10 days, $7.5: How the voice-room app Melola used paid hosts to reach 110k installs in Africa
What it is A voice-room app for Africa and Southeast Asia: join rooms to chat, sing, send gifts, guard others, level up. It's the same template as SUGO and Glow Live.
Why it took off New hosts get $7.50 for completing 10 days of tasks. Local "make money online" creators and agencies, using host and agent invite links at two levels, bring people in. Once rooms have people, paying users show up to buy gifts.
CHow you could apply it Don't copy the voice-room model. Borrow the move: pay the supply side first, then hand recruiting to local creators and agencies through a two-level commission structure, and apply it to your own two-sided product. If you do build a voice room, pick a market nobody has burned out, keep the rules fixed, and pay withdrawals on time.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-08-20 · 11-03 installs 111,310
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-03 (6 days, 6 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
In September 1, a user named Gold Pius left a Google Play review for Melola: "I'm the first, I already cashed out from this app 😉". Half a month later, Sep 16, Nigerian user Olax Tech wrote: they promised cash-out at 1.5M points, then changed it to 300k points, all my task progress was wiped, the withdrawal page won't load, "I thought it would be like Glow Live." This is a voice-room app that launched in Aug 20, published by Grizzly Machinery LLC. By Nov 3 it had 111k installs, and now it's adding only one or two thousand a day. This piece covers how it got started, where the money came from, why it's already on the way down, and how much of the playbook you can take away.
What it is
A standard go-global voice-room app. The store page says: join different voice rooms to chat, sing and make friends, plus follows, DMs, gifts, Best Friends, Guardians, levels and avatar decorations. The website melolachat.com also lists mini-games, VIP entrance effects and badges. In-app purchases run from $0.99 to $199.99 (Google Play, 11-06).
Functionally it's indistinguishable from SUGO, Poppo Live, Chamet and Glow Live. It's the template everyone in this industry can get.
How users came in: pay the hosts first
A voice room needs people talking inside before anyone else shows up to send gifts. Melola's answer was to pay hosts directly: a new host who finishes 10 days of tasks gets $7.50.
Melola didn't do the promotion itself. A crowd of "make money online" creators did it for them:
- Nigeria's Earn with Neche posted "Melola Live App Review / How to register & perform task" in Sep 6, 2,723 views. The first line of the description: "Melola is a new platform that promises $7.50 for doing 10 days of tasks on it."
- Earn with FAITH's Sep 1 video got 2,633 views, with chapters on face verification, tasks and agency rules, and withdrawal thresholds.
- Philippine creator Ayami Bel's Sep 7 video had 5,303 views, the highest in the batch. The description reads "New Host $7.50, withdraw via GCash • USDT • EPAY • Wise • Bank," with two links side by side: one for host sign-up, one for agency sign-up, plus an invite code, Agency ID and a WhatsApp group. The description opens with a leftover line, "today's episode is about Hayat Chat," so it was clearly adapted from the previous app's description.
- In Ethiopia there's an Amharic tutorial on withdrawing to Telebirr (9,1,538 views in Sep); in northeast India someone posted "new melola game join link" in Bodo on Facebook.
- In Oct 12, Side Hustle Plug titled its video outright "If you're looking for an app like Glow Live," covering the 7-day newcomer tasks, welcome wheel, invite rewards and red envelopes.
These videos drew only a few hundred to five thousand views each, tens of thousands combined, but the viewers were exactly the people it wanted: young people in Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and the Philippines looking to earn side money on their phones. Host and agent links were kept separate, so a creator who recruits a host gets a cut, and a creator who recruits an agency (guild leader) who can recruit more gets another. That means the creators shoot the tutorials and build the groups themselves, and the acquisition money is paid out as points to hosts and agencies, not to an ad platform.
The app has its own referral loop: the H5 page shows "invite friends to download Melola / friend activated / reward credited," and tasks like "produce gold coins" and "water flowers." The page tagline: "Chat and earn, $7.50 every settlement cycle."
Paid user acquisition is unverified: X returns nothing, and a TikTok search for "melola app" only turns up Melolo, a short-drama app with a one-letter difference in name. The ad libraries don't track it, so finding nothing doesn't mean it didn't spend.
Where the money comes from
Hosts fill the rooms, and paying users on the other side send gifts, buy VIP and buy guardianships. It sat at #87 to #90 on South Africa's Google Play Entertainment top-grossing chart from Oct 29 through Nov 3, so there's real cash flowing, but not much. The third-party estimate from AppGazers puts October revenue at $12k to $56k (unverified).
The question for this business is whether what's paid out to hosts and agencies is less than the gifts the rooms generate. Host costs and gift income can't be seen from the outside.
