WeWard · B2C · walking rewards app
Add a paid plan that removes ads, after ads and affiliate already work
Still a small share of revenue but growing fast
Unknownpricingpaywall
What they did
WeWard runs several revenue streams (ads, affiliate, surveys, in-app purchases) and launched a premium subscription much later, via RevenueCat, that removes ads and improves the experience. They run many tests on it.
What happened
Not yet a major revenue source but growing quickly.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard“we have the premium subscription, which is a way for people to avoid ads and to have a better experience into the app. We have some in-app purchase too. We have ads and we have affiliate marketing survey.”
“we launched the premium subscription way after the other source of revenue. So this is why today this is not a major source of revenue, but it's growing quite fast.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- WeWard: Pay a PR agency $3-5K a month instead of buying ads300K downloads in 5 minutes from one TV spot; four years with zero ad spend
- WeWard: Take the PR playbook that worked in France to Italy, Spain and the USWorked in Italy and Spain; flopped in the US despite a top agency
- WeWard: Add in-app ads once you see retention hold after a big traffic spikeAds work well thanks to the large audience; says they pay at ~100K daily users
- WeWard: Promote brands like Nike and Expedia in the app for a cut of salesWorks well; Nike, Adidas, Expedia, Booking.com and Amazon signed on
- WeWard: A/B test every feature on steps walked, and don't track time in app
- WeWard: Lock TikTok and Instagram until users hit their walking goalUsers of the feature walk 10% more
- WeWard: Give a famous athlete shares to be the app's face and press voiceHelped press, hiring, CAC and retention; founder says hard to quantify
- WeWard: Put the celebrity's face in ads and onboarding so the app feels localFounder says better ad conversion, lower CAC and higher retention; no numbers
- WeWard: Rebuild onboarding to get users to commit and feel somethingBiggest win of the year: retention and LTV up a lot; unlocked more paid UA
- WeWard: Sell companies step challenges for staff, with charity donationsBiggest fail of the year; couldn't make it work
- WeWard: Keep one app everywhere; swap only the rewards and partner brands per countryLive in 29 countries without local teams
- WeWard: Ask users if blockchain matters; switch to plain points when they shrugUsers happier, engineers relieved; scaling and lag problems gone
- WeWard: Add card collecting with your own characters to keep walkers coming backFounder says retention is the highest it has ever been; no numbers
- WeWard: Move the founder to New York to crack the USSlow first two years; now 'becoming a significant app' in the US