Video & paid · working document · August 2026
Don't buy ads.
Make the clip
they'd steal.
Short answer to "should we start with ads": no, not yet — and not because ads are bad, but because you don't yet know your conversion rate, and paid media is a machine for multiplying a number you haven't measured. Organic first. Then, if a clip works organically, put money behind that exact clip and only then.
WHY PAID FAILS AT €24.99 ONE-TIME · ILLUSTRATIVE
Cost per install, iOS, niche utility, EU (TikTok/Meta, realistic band)
€2 – €6
Of installs, share that catalogue enough to hit the 100-object cap
≈ 18%
Of those, share that unlock
≈ 22%
So: installs needed per paying user
≈ 25
Cost to acquire one payer
€50 – €150
What that payer is worth, net of Apple
€21
You'd be buying euros for five euros. That maths only inverts under three conditions, and none are true today: a subscription with a long tail, a marketplace take rate, or a creative so good its organic reach subsidises the paid spend. The third is achievable — which is what the rest of this page is for.
One more thing in your favour: this app is a visual product in a category built entirely on people showing off their shelves. The content practically exists already. Your competitors' problem is that a database is unfilmable. Yours turns.
01 · The three platforms
Different jobs,
not different sizes
TIKTOK — DISCOVERY
Raw, first-person, no branding
The only platform where a nobody can reach 200k people with one clip. Rules: shot on a phone, face or hands in frame, no logo in the first three seconds, spoken hook, text on screen because most watch muted. Anything that looks like an ad dies in the first second. Hobby hashtags matter more than reach hashtags — #vinylcollection, not #app.
INSTAGRAM — CREDIBILITY
Beautiful, and where the collectors already live
Every serious collector community has an Instagram side. Reels for the turning sleeve and the shelf scroll; carousels for "the 11 fields that describe a graded comic" — the same schema posts that work on forums perform here as saveable slides. This is also where you DM creators, and where a shop or a recyclerie will check whether you're real.
YOUTUBE — CONVERSION
Not yours. Theirs.
Don't build a channel; you'd be filming for a year. Buy nothing — trade lifetime unlock codes to two mid-size collector channels and let them catalogue their own shelf on camera. Their fifteen-minute video converts better than anything you'd post, because the shelf is theirs and the doubt is real. Shorts you can do yourself as clip repurposing, zero extra work.
Post the same clip to all three, vertical 9:16, but re-cut the first two seconds per platform — that's where the algorithm decides. Everything after second three can be identical.
02 · Before you film
What AI can and
can't make here
Generative video cannot render your interface. It will invent a plausible-looking app that isn't yours, with text that melts — and for a product whose whole argument is craft, a fake UI is the worst possible first impression. So split every clip in two:
AI GENERATES
The world around the object
Crates in an attic, a flea market at dawn, dust in light, hands lifting a sleeve, a shelf in a warm room. Atmosphere, b-roll, transitions. Never the phone screen, never text, never a logo.
YOU SCREEN-RECORD
Every frame containing the app
The real prototype, on a real device, at 60fps. The sleeve turning, the sparkle on a special edition, the shelf scrolling, the history tab. This is the payoff shot in every single clip below and it must be genuine.
Each prompt below therefore has two parts: a generation prompt you can paste into a video model for the b-roll, and a capture list of what to record from the app. Copy is written to be spoken flatly, without enthusiasm — collectors distrust enthusiasm.
03 · Eight clips
The prompts
FIRST TWO SECONDS — SPOKEN, NO MUSIC YET
"My dad left me four hundred records and I don't know what a single one of them is."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Handheld vertical video, 9:16. A dim garage in late afternoon, one small window, dust suspended in a shaft of light. Three cardboard boxes crammed with vinyl records on a concrete floor. A pair of adult hands tips a box forward and fans the spines apart; the sleeves are worn, corners soft. Natural light only, slight camera shake, shallow depth of field, warm faded colour, 35mm film grain. No text, no screens, no logos, no faces.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–6s
AI b-roll of the crate, hook spoken over it.
6–15s
Screen record: camera in photo mode, shoot a crate spine-on, results filling the review queue. Real-time, no speed ramp — the speed is the point.
15–21s
Screen record: collection list scrolling, then one object opening and the sleeve turning.
21–24s
Cut back to the real crate, now empty. Text on screen: "400 records. One evening."
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"Say the name of the person who still has your stuff."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Vertical 9:16, static shot. A bookshelf of vinyl records and boardgames in a warm living room, evening lamp light. One conspicuous empty slot in the middle of the row, a thin gap where something is missing. Slow push in on the gap. Cinematic, soft shadows, muted colour, no text, no people, no screens.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–4s
B-roll of the gap, hook spoken deadpan.
4–9s
Screen record: the "Out of the house" list — four objects, one overdue in red, a name beside each. Hold long enough to read.
9–12s
Tap a person, their history: "2 lent · 1 returned late". Text on screen: "It remembers so you don't have to be the bad guy."
03
Sleeve turn — no words
REELS
8s LOOP
ZERO EFFORT, REPEATABLE
NO SPOKEN HOOK — THE MOTION IS THE HOOK
One sleeve, rotating. Sparkle fires. Loop is seamless.
