Sway AI · B2C · dating profile feedback app
Ask for profile screenshots after the paywall, not before it
Simple onboarding before the paywall performed a lot better; no numbers
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 ChoiI was curious to ask you You You said you would you put the aha moment after the paywall, or would you put it before? Like would you let people upload their pictures and then make them pay? Or would you like make them pay after the like the question and answer and like the the pictures, and then like let them upload the pictures?
Daniel HeintzmanYeah, it's a good question. We actually explored both. If you let people upload photos before the paywall, you risk them leaving the app and then not not never coming back again because they would have to go like to their other app and then upload screenshots. We explored that, but what we had saw was just the simplicity of like going through the onboarding and not asking people to do too much so they don't have to think before they hit the paywall, like just performed a lot better. But I think if there's a way to show the insight and like the aha moment or like lead up to that aha moment, I think it would've been better. Like they could do it before the paywall.
Joseph ChoiSo let me show you this. A lot of app founders I talk to have a feeling their app has viral potential, but don't want to be the person brainrot scrolling an hour a day hunting for formats, or worse, burning thousands on creators shooting videos that just flop. Recently, I've been telling every founder I meet about SpyTok. It's basically an AI TikTok viral marketer that I've seen a lot of top app growth teams using. You just paste a link to your …
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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
- 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
- Preselect the yearly plan on the paywall to collect cash upfrontWeekly plan also tried; grew a lot slower
- 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, aha-moment, paywall-placement