A subscription app running Meta ads · B2C · guest's past podcast guest
Send Meta sign-up, paywall-view and checkout events while still optimizing for purchases
Guest says the ad account got smarter; no numbers
What they did
What happened
In their words
Steve Young - Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026
Steve Young… you disagree, I think you got to be somewhere around at least a 10 to $15 cost per trial, or a $3 revenue per install to even consider it. Cuz we tried Meta for one of our apps doing about 3k a month, and that's been all organic, but when I try Meta, our revenue per install is about a dollar, Joseph. So I'm like, I can't make the economics work with that type of numbers, and I could just and we tried hard paywall, and just didn't work as well.
Steve YoungSo the the newest thing I heard from a past podcast guest was like, he's like, "Oh, I start sending different signals to Meta." So he does require registration before paywall. I'm usually against that, I'm usually paywall, then registration, but he has a registration and he has a high registration, so he sends Meta registration event, content view event, which is a standard Meta event, that's a paywall view, initiate checkout, and then, obviously, he has no trial, so he does subscribe, like purchase event. So, and then he obviously optimizes for the purchase event, because he has no trials. But by sending those early pre-purchase signals allowed him, even though he's still optimizing for the same thing, allowed his Meta account to be a lot better and a lot smarter.
Joseph ChoiIn the Meta campaign setup, you're still optimizing for the the purchase, ultimately, or the trial start, right? Not the actual conversion, but the the trial start, or the conversion if it's a conversion. But then before that, you just make sure it's tracking all the other high-intent signals as well. What is the um tool that that they use for that? Is that like Does that have to go through an MMP, or is it just like Facebook pixel?
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More from this episode
- Buy an app that ranks #1 but charges $2, then add a $60/year hard paywallRevenue up from $1-2K to $8-10K a month with the same downloads
- Remove the X from the paywall so users must start a trialTrial starts doubled from 6% to 13%; trial-to-paid unchanged; some one-star reviews
- Name your new app after a keyword with ~30 searches that nobody uses in their title#1 in week one, 100 downloads a day, $1,600 first month, ~$20K MRR years later
- Pick keywords where the top 3 apps have few reviews and lack the keyword in their titleUsed to launch and buy apps that reached #1; no pooled numbers
- Name the app after the keyword and use the App Store autocomplete phrase as subtitleReached #1 for 'green noise'; still #3 with little upkeep
- Target 24 more versions of the keyword you already rank #1 for, and cut Apple Ads
- Buy a profitable app with a 10-year loan and pay it back from the app's profitMoney back in 3-4 months on one purchase; example leaves ~$5K a month after loan payments
- Buy apps that already get organic downloads but earn too little or skip a channelBest buys fit this; one $18K purchase without it flopped
- Try Meta ads on a small organic app, including a hard paywallOnly ~$1 revenue per install; economics didn't work
- Show paid Instagram and Facebook users a paywall with no X; let organic users close itReported to perform a lot better; no numbers shared
- Switch from a closable paywall with no trial to a hard paywall with a free trialPerformed a little better; no numbers
- Launch a good-enough app, and only finish it if downloads show upSpeaker's standing process; no numbers
- Rank for a niche keyword first, then climb to broader onesOutranked Canva on a keyword
- Build just the viral feature as a TestFlight and let creators film it
Tags: meta, pixel-events, signal-engineering, no-trial