NO AI NEEDED
100% screen recording. Record the object detail with the sleeve dragged slowly through its full ±34°, tap once to trigger the sparkle on a special edition, then reverse the clip so it loops without a cut. Sound: a single vinyl-crackle or a click, nothing musical.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–4s
Slow drag right, showing the open edge and disc colour.
5–8s
Reversed drag back to centre. Caption in the post, not on the video: the record's name and pressing.
04
Spreadsheet funeral
TIKTOK · REELS
18s
TARGETS REFUGEES
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"This is eleven years of collecting, in a spreadsheet nobody will ever open again."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Vertical 9:16. Close-up of an old laptop screen glowing in a dark room, out of focus so no text is legible, cool blue light on a tired face's edge — no full face visible. Cut to the same room, a hand closing the laptop lid. Slow, quiet, documentary style, film grain, no on-screen text, no logos.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–5s
Your actual spreadsheet, blurred, scrolling forever. Hook spoken.
5–11s
Screen record: the CSV import — 128 rows landing, the report appearing ("96 with cover art, 41 with a price you paid, nothing marked confirmed").
11–18s
The shelf, populated, scrolling. Text: "Same data. Ten seconds. It looks like something now."
05
One object, its whole life
REELS
20s
THE DIFFERENTIATOR
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"I bought this in Lille in 2021. Here's everything that's happened to it since."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Vertical 9:16, three short shots, warm documentary tone, 35mm grain. One: a narrow second-hand record shop, crates along a wall, a hand flicking through sleeves. Two: the same record being handed across a counter to a friend in a hallway. Three: it back on a home shelf, evening light. Continuous colour grade across all three, no text, no faces, no screens.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–7s
B-roll trio while you narrate the three events plainly.
7–17s
Screen record: the History tab, scrolling its entries — acquired, lent to Jeff, returned, 3D scan captured. One entry per beat of the voiceover.
17–20s
Text: "A spreadsheet holds what it is. This holds what happened to it."
06
The shelf scroll
TIKTOK · REELS
15s
SATISFYING
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"482 objects. Every one of them photographed, graded and findable."
NO AI NEEDED
Pure screen capture, but it only works if the data is real and deep — which is why this clip comes after your Founding Cataloguers have filled their shelves. Ask one of them for permission to film theirs; a stranger's 400-object collection is more convincing than yours.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–8s
Long continuous scroll through a genuinely full collection, at reading speed, no speed-up.
8–12s
Search: type two tokens, watch 482 become 3. This is the moment people understand it's a database, not a photo album.
12–15s
Open the third result. Text: "Twelve seconds to find one record in four hundred."
07
Grail found
v2 ONLY
14s
HOLD UNTIL LAUNCH
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"I've been looking for this exact printing for six years. My phone found it while I was asleep."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Vertical 9:16. A dark bedroom at night, a phone face-down on a bedside table beside a stack of comic books in protective sleeves. The screen lights up, throwing a soft glow across the table. Static camera, very shallow depth of field, cool moonlight plus warm screen glow, no legible text on the screen, no faces.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–5s
B-roll of the phone lighting up, hook spoken quietly.
5–11s
Screen record: the wishlist hit sheet — matched print, matched grade, under your cap — then the handshake to ask about it.
11–14s
Text: "It only wakes you for the real thing."
08
The lending shelf
REELS · LOCAL
22s
v3 / PARTNERS
FIRST TWO SECONDS
"This place lends out two hundred tools and tracks them in a paper notebook."
GENERATION PROMPT — B-ROLL
Vertical 9:16, documentary style. The inside of a small community workshop: pegboard walls hung with hand tools, mismatched shelving, printed paper lists taped near a door, daylight through high windows. Slow pan across the tools, then a close shot of a worn paper ledger with handwritten columns, writing not legible. Warm, real, slightly cluttered, no people's faces, no screens, no logos.
CAPTURE LIST — REAL APP
0–7s
B-roll of the workshop and the ledger. Hook spoken.
7–16s
Screen record: shared shelf, a loan going out with a due date, then the reminder email arriving with the object rendered in it.
16–22s
Text: "Same notebook. Now it sends the reminder for you." Tag the organisation — their followers are the point.
04 · Running it
Rules and cadence
RULE 1
Never open on the logo
Open on the object or the problem. The app appears at second five, once someone has a reason to care.
RULE 2
Real speed, no speed ramps
The claim is "ten seconds per object". Speeding up the footage secretly admits it isn't true, and collectors notice.
RULE 3
Text on screen, always
Most views are muted. Every hook and every payoff line exists as burned-in text as well as voice.
RULE 4
One hobby per clip
A clip about "collections" reaches nobody. A clip about vinyl reaches vinyl people, who are the only ones who'll comment — and comments are the distribution.
RULE 5
Answer every comment for the first month
Especially the hostile ones about grading. It's free research, and it's how you find Founding Cataloguers.
RULE 6
No paid spend until one clip clears 50k organically
That's your proof of a working creative. Then put €300 behind that one clip, measure cost per payer, not per install, and stop the moment it exceeds €21.
A realistic cadence for one person
Two clips a week, both filmed in the same session: one sleeve-turn loop (ten minutes) and one story clip from the eight above (two hours including the b-roll generation). Post each to TikTok and Reels with a re-cut opening; drop the loops into Shorts as filler. That's eight clips a month, ninety a year, and one of them working is the entire plan — this is a lottery where the tickets are cheap and you print them yourself.