Bickster · B2C · small app studio
Use Adapty to change prices and paywalls without an app update
What they did
In their words
How He Built an $800K ARR App Using Simple Strategies
… Day one ARP was lower than the $29. So, okay, this is good, right? We found a spot. $29 is a good place to start, right? And, you know, let's go from there. Let's start to optimize. Let's do the creatives, right? And let's go from here. So basically this passed, we're like, okay, $29.99, that's good, right? This is lifetime, boom, right away with no really work done to this app right um so um hey chris what yeah what are you using any tools or
i guess adaptee are you using adaptee to ab test all these a walls and price points or oh yeah right now yeah yeah yeah yeah you have to use something like adaptee adaptee is amazing they do the analytics and the ab tests and you know they have onboarding stuff you can do now with you know with flows and things so yeah you got to use that stuff dynamically you don't want keep shipping a new app every time you want to do price test i mean that's so you know 2024 maybe you know like you know these days you know use use the dynamic paywalls dynamic onboarding right so
you can change the prices change the language change you know whatever whatever you want on the fly and you don't have to go through the apple guards um to get a you know a new version out name hc says what's your row ass this app is still working on row as you know we're about break even right now um this app is still uh on a nice trajectory you know you gotta kind of go right there so uh we're doing a good job um at it you know we started obviously zero and worked our way up 25 50 75 right so we're getting there um we actually we have a new price 39.99 for this app
just it was didn't couldn't update we don't have a lot of uh just kind of slide but 39.99 is our new price it's actually beating 29.99 you know could it be all the reviews we're having could it be the word of mouth but we're 39 is is actually beating 29 um by a low by a good margin right now so we're we're still growing i love it i love it yeah we are we're getting chris right at the testing phase this is beautiful yeah yeah we're still in …
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More from this episode
- Turn a $5.99 paid app into a free download with a subscriptionRevenue jumped from ~$200/day to ~$2,000/day overnight
- Sell lifetime access instead of subscriptions unless the app has real running costsWorks well across their apps; subscriptions drew complaints on one
- Offer $59.99 lifetime or $39.99/year with a 3-day trial on a closable paywall~6% of installs buy; best revenue per 1,000 users of the variants tested
- Keep installs about half organic, half paid; fund only channels returning 2-3xOn track for ~110K MRR
- Use Apple Search Ads only if the cost per install fits your numbersBest paid channel for this app; too pricey for many of their others
- Run Google and Bing search ads and feed sales back to them every nightTwo of the three main paid channels; Bing small but profitable
- Test a one-screen landing page against sending search clicks straight to the App StoreDepends on the app; no general rule
- Test lifetime prices from $4.99 up to $49.99 at fixed ad spend to find the ceiling$29.99 beat $49.99 on day-one revenue; a later $39.99 now beats $29.99
- Build quick AI-coded versions of several app ideas; keep the one that sells
- Spin off an AI Bible app for chat users who asked religious questionsSold at $29.99 lifetime with little effort; ads near break-even
- Launch with a hard paywall, one offer and no free trialOne offer gave the clearest pricing lessons
- Test with exact-keyword Apple Search Ads, then scale on MetaMeta converted even better than Apple Search Ads
- Set Meta ads to find buyers, not installs, and test videos at ~$500/dayInstall-to-purchase rose from ~6% to ~18-20%
- Title the App Store page with plain search terms and put the brand last
- Test app icons first, including wildly different versionsGuest says icons move conversion most; no numbers
- Test dropping the onboarding screens entirelyNo onboarding won in several apps; even one welcome screen hurt
- Show one offer on the paywall with a 'view all plans' link
- Lay out paywall plans side by side instead of stacked~2 points higher conversion (guest unsure of the exact number)
- Skip paid attribution tools; use Meta's own numbers, in-house tracking and Mixpanel
- Put a hard paywall with one lifetime price on an app ranking in search
- Run Meta ads at ~$150/day for a fitness app for people 65+Nobody bought after $3-5K; buyers came from App Store search
Tags: remote-paywalls, remote-onboarding