Copy This $6M App Monetization Strategy

Coming up, I'm going to reveal the $6 million app flow and why you should copy its monetization strategy. Stay tuned. What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of AppMasters.com. And today, we're going to take a look at a period tracker app that is making over $6 million a month and why it has all the right monetization strategies that I've been personally thinking about today and why you should copy it and all the stats and data to support my hypothesis on why this is the right monetization strategy moving forward.

So, without further ado, let's get into it. Here's the app. It's called Flo Period and Pregnancy Tracker. It's been out for some time, so that's why you see so much revenue, but it's making, according to Sensor Tower, it's making about $6 million a month with about million downloads a month as well. And it's ranked, as of this recording, as the number seventh health and fitness app over ratings. And you can see some of the more popular countries, US, Russia, UK, and it is advertising. So, really good stuff. Thank you, Sensor Tower, for changing your UI and making this a little bit easier for us to grab these screenshots. Really appreciate it.

So, shout out to you. But, let's get through the app flow. Here's the Flo. And I'm going to go through quick because it is a really long onboarding flow, which for health and fitness apps makes sense, right? I've seen Noom do this. I've seen other fitness apps have a really, really long onboarding sequence. So, I'm going to go relatively fast, but one thing to note is that it does ask for one thing at a time. So, I asked for my name. I called it Stephanie. ATT prompt, are you pregnant?

So, really easy, really simple questions. It's not bombarding me. I think a lot of apps tend to just ask for a lot of information at once and just like, "Yo, overload, overload, right?" Here, they do a really good job of just asking one question at a time. And here's why I also like it. When you click on, "Why are you tracking your cycle?" So, here's the normal thing. And you say, "Oh, my cycles are normal." It's like, "Don't worry, we'll help you." So, when you tap on this, it'll tell you what what they're going to help you with. And I really like that. And they have one for every single thing on here as well. So, I really like that they're saying, "Why are you here?" I tell the app why I'm here. And then they say, "Hey, we're going to help you out with that." I'm like, "Cool. Thank you."

Become an expert, and then they've got some social proof in the middle. I really like it. They're asking me about how I feel about my period. I don't have one, but I put hated it. And you're like, "You're not alone. Many people feel the same way." and so forth. Again, everything I hit right here, everything I tap on, they will prompt it. And I like what they're doing. They're asking for interaction, and then they hit me with some of the social proof or benefits of the app. We'll get through this a little bit longer, as you can see, more interaction. Are your periods regular? If you put yes, no, it doesn't matter, it gives you a different prompt.

So, I really love this onboarding sequence. And then, they asked for when my last period was. Okay, I get it. I'm a dude talking about periods. Bear with me, all right. All right. So forth, you guys can go through some of these flows. I won't go through every single one of them. Asking for a lot, a lot of different questions. Asking for some social proof, some date. I like how there's health integration here, too. I said not to turn it on, but I like that. And we have seen this with the photo video app that when you ask for access or like health access, it actually increases conversions. So, our photo video client was like, "Hey, give us access to your photos. We're going to edit it." When we moved it before the paywall, we saw an improvement versus after the the paywall. So, it's okay to ask for this access before you show them the paywall. And then I love this personalization. I feel like every app

should have some timer personalizing thing, even if it doesn't do anything. I also love this where they're sort of prepping me for a paywall to come. Like, get ready to have a better life and better periods with Flo. Here's what's happening with Flo. Here's what you get. And I love the imagery here, too, right? The way they've laid it out. Makes it really easy to read. Stephanie, will you brr So, it's like, "Are you ready? Are you getting committed?" So, this is what this screen is all about. Will you track your periods, blah blah, log your symptoms. Here's, "Yes, I will." right?

