🤟 How Jared Huseby, 19, Grew His Sign Language App Ziggy to $200K a Month Within Two Months of Launch

Today's subject: Jared Huseby.

I've been analyzing a lot of top-earning apps lately, and one of them made me stop and go, "Wait, what is this?!" It's a sign language app called Ziggy.

It teaches American Sign Language (ASL) in a game-like way, kind of like Duolingo.

It only came out on July 21, 2026, and yet Sensor Tower estimates its September revenue topped $200K.

And the person who built it is Jared Huseby, a 19-year-old TikToker.

He has about 1 million followers on TikTok.

Almost all of Ziggy's users come from Jared's own account.

Here's the twist: just a few months ago, he was promoting someone else's sign language app.

That app was Anna, released in February 2026.

Almost every day, he'd close his videos with, "If you want to learn sign language, I recommend Anna!"

Anna passed 50,000 downloads in under 30 days, and by May it had reached 250,000 cumulative downloads.

Watching Anna take off made Jared realize how much demand there was for sign language apps. So he figured, "Why not just build my own?" The result was Ziggy!

Influence really is king these days.

But if we stop at "he only grew because he already had influence," we miss the whole point.

So this time, I analyzed 1,400 of his TikTok videos to dig into:

• How did he grow his account from zero?

• What kinds of videos take off?

• How do you turn those videos into app downloads?

He isn't on X, and there are no interviews where he lays out his playbook.

So I went through every one of the 1,400+ posts still on his TikTok, read the captions and comment sections, and pieced it all together!

I hope you'll stick with me to the end!

🤟 A 19-Year-Old CODA Raised by Deaf Parents

Jared's TikTok bio says:

"19 | CODA"

CODA stands for "Children of Deaf Adults": hearing kids raised by Deaf parents.

A lot of people probably first heard the term from CODA, the Oscar-winning film. I've seen it too, and it's a wonderful movie.

His parents are Deaf, and he grew up surrounded by both ASL and English from a young age.

Here's how he put it on TikTok 👇

"I get a lot of comments asking, 'Are you Deaf?' and I take that as a compliment. I'm a CODA. But I never felt different from anyone else. I just grew up in that culture."

Before he started posting ASL videos, his TikTok was mostly the occasional basketball clip, pulling around 20,000 views.

It was a completely ordinary teenager's account.

🎵 Signing Songs: 7.5 Million Views in 6 Days

The turning point came on March 22, 2025.

He posted a video interpreting a trending song in sign language. It got 42,000 views.

He kept posting signed song videos almost every day, and then it exploded.

This one racked up a whopping 7.5 million views 👇

Videos of other songs he posted the same day hit 2.7 million and 1.3 million views.

Honestly, the fact that he was posting multiple videos a day is impressive in itself.

The next month, he posted 106 videos for a combined 57.8 million views.

In May, a collab video with the dating app Duet pulled in an incredible 84.2 million views.

All this within two months of starting. Wild. That said, I suspect TikTok's "bonus period" played a part.

This is just my gut feeling, but on TikTok, the first three months or so after you start posting are when it's easiest to grow.

When my girlfriend and I started a TikTok account teaching Japanese in January 2025, we passed 10,000 followers in two weeks.

I really do feel that TikTok has an early bonus period where it aggressively pushes accounts that have just started gaining traction.

📉 A Slump, a Restart, and Promoting Someone Else's App: Anna

As you'd expect, that momentum didn't last forever.

Starting in June 2025, his views began to drop. In October, 23 videos brought in just 2.6 million views total; in December, 18 videos brought in only 700,000.

Compared with the 57.8 million in April, that's less than 1/80th...

With views falling, his motivation dipped and he posted less. But in January 2026, he ramped his posting back up and went after views strategically.

64 videos in January, 106 in February, 106 in March. From February on, that's 3–4 videos a day.

Then, on February 12, Anna, a sign language app from a French company, was released.

Just three days later, on February 15, Anna was already showing up in Jared's videos 👇

"Whether you're just starting ASL or want to become fluent, I recommend an app called Anna. It has everything you need to learn ASL."

From then on, nearly every one of his sign language lessons ended with that line.

Around the same time, a new kind of video was born.

Videos of him teaching sign language to his girlfriend, Rylie 👇

They started at around 160,000 views, but by May, a video "testing how much Rylie's signing has improved" hit 5.5 million 👇

A video where she surprises him with a message in sign language hit 8 million 👇

And both of them end with "If you want to learn sign language, I recommend Anna."

