Rootd · B2C · panic attack relief app
Show the paywall during onboarding, with a close button
Revenue doubled
Workedpaywallonboarding
What they did
Anya's panic attack app Rootd added the paywall to the onboarding flow. She kept a close button (no hard paywall) because people in a panic attack need relief before being asked to pay.
What happened
Revenue doubled after adding the paywall to onboarding.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · App Store Ethics, Dark Patterns, and Rule-Breakers — Steve P. Young, App Masters“So when you have a paywall, show it during the onboarding. We talked about Anya. She said that was the biggest tip that I would have done. Once she did that, her revenues doubled.”
“So she allows people to X out, but when she added it, it doubled her revenues, right?”
Related topics
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More from Rootd
All 25 Rootd tactics- Hire an outside ASO contractor to manage App Store keywordsRankings fell from #2 to tanking; recovered only after reverting to her own keywords
- Show the paywall at the start of onboarding instead of hiding itRevenue up 5x with almost no negative feedback
- Target the low-volume 'panic attack' keyword instead of the crowded 'anxiety'Now #1 for 'panic attacks' and #2-3 for 'anxiety'; glowing reviews from day one
- Launch on World Mental Health Day and pitch local journalists firstBrought the first few hundred users; later list placements fed bigger press
- Go after 'panic attack' first, then climb to 'anxiety relief'Now #2 for 'anxiety relief' and #1 for 'anxiety' (search score 36)
- Send new users a daily quote by push for 7 days, then make it paidReceived very positively, per founder; no numbers
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
- 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
- Earning under $1K a month? Try a hard paywall to see if people want the appTrial-to-paid under 10% suggests no fit; 10-20% means people find value
- 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