GlamUp · B2C · AI makeup glow-up app
Limit scans per week by plan, and offer a bigger plan when they run out
What they did
In their words
Nicole Cheung - she makes $400k/mo from ai apps (while in college)
Joseph ChoiSo, that's like kind of usage-triggered. So, they get they do scans, and then uh they try to do another scan, and then you that requires uh a higher plan?
Nicole CheungYeah. So, let's say like if you run out of scans weekly, right, cuz like we have the two scans weekly, four scans weekly, whatever. You want to scan more, um and the reason why you scan more why you want to scan more is because we have different scans, right? We have the color analysis, we have glow-up guide, and we have I believe another scan as well. And within the glow-up guide, we have six different makeup guides that you can scan your face on. So, there's a lot of scans that you can try out. Um but you know, we we do kind of like a limited scan per week, so that triggers them to want to do the upgrade paywall.
Joseph ChoiAnother thing that I noticed was like the results were blurred. Was that ever a decision, whether to blur the results or not? Because like the scan itself is the value, and you want people to pay to see the results?
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Post the same before/after makeup slideshow with one fixed hook, caption and audioFirst post hit 10M views; millions of views a day at peak
- Strip makeup off Pinterest photos, then add it back in-app for big contrastContrast made the slideshows go viral; founder claim
- Find a viral format on your own accounts first, then hire creators to copy itFounder went viral first on all four apps; scaled GlamUp to 30-40 creators
- Let users skip paying by inviting 3 friends with a code1.6M share/code requests; codes flooded TikTok comments; conversion barely dropped
- Put the app name in the copy-paste referral message so TikTok search ranks itSearching 'GlamUp' on TikTok shows only their content; founder claim
- Triple the weekly price from $3 to $9Conversion rate went up despite the 3x price
- Raise monthly and annual prices 20%, then test another 20%Conversion and revenue per download both rose; second +20% in test
- When people close the paywall, show the same plans at 50% off
- Show a fake 'analyzing' scan with blurred results, and run the AI only after payment
- Ask for a rating mid-onboarding; make users tap 'I rated' to continueOther founders who copied it say ratings improved; softer version still works
- After each onboarding question, show a screen on how the app beats the alternativesFounder says it primes users to convert; no numbers
- Skip the annual plan for a job-search app; sell weekly and monthly via Stripe
- Show the paywall right after onboarding, before users can open the app+50% conversion vs letting users try features first
- Put every new creator through a video course with a quiz after each moduleOver half go viral within 2 weeks; 100M monthly views at 200+ active creators
- Recruit creators in influencer-run Discords and on Handshake, then vibe-check them in 15 minutesMany top creators had no experience; founder claim
- Pay creators $10-30 per post plus view bonuses that shrink per view at scaleFounder says the decreasing tiers work best; no numbers
- Give creators line-by-line scripts with the emotion and camera shot for each lineTrained creators averaged hundreds of thousands to millions of views per video
- Film a 6.7-second 'War is over' clip flipping a job tracker cell to 'Accepted'Hundreds of millions of views and many conversions (not attributable)
- Rebuild a hit men's looks app for women, launching a rough MVP in a month1M users in 6 months; ~$150K MRR peak
Tags: usage-limits, tiered-plans, upgrade-paywall