Practitioner pattern · Steve P. Young (Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency selling ASO and growth services)
Earning under $1K a month? Try a hard paywall to see if people want the app
Trial-to-paid under 10% suggests no fit; 10-20% means people find value
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What they did
For indie apps making under about $1,000/month, switch to a hard paywall. If trial starts are solid but trial-to-paid is weak, fix the in-app experience or accept it is a nice-to-have. David adds: single-digit trial-to-paid means users are forgetting to cancel and there is no product-market fit; 10-20% means people find value.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · App Store Ethics, Dark Patterns, and Rule-Breakers — Steve P. Young, App Masters“if you're not making at least $1,000 a month, try a hard paywall, because it will force users and it will tell you if users actually want or need your app.”
“If it's single-digit percentage, you know you're not product-market fit. That's a, "People forgetting." If it's 10, 20%, people are finding value out of this.”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Pay for searches-then-installs on one quiet keyword until the app ranks #1#1 for both keyword spellings and stuck there; ~$5K/month mostly organic
- App Masters: Buy App Store reviews that mention your target keywordsOne or two keyword reviews moved rankings; stopped because stores punish it
- App Masters: Have friends mark your best 5-star review as helpful so it shows first
- Show the paywall's close button only after 5 secondsIncreases revenue, per the agency founder; no numbers
- Launch a simple one-feature app with a paywall that has no close buttonGrew $1K to $10K/month; 35% trial-to-paid; fell to $5K when Apple forced a close button
- Test a hard paywall against giving away one free puzzleHard paywall raised revenue; follow-up test vs more locked content, result not given
- Ask for a rating during onboarding or right after the paywall, not after 10 usesSeen to work really well across apps; no numbers
- Rootd: Show the paywall during onboarding, with a close buttonRevenue doubled
- Weather Up: Pull Google AdSense ads and move to a hard paywall with a 7-day trialAds caused bad reviews and complaints; app lost money for ~a year without them
- Launch Center Pro: Ship a big release that rides the home screen customization trend~$20K that month, then lost the lead by not iterating
- Ask web users to pay $1-$8.75 toward the trial's cost, then charge the saved cardHost was charged ~$70 by accident and did a chargeback
- Change one icon on a freemium app's main screen to get more paywall views+57% paywall views
- App Masters: Pick app ideas from overlooked keywords in categories where people pay
- MyFitnessPal: Show a closable paywall each time a returning user opens the appHost resubscribed at times; no numbers