| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWF_AbsR0qc |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kty486pznx078ye98r74kfpy |
| Readwise ID | 01kty486pznx078ye98r74kfpy |
| Date | 2026-03-24 |
| Author | App Masters |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FWF_AbsR0qc/sddefault.jpg |
Coming up, I’m going to share with yousome little-known app monetizationstrategies that will help you convertyour new users and those pesky [music]free users that have been on your appfor a long time and never paid. Staytuned.
What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P.Young, founder of appmasters.com. And inthis course, I’m going to break down allthe little-known app monetizationstrategies that are working today. Let’sget started. All right, here it is,little-known, hopefully till now, appmonetization strategies. The first one,I think it’s an obvious one. I’ve sharedthis in the past. It is three-screenpaywalls, and I’ll tell you exactly whatthat means. I first discovered this onResemmee. And they have an onboardingexperience, and towards the end of theonboarding experience, I wanted toinclude this screen. They have a video.
I really like that, right? Like, “Hey,are you ready?” Yeah, I’m ready, right?
And we’re going to offer you 7 daysfree, so anyone can cook with Resemmee.Really cool. Continue. We’ll remind you2 days before your trial ends.And then they’ll hit you with thatreminder prompt.And then lastly, so here’s a reminderprompt, they hit you with the paywall.And this is well-known to increaseconversions, especially if your mainmonetization is through the yearlyoffer. So, it works really, really well.We’ve tested. We’ve AB tested this, andit’s performing a lot better than anyother monetization test. This is aninteresting one that I actually firstfound on LinkedIn, but I wanted tocapture this and make it my own. It istrial to discount, okay? So, I firstdiscovered this in an app called Flow,and I will go through their onboardingsequence right here. You got their firstpage, you got the agreement, name, allthat stuff. So, I’m going through theironboarding, right? I’m Stephanie.
I’m going through it. Now I’m hit withthis paywall. The interesting thing hereis when I hit free trial enable and Itry to check out with this start 14-dayfree trial. See, sometimes 14-day freetrial works better than seven. It’s veryrare. Most of the time, seven worksbetter, but for certain apps, you know,maybe you need an extended period oftime. When I hit start free trial, I’mtaken to actually a web checkout, right?
And you can start to see some trends.We’ve seen this actually perform worsethan just using the default Applesubscription checkout flow, but this wasinteresting, so I kind of left it inhere. That’s not all, so I went backinto the app. I hit X, and then nowthey’re like, “Hey, discover how Flowcan help you feel more empowered thanever before. Tell me more. Know yourbody.” So, now they’re kind of taking methrough their entire onboarding andtrying to get me to retain.I do also like this. We have seen thatAsking for registration or sign-up afterthe paywall actually performs better.
And as you can see, I can hit X off ofthis as well. Wondering why I put likeperiod and pause stuff in here. And so,they’re asking me if I want to score. Isay, “Yes.” Sending this to someone, no,I’m not doing that. So, I’m like, “Sayyes, let’s do it.” And I’m going throughthis chat sequence. Now, I’ve also heardfrom other founders that this way ofthis chat onboarding or this chat flowdoes perform better than just havingpeople, you know, go slide, continue,continue, continue. So, prettyinteresting here. So, I’m answering allthese questions, understood, all thatstuff. And then now they hit me withanother opportunity to buy the app,okay? So, I hit free trial enabledthere.Here, I did get the default Apple promptand payment. I decided to go ahead andstart that free trial. So, I did it. ICongratulations, you can start usingFlow and all the premium users. I lovethat.
Now, here’s the most interesting part.They hit me with a discount.Now, I don’t have any data on this, butI think it’s a simple math formula thatyou can use. And this is especially truefor an app that may have low trial topaid numbers. So, the industry averageis about 30 to 40% trial to paid.If you’ve got anything lower than that,you can easily do the math and find outthat, “Hey, if I can get, let’s say, 10%to convert on this discounted offer, I’mactually winning.” So, that’s a simplemath formula that you can use to see ifthis is something that you should bedeploying within your own app. Allright? I just thought it wasinteresting. I don’t have data to sayeither way whether you should do it ornot. Okay.I said, “No, thanks.” And then Icontinued on to the app.
So, here it is again, just for those whowant that visual. All right. Let’s getto the next one. And I really like thisnext one. All right, this is the paidintro offers.As you can see, I’m a naming specialist.All right. So,I’m going to point back to Resemmee. Idiscovered this in another app ages ago,but Resemmee was the screenshot Ialready had readily available. So, youremember from the onboarding,they had that three paywall sequence,then they hit me with this normalpaywall.7 days free, and then renews at 1.99is actually59.99per year. Now, I love this, and I thinkthis is the next best thing to do forall apps. Because for monthly users,now, it is app dependent, but for mostapps, the monthly LTV is very, very low.
It’s about three, 3.5. But the yearlyobviously has a higher LTV. So, insteadof trying to charge, let’s say, 10 a month and only getting 30 dollarsfor that whole user, here’s anopportunity that you can use to getpeople to subscribe, okay? And I lovethis because I have some numberswhere we found that most of the peoplewho sign up for that monthly intro paidoffer, they tend to convert a lot betterthan the free trial users. It makessense. It’s easier for you to upsell acurrent customer than trying to find anew customer. And these are people thatare showing you willingness to pay. And
I really love the 1.99. Yes, we got lesscustomers, but we actually made moreMoney. So, I love that price point. It’senough to feel like it’s a premiumproduct, but not too much where you’relike too afraid to even try it out. It’sa low enough offer, okay? So, I reallylove this.
