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3 Growth Hacking Strategies to Revive a Dying App

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App Masters12:20Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

A dying app can be revived cheaply by refreshing its icon and screenshots, running a paid-to-free campaign, or selling it. These moves bring downloads, sales or an exit without new code or big ad spend.

Key takeaways

  • A fresh icon and look can lift downloads without touching the code. 0:52
    • A black and white kids app got zero downloads. After a designer from 99designs added color, it became his best performing app.
    • Changing only the icon on the trivia app Guess the Footballer doubled its downloads. A good icon can cost about $100 on dribbble.com.
  • A paid-to-free campaign brings thousands of downloads in a few days. 8:24
    • Results run from about 5,000 on the low end to 10,000 to 40,000 on average, and sometimes multiple six figures. The Paintball Rush campaign hit 14,500 downloads.
    • It also lifted sales of his paid apps and in-app purchases in free apps.
    • The app must have no ads, and free in-app purchases must be non-consumable.
  • Selling the app is the exit when it's not worth more work. 3:34
    • Flippa and Fliptop suit smaller apps. App Business Brokers suits portfolios aiming at six-figure exits.
    • Buyers want a systemized, automatic revenue machine, and a marketing plan showing how they can grow it.

I just want to get people into my apps. I want them to start playing so I can get some feedback.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Revamp the designs of a fading app

Icons and screenshots can be redone after launch, and the change shows up in the download numbers.

  • Icons and screenshots are the first thing to redo on a trickling app 0:52
    • They deserve thought from day one, but a launched app can still refresh them.
    • The kids app kept the same code and gameplay. Only the look changed.
    • The goal is real, legitimate downloads, not a paid push.
    • A lively, colorful look beat the plain one.
  • Test the new icon and read the result in app analytics 1:52
    • Rich Wacksteff, a fellow App Masters member, swapped the old icon for a new one just to run a test.
    • The analytics chart marks the day of the change, and downloads rise after it.
    • Steve found nothing wrong with the old icon, so the gain was not obvious in advance.
    • Rich changed nothing else, which makes the icon the clear cause.
  • Dribbble lets you buy a finished icon directly from its designer 2:50
    • Search the site by theme, such as football or camera, then message the designer.
    • Ask whether the icon has been sold before, so nobody else uses it.
    • Then ask the price. Steve's camera icon was beautiful.
    • It gave a rich 3D look that he could not have got otherwise.

3:34 Sell the app instead

Selling is the right move when a rebuild is not worth the effort, and each marketplace has its own trade-off.

  • Steve sold his educational portfolio to avoid redoing the work 3:34
    • iOS 8 and new iPhones were coming, so he would have had to change graphics and sizes again.
    • He has sold several apps through listing sites.
    • His reaction was heck with it, so he sold.
  • Flippa is easy to sell on but asks little proof from the seller 4:04
    • It is owned by the same company as 99designs.
    • He handed over the source code, which includes the graphics, and gave download and revenue figures.
    • The sale was for a few hundred dollars.
    • The con is that buyers must simply trust the seller's data.
  • Fliptop drew more buyers but made the handover harder 4:57
    • Listing meant connecting iTunes Connect, so buyers saw real downloads and ad revenue.
    • Old apps made the transfer painful, as he had to track down every graphic and PSD file.
    • His view is only an opinion, from a different portfolio.
    • He suggests listing the same app on both sites to compare.

6:10 Getting ready to sell

A sale goes smoother when the files are ready, and a broker suits big portfolios.

  • Gather every app file before you list it. 6:13
    • Disorganized sellers lose time hunting for assets.
    • Young's old apps forced a search for the PSDs.
    • Some design files could not be found at all.
  • A broker does the legwork on large portfolios. 6:38
    • It finds buyers, checks they are legit and passes on the information you need.
    • A friend sold his app business for multiple six figures through App Business Brokers.
    • Young interviewed co-founder Eric Owens, and the interview is linked in the show notes.

8:24 Run a paid-to-free campaign

Free downloads cost far less than ad installs, and only certain apps and purchases can go free.

