7 Proven Ways to Increase App Revenue

All right, I'm going to do something a little different. All right, I know you guys had to sit through a lot of talks now, so you're kind of like feeling the low maybe. So, would you please do me the honor? Look, I'm already embarrassed doing this, all right? So, you're not going to get any more of it. Can you just stand up real quick? Just shake it out a little bit. Come on, come on. Look, I'm asking, all right? I'm already standing. Cool. Shake it out cuz it's going to be very interactive, all right?

So, I need a lot of participation in this presentation. Everybody feel good? Feel a little more energized? Ready for lunch? All right, okay, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I have a photo. You get that, Sefan? I got a photo. I'm going to send it to my wife. Make it look like I got a standing ovation after this talk. That'd be really good. All right. Look, I've been in the app space, like James said, since 2011. Started doing this on the side.

Just coding away on BART, if you guys are local here. Started making apps about $500 to $1,000 a month. I was working full-time, so couldn't support myself on that. So, I was like, "Hey, my dream job is to be a game show host. That's why it's going to be interactive." I want to do a podcast. Let me do one on apps. So, started interviewing my heroes in this space. Dan Counsel who made Clear, Paul Haddad who made Tweetbot, Chris Barton, co-founder of Shazam.

Started learning from them so that I could grow my apps. Now, built up an audience who then started coming coming to me for app marketing help. Didn't know anything back then. But, 6 months after starting the podcast, felt confident enough to take the leap and do this full-time. So, we still have the podcast, we have a YouTube channel, all that jazz. We focus on ASO, ASA, Apple Search Ads, Google Ads. And since 2019, we have a lot of case studies about paywall optimization. So, how to increase revenues. I'm going to go through all the seven ways. Shoot, I need a clicker.

All right. Now that's all done, all that jazz. All right, number one. If you do nothing else, do this one thing. I guarantee you it will increase your revenues. Look, like Jenny said, we download apps, but we come in as a warm lead. And so, unlike maybe like a web video or a YouTube video, you need to watch two or three to kind of build that trust. You're coming in with the inherent trust, all right? So, if you show Whoops, I'm sorry. For people taking photo. I'm going to go through some examples. If you show your paywall, your pricing during the onboarding process, it will increase your sales. You can thank me later.

All right, here's Headspace, No More Robo. All right, so I love my job. I have a community. I have YouTube subscribers who come back and tell me stuff. They Steve, I tracked where all my purchases were coming from. These four places. All right? You want to guess? So, interactive time. How many think that of all the people that bought on the onboarding process, that was under 50%? So, hope you understand the question. Do you understand the question? Okay, good. How many think it's under 50%?

Thank you, brave one. Thank you, brave two. How many Oh, three. Okay, how many are over 50%? Come on, there's like a hundred people here. There should be 97. Come on. Good, it is. In fact, 60 to 70 80% of the people who end up buying buy during this onboarding process. All right? Now, one last thing on the onboarding topic. If you If I were calm and if I swapped the paywall before making users sign up, we see an increase in conversions doing this route, too.

All right? Oh, I want to on the onboarding. I saw this on Lucid. Anybody from Lucid? Anyways, I really love this. So, if you get users to interact with your app asking them questions increases conversions. And what I really love this is they got social proof right on the onboarding process. That's only going to help you, right? Getting users to engage and then in the middle of it, at the end, they've got a yes ladder.

They're trying to get me to say yes a bunch of times before they hit me with their paywall. I'll hold. Good. All right. Cool. Interact Hey, yo, I need more hands this time, all right? So, somebody in my audience was like, "Steve, paywall, love it. I'm going to show it as the first screen." That's A. B, I'm going to do a little teasing, a little bit of warming up before I show them paywall. All right, who thinks it's A?

Who thinks it's B? Cool. Congratulations, B. 234% increase in sales just by warming up the lead, all right? Now, if you got you're If you're on two, don't worry, there's plenty of opportunities to win, okay? All right. So, here's so Here's the proof if you think I'm lying. So, have an onboarding process. Don't be super aggressive and just show your paywall as that first screen, all right? Make sure people I didn't think I needed this slide, but when people started I started seeing more apps do this, I was like, "All right, I better add this."

All right. Next. All right. The second most popular I'm just going to go through this. Second most popular is the home page. So, 80 to 90% of people who buy buy through these two one phase and one flow and then one page, right? Push notifications. This is the mistake I commonly see. Oh, it's in the settings. Steve, just, you know, the hamburger menu, just tap that and go in the settings. That's where you upgrade. I'm like, all right, thank you. A lot of work.