And you can see they charge 10 bucks amonth. At the time that I was takingscreenshots from Resemmee, sorry, guys,they were AB testing a few differentpaywalls. So, I want to kind ofhighlight this, one where they just gostraight into the free week, and anotherone where they do have the 70 with the 70 free offer, 6.99 as well. And heran the experiment overa month and a half, and it workedincredibly well for one of his apps. Hisconversion rate went from 19 to 25%.
That’s conversion rate. And his proceedswent up by 21%. Really, really cool. Andwe’re seeing this work pretty well formost apps. The next one is really cool,so you want to pay attention to thatone. All right, this is one of myfavorites, and this was shared in a livestream from John. Great, great livestream. I’ll try to link that up intothe show notes and so that you guys cancheck it out as well. It is calledreverse trials. I didn’t make it up,John made it up. And he like highlightedthis, and I really love this idea. So,he’s got a value-based onboarding. Iwanted to pay respects to John and keephis presentation style together, but hisapp’s called Momingo. Go check it out ifyou take the bus or train to work.
Really great app.He’s got a value-based onboarding. Ireally love this. I wanted to kind ofhave this on this screen as well, justto show you that he’s not highlightingthe features. He is in a way, but he’sUsing benefits to get you to see thevalue of the app. So, get there on time,stress-free, share your location just incase you need to send it to a friend tomake sure you’re safe or get to work ontime.
Never miss your stop again. I love thesocial proof right here every singletime. Over 5 million riders. Here’s aquote. 50,000 five stars. Another quote.
And he’s got thisHe sort of combined that three paywallscreen that I shared earlier with this.So, you’ll get a reminder 2 days beforeyour trial ends. Awesome, right? Peopleare more likely to actually activatethat trial when they feel like,"Hey, you’re just going to remind me."Love this paywall as well. The otherthing I want to call out from thepaywall, he’s found that photos workbetter, right? And I actually like theless clutter that you have on thepaywall,probably the better it is. So, add allYour value up front, and then just lessclutter at the very, very end, right?
Some social proof here.I also like this, pay as you go.That seems to be working a bit betterfor us as well. So, instead of callingit weekly, you just call it pay as yougo. And it is a weekly subscription.So he does yearly with a 7-day trial,weekly, and then lifetime. So you here.
Now here is the reverse trial. So if Iactivate that trial or I pay one of hisplans, they say he says welcome to pro.Perfect, and then you’re off on yourway.But if I hit X on this, he says, "Noproblem. Enjoy a week of pro on us."Again, really cool. So what you can dohere, it’s the same flow.If I hit X, I get enjoy a free week ofpro on us. Boom. What I really loveabout this as well is that during theonboarding, right after this, so rightafter the paywall, he gives you asecondary onboarding to try to get youTo activate some of the premiumfeatures, and I’m going to show youthese premium features. Customize yournotifications. Look at this is pro. Sowhen I scroll down,this is pro.
You can see that some of these, if youturn them on, they’re going to go away.So give your users a little bit of ataste of your app and then eventuallylet them know that, "Hey,it might go away, right?"So let’s take a look at what happenedwith his free users, that conversionrate.The before was 0.4%,and the after is 4.5%.Probably not 100x, okay, butwhat an improvement, right? And onaverage, it’s about 2% of all free usersconverting to your paid customer. Sothis is an amazing, amazing stat. Nowobviously, not every app can do it, butif your app doesn’t have high usagecosts, it’s definitely something thatYou should be trying out. Now I want tocover pay what you want. I love this. Idon’t see a lot of apps doing this, butit works. So rather than showing onediscounted offer, you let them slide tothat one discounted offer. So this isone of our apps. You got this free giftfor you. This does convert. You can seethat’s put it right in the middle. And
why would you select the middle? Whywould you not just put it all the way tothe very end and get that discount for50% off? And if you go all the way tothe beginning, you get that 7-day thatdefault offer that we have during theonboarding. And so this is for peoplewho started using your app. This is agreat way, like John, maybe stackingthese monetization strategies with thereverse trial as a reverse trial. Andyou can say, "Hey, pay what you wantand, you know, unlock your discount."Now what we found is most people willslide all the way to the left. So ratherthan showing that 50% for $29.99,Letting users choose increases yourconversion rates. Here’s one of ourclients that’s doing the same exactthing. These numbers have shifted quitea bit since we put this together, butyou can see that most of his revenuesare coming from the onboarding paywall,but then there’s a pretty good number offolks over a close to a thousand dollarsa month for this relatively smaller app.
It’s about 10% of his overall sales thatare doing thatpay what you want discount. Now, at thetime, people were selecting the higherprice offer, but now everybody’sselecting the lowest price offer as ofthis recording. All right, that’s it.
Let me know which one of thesestrategies is your absolute favorite.And [music], if you want access to thatexclusive, that full course where I’mrevealing everything I got in mytreasure chest of monetization tricks,go check out appfounders.co.It is appfounders.co. We have over aHundred amazing app founders [music] andwe meet twice a month to go through someof the wins, some of the losses, what’sreally working well in the app space. Wegot folks that are growing through meta.
We got folks that are growing throughGoogle Ads for iOS app installs. Gotsome amazing, amazing folks in there. Soif you’re interested in joining, gocheck out appfounders.co.
All right, till next [music] time. I’llsee you on the next video.