Why it started declining at 110k
Looking at Google Play installs: Oct 29 107k, Nov 3 111k, adding 4,800 over 5 days, one or two thousand a day. The version stopped at 1.0.8 from Oct 15 and hasn't been updated since. There are two reasons.
First, the rules changed and withdrawals stalled. The Sep 16 negative review at the top got 13 "helpful" votes. Comments picked up by another site said "all Ghanaians are facing this problem," with points reversed after withdrawal. A Sep 3 review with 14 "helpful" votes says: "Coins are too expensive, 4M points is worth just $10, you should reconsider the exchange rate for other countries." This kind of app runs on the word-of-mouth promise that you really can cash out. Once the rules change and withdrawals break, local WhatsApp groups turn it into a "scam app" within days.
Second, the same team has already moved on to the next one. In Sep 11, the same developer account published Minemo: same code, same new-host rewards (about $7.98 in 7 days). By Nov 6, Minemo had 590k installs, adding 81k in one week, charting in 13 countries and regions, roughly 5 times Melola's pace. The package names all start with com.biao, the privacy policies sit on each app's H5 page, and it looks like an overseas team mass-producing voice-room apps (inferred, unverified). Melola was the first version of this recipe and the one that performed worse; the reward budget has probably already moved to Minemo (inferred).
Who it's competing with
The lane is crowded, and Melola ranks far down (Google Play installs, 11-06):
| Product | Launched | Scale | How it compares to Melola |
|---|---|---|---|
| SUGO | 2021-06 | About 81M | Established veterans, same features |
| Chamet | 2019-11 | About 78.4M | Voice plus video, focused on the Middle East |
| Poppo Live | 2022-05 | About 47.9M, #3 on South Africa's social top-grossing chart | Market leader in the same region, with video live streaming |
| Glow Live | 2022-04 | 1.79M, +39k a week | The benchmark of the African "get paid to talk on mic" scene, and the users Melola was chasing came from it |
| Timo Lite / Tello / Taka / Saaky / Lakki | 2025-03 to 2026-09 | Hundreds of thousands to a few million | New apps in the same wave that chase new-host rewards are mostly bigger than Melola |
| Minemo | 2026-09-11 | 590k | The same developer's next skin |
It's itself a copycat, following Glow Live; behind it sits a string of new apps using the same playbook. No media coverage, no public revenue; it only circulates in the "earn by going on mic" niche. Few people know about it, but the players in that niche are teams with proven templates and agency networks.
What you can take away
The product itself has nothing worth copying, but the playbook has three points worth noting:
- Cold-start a two-sided market by buying supply first. Make rewards low-threshold, payable within 10 days, and withdrawable to local wallets (GCash, Telebirr, USDT). 7.5 dollars is visible money in Manila or Lagos.
- Split distribution into two layers handled by people. Hosts on one layer, agents on the other, so creators and agency leaders make tutorials, build groups, and answer questions for you. That's far more precise than ads, and you pay for results.
- Rotate reskins with new launches. "New app, biggest rewards" is itself a traffic entry point in side-hustle circles, so the same codebase ships under a new name every few weeks, riding each wave while the old one decays on its own. Melola August and Minemo September were timed exactly this way.
The lesson in reverse is clear too: apps like this live two or three months. Change the rules once or freeze a withdrawal card once, and word of mouth collapses.
If it were you
One-line verdict: Don't copy a voice room; learn how they bought supply and found people to distribute through, and apply it to your own two-sided product.
Who it fits: teams that already have voice-room or live-streaming code, have payment and withdrawal channels, have agency relationships in Southeast Asia or Africa, and can absorb reward budgets for several months. For them Melola isn't new, just another sample.
Who it doesn't fit: indie developers and small teams without overseas live-streaming experience. Real-time voice, content moderation, local withdrawals, and dealing with agencies are each a barrier. Worse, the competition isn't Melola but SUGO, Poppo, and a pile of teams running the same template on the same budget, able to swap a skin every three weeks.
How to do it: if you're really in this industry, pick a market that the "earn by going on mic" creators haven't worked yet (say, other East African countries they cover less, or smaller-language regions of South Asia; inferred, not verified one by one), or do the opposite where they fail: lock the rules once set, pay withdrawals on time, and label exchange rates clearly in local currency. In this niche, "money actually gets withdrawn" is itself the best ad. If you're building a different two-sided product (tutoring, voice-over, labeling, secondhand), borrowing the move "new supply gets cash within 10 days + two-layer invite commissions" pays far better than building a voice room.