Anna hit 50,000 downloads in under 30 days, 100,000 within 90 days, and 250,000 cumulative downloads by May.

Of course, Jared wasn't the only reason. But given the timing, it seems pretty clear he made a big contribution.

🚀 Finally Launching His Own Sign Language App: Ziggy

As far as I could tell, Anna's name disappears from his videos after one posted in late May.

And then on July 21, Ziggy finally launched!

The next day, July 22, he posted this 14-second video, which is still pinned to his profile 👇

"I launched my own ASL app. It's taught by certified interpreters, and my mom's in the app too. Search 'Ziggy ASL' on the App Store and give it a try. Love y'all."

1.2 million views, 75,000 likes, 12,000 saves.

And Ziggy passed 25,000 downloads within 30 days of launch.

In August, Jared posted 123 videos (about 4 a day!) for a combined 74 million views.

September revenue came in at an estimated $200K. His following grew by about 280,000 in two months, reaching roughly 1 million.

🧭 What Is Ziggy? Onboarding and Paywall

Let me take a quick look at what kind of app Ziggy actually is.

Ziggy's onboarding has 32 screens in total. I've saved the whole flow on OnboHub, so take a look 👇

• Ziggy's onboarding | OnboHub

Here's what stands out in the onboarding 👇

• It starts by asking, "Who do you want to sign with?" (a parent, a sibling, a partner, and so on), then has you enter that person's name

Asking "who you want to talk to + their name" is a seriously clever move.

Most people learning sign language have someone specific in mind: a Deaf family member or friend they want to talk to.

Jared himself is a CODA who grew up talking with his Deaf mom, so he must understand that feeling better than anyone.

Just asking that question should make people more motivated to use the app.

• You can actually take your first lesson inside the onboarding

Jared himself appears in the onboarding lesson 👇

Giving users a small win during onboarding is another really important move.

As for pricing: $49.99 a year or $7.99 a week.

Competitor Anna charges $89.99 a year, and Lingvano's in-app purchases range from $17.99 to $119.99, so on an annual basis, Ziggy is on the cheaper side.

But there's no free plan. It's what's known as a hard paywall.

That has drawn a ton of criticism. There are 1-star App Store reviews saying, "Deleting because there's no free option." But every app gets complaints like that.

My own app was free to use at first, but I eventually settled on a hard paywall too.

And yes, I also get the occasional 1-star review saying "I can't use it for free." But as long as you're getting more good reviews from the people who actually use it, you're fine.

Sure enough, Ziggy has more than 5,000 ratings with an average of 4.8.

Also, with language and habit apps, paying real money makes people more committed and more likely to stick with it. That's why a hard paywall that keeps people going actually serves the user, too!

So far, we've quickly walked through his account and the road to launching his app. On the surface, it just looks like a sign language influencer launched an app and used his reach to grow it.

But what really matters is how he grew his following from zero in the first place, and how he designed the path from his videos to his app.

I run social media accounts for my own apps and have a fair number of followers, but turning that into app growth is harder than you'd think.

That's exactly why this case was so useful to me.

So in the rest of this piece, I've laid out the winning patterns I found by actually tallying and analyzing all 1,400 posts!!! Specifically:

• The relationship between post count and views, from tallying 1,400 posts by month

• He promoted his app every day, and his views actually went up?!

• The "four formats" behind his top videos, and the job each one does (reach, trust, downloads)

• The type of video with roughly 7x the save rate

• A 90K-like video where another creator promoted the app for him

If you want to grow an app on TikTok or Instagram, I think you'll find this seriously useful!

📊 Laying Out All 1,400 Posts by Month

Let's start with the big picture.

I was able to find 1,400 posts on Jared's TikTok, with about 660 million total views.