It's a yes ladder. And if you watch similar videos that I've done with Headway, they do the same thing. It's called a yes ladder. Here, Flo's only doing it once, but I still like it. Again, that's great. So, a little bit of a break, little bit yes ladder, little bit of break screen, then they hit them with the paywall. Now, I have no data to support this, this free enable trial. I think it's the way to go, but I'm going to try to AB test this with a few clients of ours and give you guys the data to see if it's worth doing. But, I'm seeing a lot of this. You see there's no price change when I hit the free trial enabled. 14-day trial is enabled here, so it is pretty long, but obviously it's a period tracker, so I'm going to need some time anyways to do it. What I've heard from others, when we've shown this, this is just an opinion, so there's no data on this, what they have said is that by hitting

that toggle to say enable free trial, I'm more likely to end up paying you because I opted in for the free trial. So, I'm less likely, in other words, I'm less likely to cancel that free trial because I enabled that toggle. Okay? So, makes sense? So, maybe it's a psychological thing versus anything cuz the times I have seen this toggle, it's always been the same price. There's been no discount. Like, give me a discount, you know? If I'm not going to do a trial, give me a discount. So, when you hit view all plans, this is what you see. And now here's the kicker. Pay attention, all right? If you've been watching something else, pay attention right now. They give you a discount. So, if I hit X out of this initial paywall, they hit me with an offer. So, it's 33% off forever. I get it for just $40 a year. So, the normal pricing is $60.

Now, this 33% off is for $40 a year. It doesn't renew at the high rate. It's just $40 a year all the time. I really think this is the best practice moving forward. You want to hit two paywall views. Jake Moore from Superwall said, "Hey, two paywall views is the optimal way." Now, he said paywall onboarding paywall. I think it's paywall discounted. And here's the data why I feel this is the right way. Sorry, Jake. This is the right way to do this, okay?

Most people buy during the onboarding process. Yes, before they even use your app. Anywhere from 60 to 80% of all the people that buy, buy during that first-time user experience, all right? So, that's why I like the discounted offer. But, wait, there's more. This is from Google, by the way, Think with Google. Google says incentives can prompt renewed app usage. So, they found that 30% of people who stopped using an app, they say, "Yes, I'll come back to an app if they give me a discount." So, I'm combining both stats, the fact that most people buy during the onboarding process and most people will buy if I give them a discount, not most people, but 30%, that's not a tiny number, will buy if I give them a discount. So, if you say yes to that first paywall, like you did here, I'm going to hit you with that discount. And I'm going to hit that two paywall rule that Jake said works so well, but I'm going to do it in this

fashion. And I think this is the best way to go. So, after the paywall, I hit X. I didn't pay Flo either one. I'm going to just show you this. They then asked me to sign up. Now, I love this. We have seen data to support this as well. Show the paywall, then ask them to sign up. There are apps out there that force you to sign up. If you force a user to sign up, that paywall view is never going to be 100%. So, you should swap it. We had one client do this where they swapped forcing people to sign up and then showing a paywall versus paywall and then forcing people to sign up. We saw 52% increase in sales by showing the paywall first and then asking people to sign up or sign in. So, I like this, too. And then guess what?

They hit them with another paywall. It's pretty insane. So, that's three paywall views if you've been counting. Asked to sign up, I hit X. I don't want to sign up. And then, they show me the normal paywall view. Now, you can go through the flow. They're kind of walking me through the app. They want access to my motion and fitness activity, blah blah blah. They're walking me through the app, okay? So, here, these are These are all just the tabs of the app. So, here's the today tab. Here's the insights. If I click on one of these, I'm then shown a paywall. I love all this locked content.

As you know, locked content is very valuable. Nothing free, but the value of locked content is users can see how much content there actually is. If you don't want to do a hard paywall, do more locked content. That does work. Then you can see secret chats. I love this. And then lastly, messages. Now, wait. If you are looking at other apps and your competitors, what I want you to always do is close out of the app, go through the flow, close out of the app, and then open it for the second time because that's where a lot of magic happens, okay? So, here's what happens with Flo second app open. Whoa, you can unlock another offer. Get out. So, unlock a full month for just 99 cents, and then it renews at $60. If I hit X out of this, they're going to hit me with the normal paywall once again. I don't think you need to do the normal paywall, but why not? Doesn't hurt, right? We've seen the more paywall views, the more money

you end up making. Now, there are some diminishing returns. You maybe you don't want to distract your users, but before you get all religious and in love with your users, trust me, your users are not thinking about you as much as you're thinking about them. Here's the stats to back this up. The average app loses 77% of its daily active users in just 3 days. That's a stat from Amplitude. So, you have a very short window to try to get a user to subscribe because they're going to lose interest in you quick.

