Sviat Hnizdovskyi

Show the paywall on each app launch. A user opening the app means there is interest, so you can explain there are some premium functionalities that they are missing out on.

If you’re just getting started, don’t test micro-improvements.

• Take 2 or 3 examples of what seems to be the best paywalls_ (e.g., Blinkist paywall, Flo, paywall with 3 subscription tiers)_ and measure the ARPU over time of these 3 tests.
• Test increasing the frequency of how much you show the paywall
• Then, move on to pricing tests to understand your pricing elasticity_ (e.g., there are “sweet spots” for yearly plans like $49.99, $59.99, and $89.99)_

Take note of apps from companies that haven’t raised VC capital yet climb to the top of the charts. This most likely means they’re great at monetization and profitability.

When you start (especially if you bootstrap), and you want to run user acquisition, you have to be pretty “aggressive” with monetization to be able to compete on the ad auction. If you give too many features for free and don’t show paywalls frequently, then you don’t provide the opportunity for users to pay for your product.

For early-stage startups, identify the top 5 competitors monetizing the best (especially if they have a bad product) and start with what they do (e.g., paywall).

Once you change your paywall design, the learnings you got from your previous pricing tests might be less relevant.

A lot of early-stage apps would benefit by increasing their price by at least 20-30%. Almost everyone who just launched an app has imposter syndrome and doesn’t dare to charge a high price for their subscription.

One of the most impactful things you can do is increase your experimentation speed by saving time on engineering. One example is enabling remote configuration of all your paywalls and onboarding screens (via a dedicated tool or JSON files).

Three things that matter for monetization besides paywalls and prices:

• Onboarding experience: what questions you ask, how you design your login screen, what product benefits you show, etc.
• Pushs, emails, in-app messages strategy: trying to get users that did not convert initially.
• Discounts: lowering the price with a sequential price drop.

Create a spreadsheet to map all your previous experiments by category (e.g., paywall, price monetization, onboarding length). Look at the areas where you’ve tested less, and prioritize tests in that category to avoid the diminishing returns of over-testing a type of experiment.

On the web, keep your chargeback rates under 1%, even if it means refunding proactively. This will ensure you don't get penalized.

At the very early stage of a subscription app, the team shouldn’t focus on improving the product but on making changes to the very first session (activation flow, onboarding funnel, paywall, etc.). It’s not efforts to improve product retention that will bring you a better LTV (especially for health & fitness, education, and entertainment).

List all your growth experiments and categorize them: subscription price, discount, frequency of the paywall, onboarding survey first screen, onboarding survey questions, etc. Use this to understand which categories (and even subcategories) you’ve optimized the most so far, and define which categories you should target in the future.

For each test, list the LTV change you’ve had per variant. Then, sort categories of tests per average LTV impact. This helps you understand how impactful a category of tests has been, how promising it might be, and to spot bottlenecks and low-hanging fruits.

When it comes to pricing, track the specific effect of a/b tests by OS and country tier because prices (and price changes impact) can vary a lot for each OS/tier. Example: tier 1, US, and all other countries.

Keep track of diminishing returns as you conduct tests in a category. When you see diminishing returns in a category:

• Start revisiting some of your assumptions, and think about bigger bets
• Consider switching to another category

A strategic decision you need to ask yourself: how “aggressive” you want to be with monetization and the impact you’re willing to have on retention.