  • A paid-to-free campaign replaces ad spend with free installs. 8:55
    • Matching a few days of downloads would cost a lot on Facebook or Chartboost ads.
    • Critics say free users are only incentivized. Young wants players and their feedback.
    • The Paintball Rush video shows the real numbers and the effect on ASO.
    • The same campaign works for a free app by making one in-app purchase free.
  • Only ad-free apps and one-time purchases can go free. 10:16
    • Apps with ads are not covered. Make the remove-ads purchase free instead.
    • Non-consumables are bought once and kept forever, unlike gems or coins.
    • Young has also run it on virtual goods like characters and weapons.
    • He says it works like a charm.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Host of App Masters and app marketing consultant. Three ways to revive a stalled app: refresh the icon and screenshots, sell the app to a buyer, or run a paid to free campaign. A kids app went from zero downloads to the author's best performer after a color redesign, and an icon swap doubled another app's downloads.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript315 lines
0:00

coming up I'm going to share three of my favorite growth hacking strategies to revive a dying app stay

0:18

tuned what is up app Nation it is Steve p young back and better than ever to share three strategies to revive a dying app now this is an exerp that I pulled I actually have seven strategies but it's part of an article I wrote for entrepreneur.com I'll give you access to it but if you want to check out that art article I'll share with you a link where you can check out all seven but I'm going to take three of my favorite ones and share them with you in this very video so let's get started the first one is to revamp the designs now if you've got a dying app that's sort of trickling in downloads and you really want to pump it up and get some real legitimate downloads revive the designs now what am I talking about the icons the screenshots these are things that you should be thinking about already from day one but if you've already launched heck you can just revive them and I'm going to share some

1:20

resources but I did this with one of my apps when I launched this there was a paid app and launched it as a completely black and white app but I then hired a designer 399 designs and I actually saw an increase in downloads I started getting downloads it was getting it was getting Zero downloads as a black and white app but because I put some color into it because I made it feel more lively the code was the same the gameplay was the same it was a kids app and just by doing the app it literally became my best performing app so I want to share another case study with you as well this is a friend of mine Rich waack staff great friend of mine who's also in the master but he created this app this is his app it's called guest the footballer great app you got to go check it out guest the footballer but it's a trivia app now as you can see he looked at the icons here's the old icon to the left and to

2:14

the right you got the new icon now if you ask me personally hey nothing's wrong with the old icon but Rich wanted to run a test and he he changed the icon I'll share the resource that he actually found the icon on and I actually found a great icon on icon on this Resource as well but look at these results literally doubled his downloads I'm just pulling the app an data from this after changing it and you can see where the icon change happened and look at the performance he did nothing else besides change that icon and literally doubled his downloads right and if you're looking for an affordable way to get an icon let me share a great resource that rich provided that I've used in the past as well it's called dribbble.com it's dribble with 3bs dribbble.com you can search for an icon there so football icon I was looking for a camera icon you can contact one of the the designer directly through that site and then ask

3:13

them hey have you sold this icon in the past because you want to see if somebody else is using it if they haven't ask them how much are they willing to sell it for usually you can get it for $100 I got one of my icons for $100 there it was beautiful and you get this Rich 3D look that you wouldn't get so dribbble.com is the place to go number two strategy is to stink and just sell the app get rid of it right I know that's what I did with my educational portfolio I just sold it I think ios8 at the time was about to come out and there was new iPhones and I just didn't want to optimize it and change the graphics increase the size all over again so I just said heck with it I'm going to sell it and I've sold a couple of different apps through these different websites and I'm going share with you how to do that if you want to go down this path so the first one is Flippa and this is owned by the same company that owns

4:10

99 designs and I use this site to sell a couple of different smaller apps but the I love this site a lot actually it was a lot easier to use and I'll give you some of the pros so really easy to sell and all I had to do was transfer the source codes I kind of gave some data away in terms of how many downloads it was doing what the revenues were like like but that's all I had to do and when I sold it when somebody bought it was just for a few hundred I just had to say here's Source codes that's it and you know the graphics are in the source codes but that's it that's all I had to do really really easy now as a con if you're trying to buy an app on flipa it's I didn't have to share real data you know you just sort of had to trust me on that and I just remember it being really really easy in terms of transferring over the source files the other site that I use is fliptop now with flip Utopia I felt like I had

5:01

more more interaction more buyers interested in buying the app I think if now this is just my opinion I don't know for true and plus it was a completely different app this is where I sold the educational portfolio because I want to try a different side out than Flippa but my opinion was I was getting a lot more interest from fliptop than I was from my other one I think the key way to do this would be to sell the same app on both platforms and see what you're able to get I'll just share with my experience so my experience is a whole different portfolio that I'm trying to sell here so with fliptop it's very easy to list as they'll put it up there the thing was I had to connect my iTunes connect so the seller could see real data that said hey here are the downloads here are the ad revenues here's everything so you could really trust the data that you see on fliptop the bad part of fliptop is that