Now, 6 days, users tend to keep an app for just under 6 days before losing complete interest and usually uninstalling altogether. That's a stat from Adjust. And that stacks this up with other interviews we've done with other guests where they'll do re-engagement campaigns after a user initiates a trial, they'll retarget them on Facebook within the first 7 days to make sure they don't cancel that trial. And what we've also seen is that people who pay pay attention. So, that's why you want to be a little bit more aggressive with all your paywalls in the very beginning cuz we had one app that we work with a million downloads a month, 5 million monthly active users.

He saw an improvement in retention when he improved his monetization. Does work. People who pay pay attention. And the last stat I'll hit you with is real data, right? These are Adjust, these are Amplitude. You could say, "Steve, guess what? These guys want to sell me a service, so obviously they're going to try to get me to do something and show stats like, 'Hey, you need us, right? You need Amplitude to track all your events. You need Adjust to get MMP, so you need us.' Then well, look, I wanted to look at a client app. I love this client, by the way. I use this app. I paid for this app. It's in the health and fitness space. So, this is the benchmarks under App Store Connect, and I pulled this, right? It's in the health and fitness space, so I pulled it for dates of January, the first week of January, where everybody's like super high retention rate, right? Especially for health and fitness apps. So, you can

see day one retention. So, those are the people who came back and saw the app, opened the app, and then came back the next day. That's only 23% been able to get. This was his highest, by the way. I looked at the most recent ones, not that high, okay? So, this was the highest that he was able to achieve. Now, this is an app that I absolutely love. It's a niche app. It has all the makings of what I really love about an app. High retention, high engagement, high install to trial rates. That's what I'm trying to show you that even for an app like this where proceeds per paying user, 20 bucks, right? Day seven is 7%, day 28 is 4%, like really, really good app. I'm a big fan of this app. And even he cannot get more than 23% day one retention. Shows you that you really, absolutely have a short window of time. These app downloads are hot users. They're really warm leads.

They're coming in having analyzed your App Store ratings, your screenshots. Just think about how you make a purchase on Amazon. You're like comparing all these products, you're looking at the reviews, you're looking at the number of reviews, you're doing all these things. So, that when you hit add to cart, when you go on to a product page, you're more likely to convert. That's what an app download is. They're looking at the reviews, they're looking at your screenshots, and they're saying, "Hey, I believe in this app. Let me try this app out." They're not like, "Let me click on this banner and just see this." So, it's high-intent users. That's why you have this short period of time because they might be really motivated when they download it, and so you got to catch them when they're really motivated. And when they're really motivated, they aren't paying you, they're going to actually use your app. And ultimately,

that's what you want them to do anyways, right? There it is. Just to recap, point number one, show your paywall during the onboarding. I shouldn't have to tell you this if you've been following the channel. It's a well-known fact. So, show your paywall during the onboarding, all right? Number two, show discounted offer after the initial paywall. It works. I gave you the data to back it up. I have data from other clients with different types of campaigns we've run similar to this that works. I just think it's easier to hit next, just show them another paywall. Make sure you have no trial. I've seen one of our clients, I saw his app and I was like, "Yo, why are you giving them trial? There's already a discount." No trial, all right? Show the trial on the initial paywall, but no trial on the discounted. Next, I think this is best practice, too, show a 99 cents a month offer with a yearly renewal on second open. Now, if you

caught my live stream with Lana a couple of weeks ago, she talked about the power of a $1 transaction because people who pay pay attention. Even if you're able to get $1 out of them, they're more likely to convert to that $60 a year if they just give you that $1. Remember the old adage that it's easier to sell to an existing customer instead of trying to find a new one. And that's what this 99 cents offer is all about. All right, guys, that's it. You got any value out of this, do me a favor, go share it with a friend, go post it on Instagram, and tag me at Steve P. Young. Make sure you hit that like and do all that fun stuff that YouTube loves, like, share, subscribe, all that jazz. And if you're looking for help with your app monetization, your app growth, well, check out our agency appmasters.com.

Till next time. See you on the next video.