Here's how it breaks down by month 👇

(Total views of the videos posted in each month, tallied on October 11, 2026)

• March 2025: 37 videos / 29.8M views

• April 2025: 106 videos / 57.8M views

• May 2025: 86 videos / 113M views (84.2M of that from the Duet collab video)

• June 2025: 78 videos / 16.7M views

• July 2025: 46 videos / 10.2M views

• August 2025: 28 videos / 10.6M views

• September 2025: 26 videos / 9.9M views

• October 2025: 23 videos / 2.6M views

• November 2025: 22 videos / 6.4M views

• December 2025: 18 videos / 0.7M views

• January 2026: 64 videos / 4.3M views

• February 2026: 106 videos / 18.4M views

• March 2026: 106 videos / 39.9M views

• April 2026: 109 videos / 31.6M views

• May 2026: 95 videos / 64.2M views

• June 2026: 92 videos / 32.4M views

• July 2026: 85 videos / 56.9M views (Ziggy launched July 21)

• August 2026: 123 videos / 74M views

• September 2026: 110 videos / 62.9M views

As you can see, he blew up in spring 2025, dropped off through fall and winter, then doubled his posting in 2026 and came roaring back.

When he posts less, views fall. When he posts more, views come back. It couldn't be clearer.

And in August, after Ziggy launched, he hit 74 million views. That's his second-best month ever, behind only May 2025, when he cleared 100 million. September held strong at 62.9 million, too.

He's plugging the app every single day, and his account's momentum is actually increasing.

🎬 The "Four Formats" Behind His Top Videos

Going through all 1,400 posts, his best-performing videos fall roughly into four types:

1. Signing songs

2. Teaching his girlfriend sign language

3. Deaf-parent content (life as a CODA)

4. Real sign language lessons

And each one has a different job.

① Signing Songs: Maximum Reach

This is the format that pulls the biggest numbers.

His all-time best of 19.6 million views and the 7.5 million that first went viral both belong to this type.

The songs are trending tracks from artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Malcolm Todd, and Noah Kahan. The captions are simple: "Song title - Artist #asl #signlanguage".

But these videos contain almost no app promotion.

They're purely about growing his following.

② Teaching His Girlfriend: Pulling People In With a Story

This format started in February 2026.

He teaches his girlfriend Rylie signs, quizzes her, and tests how much she's improved.

For example, this "signs you shouldn't teach your girlfriend" video got 4.8 million views 👇

He teaches her slightly naughty signs like "whatever," "shut up," and "gross." Of course people are going to watch that, lol.

And it ends with a solid plug: "If you want to learn ASL, I recommend Ziggy. You'll be fluent in no time. Download it with a free trial."

72,000 saves.

By the way, Rylie is a creator herself, with more than 220,000 TikTok followers.

On September 30, with Rylie heading to Spain for 18 months, he posted a video saying he won't be able to teach her sign language for a while. It got 6.3 million views 👇

It's a bittersweet video, and yet the last line is, "At least download Ziggy, lol."

Slipping a CTA into even a video like that is impressive.

Couple × language learning is seriously powerful.

Language videos tend to get dull if all you do is teach.

But add a storyline like "Can she actually remember it?" and people want to see what happens next.

My girlfriend and I make videos teaching Japanese too, but since we're both Japanese, the "one teaches, the other learns" setup doesn't work for us.

A couple where one person can be the teacher and the other the student, like them, is a really strong setup. It's not something you can easily engineer, though...

Maybe content where I become multilingual and teach my girlfriend other languages could work. Then launch a multilingual learning app from there.

③ Deaf-Parent Content: Making People Want to Learn From Him

Then there's a video with the on-screen text "How deaf are your parents?" that got 4.2 million views and 940,000 likes 👇

A 7-second video, "Mom, wanna hear a joke? Oh wait, you can't," got 4 million views, and "What's the best part of having Deaf parents?" also got 4 million.

These videos turn his everyday life as a CODA straight into comedy.

This is really strong content too. It's the kind only he can make, because he's a CODA.

④ Real Sign Language Lessons: Closest to the Download

And this is the format that looks like it's doing the most for Ziggy's downloads 👇

• "Signs you're probably doing wrong": 2.4M views, 53,000 saves

• "Signs to teach your little kids": 2.2M views, 51,000 saves, 1,835 comments

Pay attention to the saves.

When I calculated the save rate (saves ÷ views):

• Signed song "Self aware": about 0.3%

• "Champagne Coast," his first viral hit: about 1.0%

• "Signs you're probably doing wrong": about 2.2%

• "Signs to teach your little kids": about 2.3%

The teaching videos get saved about 7x as often as his all-time top song video.

The people who save a video are people who want to come back and learn from it later. In other words, they're exactly the target audience for a sign language app.

And at the end of the video, he tells those exact people, "Learn with Ziggy." Of course they download it.