How to acquire users: find local "make money online" creators on YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and pay them two-layer commissions on host links and agent links. For the first two weeks, set new-host rewards at their maximum, and get the first people posting withdrawal screenshots fast.
When it was before: for Melola specifically, the window has closed: it's declining, and the team has moved on to Minemo. For this playbook the window stays open, but each new app's bonus lasts only the first month or two.
What would show this read is wrong: if Melola restarts version updates in November and daily installs climb back to tens of thousands, the team is evidently not reskinning but growing it into a long-term product, and the "two-to-three-month lifespan" call is wrong. Conversely, if Minemo also drops off national charts before year-end, it means this round's new-host reward traffic has been split among the copycats, and even teams that know how to do it will struggle to break out.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Glow Live Android 2022-04 1.79M installs, +39k over 7 days, South Africa Top Grossing #118 (googleplay) The benchmark of the "earn by going on mic" circle; Melola was treated as its alternative, riding the new-app rewards Minemo (same developer) Android 2026-09-11 590k installs, charted in 13 stores The same codebase's next skin, pushing roughly 5 times Melola's volume SUGO: Voice Chat Party Android 2021-06 About 81M installs Veteran leader, same features, three orders of magnitude bigger Poppo Live Android 2022-05 About 47.9M installs, South Africa Social Top Grossing #3 Market leader in the same region, with video live streaming Chamet Android 2019-11 About 78.4M installs Video + voice, aimed at the Middle East Timo Lite / Tello / Taka Android 2025-03 to 2026-09 Hundreds of thousands to millions of installs Newer apps from the same wave, boosted by new-host rewards, are mostly bigger than Melola - Where users come from
- Verified new-host rewards + agency / agent: several YouTube tutorials say "New Host $7.50,10 days task"; a Filipino creator, Ayami Bel (5,303 views), posts both host-signup and agent-signup invite links plus the Agency ID in the same video, with withdrawals via GCash / USDT / Wise; Earn with FAITH covers the Host Center tasks and joining an agency specifically
- Verified make-money-online YouTube / Facebook tutorials (creators with their own invite codes): Earn with Neche (2,723), Earn with FAITH (2,633 / 1,180), Earn With Ruth (Agency ID 21505840), Side Hustle Plug (positioned as a Glow Live alternative); plus an Amharic withdrawal tutorial from Ethiopia (1,538) and a Bodo-language Facebook post from India
- Verified in-app invite referral: h5.melolachat.com has Invite friends / Friend Activated / Reward received, coin-earning and leaderboard tasks, and the tagline "earn money by chatting—$7.50 per pay cycle"
- Inferred Glow Live user migration: a Play review says "I thought it will be like Glow Live app"; in a Facebook group someone asked about withdrawals while putting Glow Live and Melola side by side
- Inferred paid acquisition: x-radar has 0 posts; no Melola ads seen on TikTok; the ad libraries don't track it, so not finding ads doesn't mean there were none
Why Melola - Voice Chat Party (com.biao.melola) got traction
Channel: Google Play · Developer Grizzly Machinery LLC · Store launch 2026-08-20 · Research date 2026-11-06
Bottom line
Melola is a templated overseas voice-room app (voice rooms, DMs, gifts, guardians, levels), nothing special in itself. It took off through the old voice-room playbook: buying hosts. A new host who finishes tasks within 10 days gets a $7.50 new-host reward. Agencies and "make money online" YouTube / Facebook creators push the reward with invite codes into markets with cheap labor such as Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the Philippines, recruiting a batch of hosts. Hosts keep rooms lively, paying users buy gifts (IAP $0.99–$199.99), and that's where the money comes back. It's the first skin of the same developer account: 3 weeks later the same codebase shipped as Minemo (2026-09-11), which grew much faster (already 590k installs). Melola is now in decline: installs rise only 1–2 thousand a day, with South Africa's entertainment Top Grossing still holding #87–90.
1. Data (our googleplay library, 2026-10-29 to 11-03)
- Installs: 106,551 (10-29) rose to 111,310 (11-03), about 5K new in 4.8 days. Per observation it's +2,014 (10-31), +2,077 (11-02), +668 (11-03), averaging about 1K a day (app_day). Listed for 75 days, reaching 111k.
- Charts: chart_rank shows only South Africa (za) entertainment Top Grossing, from 10-29 to 11-03 consistently at #87–90, latest #88. app_profile's n_countries_now records 0, which doesn't match this record, likely a different counting method.
- Ratings: not captured in the database. The Play page shows 340 reviews (2026-11-06 pages); the average in the South Africa chart records fell from 4.14 to 4.07 (chart_rank.score).
- Versions: no updates since 1.0.8,2026-10-15. Over the same period Minemo was iterating and pushing fast, so the team's resources appear to have moved over (inferred).
