Sway AI · B2C · dating profile feedback app
Preselect the yearly plan on the paywall to collect cash upfront
Weekly plan also tried; grew a lot slower
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- monetization
In their words
Daniel Heintzma - I speedran a new app from 0 to $2m/year in 6 months (here's how)
Joseph ChoiAnd how what was the what was the pricing on each of the packs?
Daniel HeintzmanWe did like a 10 pack and then a one pack, and the pricing was like that. It was like $14.99, and then $49.99 for the 10-photo pack. I think what is unique about this is something that I had saw from other apps is ones that were offering and defaulting to an annual plan are the ones that like had a pretty good like LTV. We defaulted the annual plan in order to like collect more revenue upfront to fuel the growth. We also tried out weekly plan, but that's like a lot slower growth, right?
Joseph ChoiThat's crazy. Yeah, I didn't know that uh this is one of the most highly monetized niches on the App Store. But it makes sense. I mean, people just want People love looking at their own face and making themselves look better. And AI is very good at doing that, and there's like a wow effect um with that.
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More from this episode
- Grow an Instagram account on Hinge prompt tips before building, with a preorder linkSome videos took off within weeks; audience existed before launch
- Charge followers $15 by DM for a manual profile review before buildingPeople paid before any app existed; proved willingness to pay
- Copy the text of a men's self-improvement account's most viral slideshows into your own designsSlideshows averaged 10-50K views; one hit 600K
- Make a month of TikTok slideshows in 1-2 hours from a spreadsheet and templateSeconds per slideshow; a month of posts in an hour or two
- Post unbranded slideshows until views come, then brand every slide with the appOne branded Christmas Day post got ~4M views and $5-6K revenue in a day
- Have one dating influencer make promo videos, then run them as ads from his pageTook revenue from $30-40K/month to about $2M a year; creative supply became the limit
- Open onboarding with short videos explaining the app before asking any questionsAdded after emails asking what the app does; no numbers given
- Ask for profile screenshots after the paywall, not before itSimple onboarding before the paywall performed a lot better; no numbers
- Sell extra analysis credits to people who rerun the profile checkAbout 11% of revenue
- Sell AI photo packs at $14.99 for one and $49.99 for tenBiggest upsell in the app; no spending cap lets big spenders pay more
- Redesign the meal logging screens so people keep paying after the 3-day trial
- Let users join friend groups and topic groups with streak leaderboards
- Add daily logging streaks, copied from Duolingo
- Let users post progress photos, meals and streak badges to Instagram storiesA lot of users share progress and meals; no numbers
- Make the 3 screens creators film (camera, loading, food detail) instantly clear
- Grow through fitness creators who sell coaching, so the app doesn't compete with themMain growth driver; guaranteed views vs hoping to go viral
- Ramp up paid ads once influencer growth is workingMarked Cal AI's big growth inflection point; no numbers
- Launch in a month with game-like branding unlike bank-style crypto appsWent really viral; idea to launch in about a month
Tags: ios, annual-plan, default-plan, weekly-plan, cash-upfront