To sum it up 👇

• ① Song videos grow his following

• ② Girlfriend videos and ③ Deaf-parent videos make people feel close to him and build trust

• ④ Lesson videos send the people who save them to the app with that final line

He cycles through these 3–4 times a day, relentlessly. It may look like he's just posting a ton at random, but once you break down the patterns, you can see he's posting strategically!

That's strong.

And on top of posting a ton on his own TikTok, he's also getting other creators to promote the app.

I don't know the exact arrangement or terms, but this video, for example, got 90,000 likes:

The content is his signature format: signing along to a song. And sure enough, it ends with a plug for the app in sign language.

He doesn't miss a trick...

💡 How to Apply His Success

To wrap up, let me sum up what we can learn from his success.

First: post like crazy! Promote your app like crazy! But give each video a clear job.

He's still posting about 4 videos a day, and nearly every one has a CTA promoting the app.

But he leaves it out of the song videos that are there to rack up views.

He's split the roles clearly, while still cranking up both his video output and his app promotion.

Seriously intense.

This is something I need to learn from. Right now, I basically post one video a day. And I haven't been actively promoting my app in my videos, out of worry that it might hurt engagement...

No wonder my app isn't growing like his...!

So don't be too afraid that posting more or promoting your app more will hurt your engagement! Keep posting!

The second lesson is how important it is to share your own unusual habits and surroundings. I think I've been putting myself out there more than most, but these days, anyone can publish.

Something that feels completely ordinary to you can be special to someone somewhere in the world.

For Jared, sign language is a language he's used since birth. Totally normal. But there are tons of people around the world who want to learn it.

So keep putting yourself out there!

I also think sign language just happens to be a great match for short-form video.

Moving hands make people stop scrolling. Even in regular language-teaching videos, adding just a bit of hand movement boosts retention.

Popular podcasts lean heavily on zooming in and out, and travel vlogs with more scene changes tend to perform better. It all points to the same thing: movement matters.

In that sense, sign language may be a genre with enormous potential, because the motion is built in from the start.

Competing in sign language itself might be tough, but it could be interesting to think in terms of "something only you can do × a theme you can add motion to."

Take a moment to think about whether there's a theme only you can own!

📝 Wrap-Up

So that's the story of Jared Huseby, a 19-year-old TikToker with Deaf parents, and his sign language app, Ziggy.

Here's how it played out 👇

• March 2025: started signing songs and hit 7.5M views in 6 days

• Then stalled, and switched to promoting other companies' sign language apps (Lingvano, Anna)

• 2026: restarted with 2–4 posts a day, and broke out again with videos teaching his girlfriend and Deaf-parent content

• Promoting Anna showed him the demand for sign language apps and the formats that win

• July 2026: launched his own app, Ziggy, right as his account hit peak momentum

• Kept ending the lesson videos on his own account with the same CTA, every single time

• September: an estimated $200K a month

Man, pulling this off at 19 is just way too cool!!

And what he's actually doing is incredibly simple.

Turn the environment you grew up in into videos, post 3–4 a day, and mention your app in one line at the end.

But keeping that up for 1,400+ videos is the truly impressive part. Consistency is power!!

It made me realize I still have a lot of work to do.

Let's keep building!

That's a wrap on Jared Huseby.

Thank you for reading all the way through! If anything caught your interest or you have questions, feel free to reply to this email anytime!

And if you mention my X account when you post your thoughts, I'll be absolutely thrilled. I'll always respond!

See you again next time!

References

• https://www.tiktok.com/@jaredhuseby1706

• https://www.tiktok.com/@ziggyasl

• https://www.instagram.com/_jaredhuseby/

• https://www.youtube.com/@jaredhuseby1706

• https://linktr.ee/Datboyjared

• https://www.ziggyasl.com/

• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ziggy-learn-asl-sign-language/id6781227577

• https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/onedegree-labs/id1850531994

• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ziggyasl.app

• https://onbo-hub.com/apps/ziggy

• https://app.sensortower.com/overview/6781227577?country=US

• https://app.sensortower.com/overview/6758141347?country=US

• https://app.sensortower.com/overview/1547252782?country=US

• https://mwm.ai/apps/ziggy-learn-asl-sign-language/6781227577

• https://mwm.ai/apps/anna-sign-language/6758141347

• https://www.appbrain.com/appstore/ziggy-learn-asl-sign-language/ios-6781227577

• https://screensdesign.com/showcase/ziggy-learn-asl-sign-language

• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/-/id6758141347

• https://developer.apple.com/articles/lingvano/