- Same developer's Minemo (com.biao.minemo): launched 2026-09-11, 590k installs at 11-06, +81k in 7 days, charted in 13 stores, best South Africa overall Top Grossing #107–120. Its scale is roughly 5 times Melola's.
- Benchmark Glow Live (com.biubiuclub.biubiuclubchat, Biubiubiu limited): launched 2022-04, 1.79M installs, +39k in 7 days, South Africa Top Grossing #118. Creators introduce Melola as the "Glow Live alternative".
2. Competitors
The voice-room category is crowded, and Melola ranks far down in it. Having no competitors isn't its situation; having too many is.
| Product | Launched | Scale | How Melola differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| SUGO: Voice Chat Party | 2021-06 | 81M installs | Veteran leader, same features, three orders of magnitude bigger |
| Poppo Live | 2022-05 | 47.9M installs, South Africa Social Top Grossing #3 | The leader in the same market, with video live streaming |
| Chamet | 2019-11 | 78.4M installs | Video + voice, aimed at the Middle East |
| Glow Live | 2022-04 | 1.79M installs, South Africa Top Grossing #118 | The benchmark of the "earn by going on mic" circle in Nigeria and Ghana; Melola went after its users |
| Timo Lite / Tello / Taka / Saaky / Lakki | 2025-03 to 2026-09 | Hundreds of thousands to a few million | Newer apps from the same wave that boosted installs with new-host rewards are mostly bigger than Melola |
| Minemo (same developer) | 2026-09-11 | 590k installs | The same codebase's next skin, pushing even harder |
| Melo (meloparty.com) / Melo video call (com.axiaodiao.melo, 2.88M) | Earlier | — | Similar name, also recruiting "Melo Host", easy to mix up in search |
Competitor scale comes from the googleplay database (2026-11-06) and the summary in the sister report play_com.biao.minemo.
Product differences: the official site melolachat.com lists "Voice Party / Discover Friends / Casual Games / Private Chat / Shine As VIP", with avatar frames, badges, and entrance effects; the store listing adds "Best Friends, Guardians". These are industry-standard parts, and no functional differentiation shows up.
3. Where users came from (growth tactics)
- New-host rewards + agency / agent (confirmed, main channel)
- A YouTube video, "Melola Live App Review / How to register & perform task" (Earn with Neche, 2026-09-06,2,723 views), says: a newly launched platform, complete 10 days of tasks and earn $7.50.
- Filipino creator Ayami Bel's video (2026-09-07,5,303 views) says: "New Host $7.50, withdrawals via GCash • USDT • EPAY • Wise • Bank". The description carries both host signup and agent signup invite links (app.melolachat.com/invite/v2?r=…), plus an Agency ID and a WhatsApp group.
- "HOW TO COMPLETE TASKS ON MELOLA" (Earn with FAITH, 2026-09-06,1,180 views) covers the daily Host Center tasks and "why you should join or create an agency".
- "Make money online" tutorials, creators with their own invite codes (confirmed)
- Earn with FAITH, "MELOLA LIVE APP REVIEW" (2026-09-01,2,633 views): covers face verification, 10-day validity, and withdrawal thresholds.
- Earn With Ruth (2026-09-28): includes an invite link, Agency ID 21505840, and a Telegram channel.
- Side Hustle Plug (2026-10-12,873 views): the title reads "looking for an app similar to Glow Live", covering 7 days of new-user tasks, welcome spins, Invite and Win, and red packets.
- Amharic withdrawal tutorial for Ethiopia (Geze Tip, 2026-09-09,1,538 views): explains how to cash out to Telebirr or a bank.
- A Bodo-language post on Facebook: "4m ao withdraw new melola game join link".
- These videos get a few hundred to five thousand views each, a few tens of thousands in total. Small reach, but very targeted.
- In-product referral (confirmed): The H5 page h5.melolachat.com has tasks like "Invite friends to download Melola / Friend Activated / Reward received", "Producing coins / Feed flowers", and a ranking mechanic. The page tagline reads "earn money by chatting—$7.50 per pay cycle".
- Competitor user migration (indirect evidence): One Play review says, verbatim, "I thought it will be like Glow Live app". A Facebook group has someone asking "How to withdraw from Glow Live and Melola with referral". Its users are from the Glow Live crowd, showing up to collect the new app's rewards.
- Paid acquisition: Nothing found. x-radar returns 0 results for melola; a TikTok search for "melola app" turns up only Melolo, a short-drama app with a similar name, and no Melola creator campaigns. Meta and Google ad libraries don't track it, so a lack of results doesn't mean it wasn't advertised.