So, number three, just put the stupid upgrade button on your home page, right? And I've actually seen good results with people who show the paywall on every single app open. All right? You've seen good results. So, this is one client that we work with, 12x their revenues by just adding it. That was the one of the big tips I gave them. Add it to your stupid home page. That's my son's name, by the way. Here's one. This is Headway.

Who loves Headway? I love this promotion, right? They have this on the home page, like go 50%. Pretty and crazy. It's like always there. I've had the app for like 2 weeks, that thing is always there, that gift. So, second open and every single open, they hit me with a special offer, same 50% offer. They're being super aggressive. You want to check out an app that's being super aggressive with their paywalls, check out Headway. Sorry, Headway.

All right. Number Another test. A or B, all right? Shorter paywall, longer paywall. Who thinks it's the A? Yeah, look at this. I'm getting more hands. B? It's almost 50/50. I don't think you guys are voting. It is B, 65% increase conversions. Why? Well, I thought I started thinking about this 2018, I was like, you know what? Longer paywalls are converting better on the web. It's just known, right? If you go to ClickFunnels, LeadPages, all this jazz, they convert better, longer pages, cuz people will read what they want to read. But, they won't read most of the time. They will read when they're about to pay you. So, I started thinking, longer paywalls.

So, that that was a stat. 12x more revenues again, same client, but we added this, longer paywall. This is one that I'm very proud of, because this is a guy just watching our YouTube channel and emails me out of the blue and says, "Steve, I went from $250 a month to $1,000 a month, and all I was doing was just optimizing the paywall." And he only has 15 downloads a day. 15. So, you don't need much to start making more money by just optimizing your paywall.

All right. Another one. Again, more text, less text, friend of mine, 50% increase in sales. So, you don't got super long. You just want to add more text, right? People want to know what they're getting. Number four, long long pricing pages. Pretty simple. All right. I kind of break it down, but I'm going to go through this just for the sake of time. So, you want a good headline, pricing page, you want to talk about the benefits, more social proof, lots of social proof.

Maybe a features table, maybe not, up to you. And then show the testimonials, pricing page, frequently asked questions, and then floating button. So, you can just scroll, you know, you see the button, all that jazz. So, there it is one more time. You look, you you go on any pay website, you'll see the same type of things, elements. You just borrow it, right? Literally go to ClickFunnels, you'll see pretty much all the same elements that you might have. All right. It's a quick summary.

Snap, snap. Number five, animation actually increases sales. So, if you have small animations, I don't want to distract users, but I want subtle animations. We've actually seen an increase. And you can be sneaky, too. You see that X in the top left corner? What we've actually seen, if you wait a couple of seconds before you show that X, that actually increases conversions as well. So, couple examples, little 50% down there, back to my headway.

Had to add that. Look, continue button there. All right, number six, add some urgency, right? For me, the way I think about app monetization similar to the web monetization. All the little tactics that has worked on the web, start utilizing that form. Like, I think people try to make it too short, like the longer pricing pages. So, I'm going to give you examples. Apptive. So, this is their normal paywall. I X'd out and they're like, "Yo, you want another offer?" And they gave me some a discount with some urgency there, too.

Same, Fast Trak. ClassPass. Expires. And the last one I saw, I want to make make sure we have time for questions as well. I think this is underutilized. Just promotions and win backs. Like if you think about e-commerce, you think about any of the web stuff, it's like having some promotions with some urgencies actually increase sales. So, I'll give you some examples. I've got some pretty cool hacks that I might share privately, but I won't do it on stage. So, I'm going to go through Headway real quick. You got there Everything's locked, by the way. All right, they've just got one daily read.

Everything else is locked. You hit read, they hit you with the paywall. I exit out of that paywall. Oh, actually, this is view all the plans, just so you guys can see. Now, I exit out of that, they give me another offer. So, I exit out of this paywall, right? I'm like, "I'm not interested. I'm not going to pay you." They give me an offer. They give me 70% off. You got the user. They're interested in a book. They decided not to pay you.

So, you think about any like e-commerce site, you wait a little bit longer, like, "Hey, you want a 10% coupon?" Same type of idea here. And so, here what I want to point out is, look, this is one of their most popular in-app purchases, right? Most people are probably buying on the onboarding process. They're buying that $9 offer, but a lot of people, I don't know how many, but a lot of people are buying that 70% off offer through that reading flow.

That was interesting. Anybody else? Yeah? All right. So, here's some more offers in here. And that's it. Any questions?