafted app.

You choose which types of adverts your app shows, and also where your own app appears.

From there the accounting is straightforward: every advert you show earns you 1 point, and every time your advert is shown costs you 2. Every new account starts with 200 points, which means you get 100 ad views just for joining up.

Most importantly of all, you choose which types of adverts your app shows, and also where your own app appears – you can select specific categories, exclude certain words or phrases, or even mix in adverts for your own apps. Plus you can stop showing adverts at any point, which means you have an easy “Remove ads” in-app purchase to sell.

Why I made it

We all know that paid user acquisition can be brutal for indie developers: Apple Ads will happily burn through whatever budget you give it, finding traction on TikTok is often hard for many months, and Facebook ads still feel slimy at best.

But every indie app already has the one thing every other indie developer wants: users who already love indie apps.

So, I built Kickstart Exchange to help every indie developer have a shot at being noticed – in a free way, in a fair way, and in a way that totally respects user privacy.

That means Kickstart Exchange tracks zero user data or device data, keeps only app-level records for around 30 days, and it’s as private as I know how to make it.

The first 300 developers signed up before I’d even finished writing this post, but the more apps in the pool, the better the matches get so I hope you join today – together we can build a supportive network of indie developers to help everyone grow.

Your questions, answered

What platforms does it support? iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2 or later, building with Xcode 26.

Kickstart Exchange tracks zero user data or device data.

What if I run out of points? As long as you’re showing adverts for others, you’ll earn points and your advert will appear again in the future.

What’s the catch? There isn’t one. Yes, Kickstart Exchange is part of my wider Kickstart project for indie app developers, but it stands entirely alone – you do not need Kickstart itself to take part.

Stop reading, start doing

1. Add the KickstartSDK package and add ExchangeBannerAdView into a view with the "preview" API key to see it running in your app.
2. Sign up free at exchange.kickstart.tools, then add your app with its App Store link.
3. Complete the app ownership verification process (it takes only a few minutes!) to get your app approved.
4. Ship your next update with Kickstart Exchange inside – your first 100 ad views are waiting!