Sway AI · B2C · dating profile feedback app
Sell extra analysis credits to people who rerun the profile check
About 11% of revenue
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 ChoiOh, so you do um additional in-app purchases for credits?
Daniel HeintzmanYeah, I mean we started at once we after we launched, we noticed that people were going through this flow like multiple times, more than we had anticipated. And so we added this as a way to like like further monetize the power users. And I think this paywall itself I think like contributes to like over 10%. I think like 11% of revenue like comes from like the additional upsell here. The biggest upsell of this app, actually, is we added these photo packs, which is AI-optimized photos where you can like look at these AI photos, and then well you upload pictures of your face, and then we'll create
Daniel Heintzmanpictures based off of the look here. We would go through this flow, you would purchase these photo packs, and then upload pictures of yourself, and then we'll email you you in that photo pack, if that makes sense.
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More from this episode
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- Charge followers $15 by DM for a manual profile review before buildingPeople paid before any app existed; proved willingness to pay
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- 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 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, consumables, credits, power-users