4. Why it took off / where the money came from
- The supply side was bought: "Earn $7.50 a day for 10 days" is visible cash in Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. New apps pay their richest newcomer rewards during cold start, and "newbie launch app" is itself a traffic source in the side-hustle scene.
- Distribution outsourced to people who take a cut: Host invite links and agent invite links are separate. Guild leaders and creators earn from invite codes, so they make tutorials and build groups on their own. The acquisition cost was really coins paid to hosts and guilds, not ad spend.
- Demand side: Where real people chat in rooms, people send gifts. The top IAP tier is $199.99. It charted #87–90 in South Africa's social grossing, a little revenue but not much. The recall card cites AppGazers estimating October revenue at $11.6k–55.5k; that figure is unverified.
- Why it peaked at only 110k and is now declining:
- Reward rules changed and withdrawals got harder. A Play review with 2026-09-16 "helpful" votes from 13 people says the task target dropped from 1.5M coins to 300K, progress was reset, and withdrawals are blocked. An appbrain excerpt says "All Ghanaians are having this issue", with coins refunded after a withdrawal. Another review complains the coins are too expensive: 4M coins = $10.
- 3 weeks later the team launched Minemo, and traffic and reward budgets likely moved to the new brand (inferred).
5. Differentiation
There is no product differentiation. It uses the same template as Glow Live, SUGO, Poppo, Timo, and Minemo. The real difference is in operations:
- It targets Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and South Africa, markets the Middle East's top players left underserved;
- It uses new-app newcomer host rewards to harvest the Glow Live crowd.
It took off because of this playbook plus the money used to hand out rewards, not because of the product. Compared with Minemo, Melola was the earlier version of the same recipe, and the one that performed worse.
6. How many people are seeing it / copying it
- Visibility: It spread only within a small circle around "earn by going on mic / host guilds", via YouTube tutorials with a few thousand views, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp and Telegram groups. No press coverage, 0 posts on X, no public revenue, and not on TrustMRR.
- Copycats: It is itself a copycat (of Glow Live). Later entrants include the same company's Minemo, plus Timo Lite, Tello, Saaky, and Lakki, new apps with the same playbook.
7. What others can learn
- Cold-starting a two-sided market means paying for supply first. Make rewards low-threshold, payable within 10 days, and withdrawable to local wallets (GCash / Telebirr / USDT).
- Split promotion into two tiers handled by people: a host-invite tier and an agent-invite tier, so creators and guild leaders make tutorials and build groups for you.
- Re-skin the same account and codebase, and launch a new brand every few weeks (Melola in August, Minemo in September), each time chasing "new app reward" traffic. Let the old one decay on its own.
- Lesson: once reward rules change or withdrawals get blocked, the local community quickly spreads "scam app" warnings. Apps like this have a life of only two or three months.
8. Still unclear
- Real revenue, and the ratio of host costs to gift income (AppGazers' estimates are unverified).
- What team stands behind the shell LLC. The package name com.biao suggests a Chinese going-global team, unverified. Also unknown is whether there are more brands.
- Whether it ran paid acquisition on Meta or TikTok.
- The peak push before 10-29 is outside our database coverage.
Sources
- Our databases googleplay: app_profile, app_day, chart_rank (2026-10-29 to 11-03); Minemo and Glow Live app_profile (2026-11-06)
- Play page: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.biao.melola (340 reviews; reviews from 2026-09-01, 09-03, 09-16)
- Website www.melolachat.com/; H5 h5.melolachat.com/index.html
- YouTube (data from YouTube Data API, 2026-11-06):
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUwO87_jMw0 (Earn with FAITH,09-01,2,633)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=lno9LFhsZBA (Earn with Neche,09-06,2,723)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFqwTiEvIys (09-06,1,180)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-r5QnYV-EU (Ayami Bel, Philippines, 09-07,5,303)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTi214C4OLA (Ethiopia, 09-09,1,538)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd55QfE56xc (Earn With Ruth,09-28,Agency ID 21505840)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjuy4GJJNWM (Side Hustle Plug, 10-12, a Glow Live alternative)
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/2364159430555409/posts/4080101315627… (Glow Live and Melola withdrawal questions together); www.facebook.com/m.n.narzary.679701/posts/4m-ao-withdraw-new…
- appbrain: www.appbrain.com/app/melola-voice-chat-party/com.biao.melola (Ghana user withdrawal issue, from search excerpt)
- x-radar search for melola: 0 results (90 days, 2026-11-06); TikHub search for "melola app": results all Melolo short dramas
- Sister report: /home/ljr/fanout/why/out/play_com.biao.minemo.md