5:56

you it was a pain in the butt to transfer everything cuz a lot lot of my apps were really old I had to find where all the graphics were where all the source files were everything I had the source files but in terms of the graphics I had to get all the PSD the Photoshop files and send it over so if you're going to sell on fliptop make sure you have everything ready to go if if you're unorganized like me I had to go searching for it because they were so old they had to go really looking for the psds and some of them I couldn't really find them anymore but that's sort of the cons of fotopia and even if you're buy buying some apps I think there's some really great apps on there too if you want to look for some and the last resource I'll share with you and I will link up the in the show notes an interview I did with one of the founders Eric Owens of app business brokers but this is the same service that Chad

6:47

Moretta used of the app Empire moyo okomi who's a friend of mine he used to sell his app business for multiple six figures on app business brokers so if you've got a really big portfolio you're generating a lot of good money from it I think app business brokers is probably the better way to go if you got a really big the two two ones the the previous two I think they're great for smaller apps but if you're looking for like six figure exits then I would use app business brokers because they're going to do all the leg work of finding the buyers making sure they're legit and then passing on all the different information that you need so if you want to go through through at business brokers it's businessbroker.net business systemized okay because these guys want to buy the buyers on there want to buy a revenue generating machine they don't want something where there's a lot of overhead they have to control

7:40

it they have to manage it they want to buy something where they can just say it's automatic okay here the systems in place it's all automatic everything's taken care of for you the other thing is that moo said is if you have a marketing plan in place it attracts buyers and shows them how they can grow hey here's what I'm planning for the next year here's how I think you can grow in the next year and having that in place to give them would really attract and show potential buyers that hey this is legit this is still growing yes it's making money and if you just let it be it'll still make money but if you hear some ways where I think that you can grow it so those are three sites let me just summarize Flippa fliptop and app business brokers and the last strategy that I want to share with you is one of my favorite strategies I've been doing a lot of this stuff run a paid to free campaign all right in my last week's

8:35

video I shared with you a case that I did with one of my apps paintball rush and how I generated 14.5 th000 downloads and the impact on ASO for that particular from running that particular campaign so let me just give you a brief overview why you should run it look on average anytime I've run it for my friends or for my clients we see about 5,000 on the low end and we've actually hit multiple six figures on the high end now it's been far fewer in terms of hitting multiple six figures for the downloads but anywhere from I would say 10 to 20,000 to even 40,000 is what you're going to see on average when you run this campaign in a couple of days so if you had just think just imagine this how much would you have to spend on Facebook ads how much would you have to spend on chart boost ads to get the same amount of downloads right and people can say Well they're incentivized because it's free right now blah blah

9:34

blah I don't care I think frankly I just want to get people into my apps I want them to start playing so I can get some feedback the other thing is I've seen an increase in sales after the campaign for my paid apps so this campaign is you make a paid app for free or if you have a free app you can make one of your inapp purchases for free and I've also seen an increase in inapp purchases for free apps I'm going to link it up in the show notes go check out that video if you didn't if you haven't watched it but it's great I share all the numbers about what happened after the paay to free campaign or during the PID to free campaign as well so you can see the real numbers I'm not just making this stuff up okay and for those who are W want to run this so what can be paid what can be free it's paid apps make sure if you have a paid app you don't have ads in it even if you have free ad free app make

10:29

sure sure you don't have ads in it for app advice they don't want to cover it you can make your remove ads in app purchase for free and that an app device will cover it but make sure that ads are not there okay the inapp purchases can be free so they must be non-consumable what that means is you get it once you buy it once you get it forever right it's not like Gems or coins where you can continually buy buy buy buy buy buy buy hit buy and spend like $10,000 in a couple of days no it's one of these things where you like a remove ads or a character you buy once and you get it forever and I've each actually made virtual goods for free so if you got these characters or weapons or anything like that that you want to make for free for a couple of days I've ran this campaign just for virtual Goods these are where you need gems to buy right so it works and it works like a charm I love this campaign if you want to get

11:21

access to my course for this campaign it's atms. CP the number two f atms. p2f okay now if you want to read the complete article seven strategies to help breathe life into your dying app go to atms. revive that's revive and it will redirect you to my entrepreneur.com article trying to write a lot more on this site and trying to share all the case studies all the things that I've learned through the app space on entrepreneur and on appm M s.co but this is to read all the seven strategies there's a lot more tips in there go to atms. revive all right guys that's it for today thank you so much for your attention and I'll see you next week's video bye