
How we tripled our revenue by adding one button - ARolek
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/a8e04b2d85fe
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columbo
Good deal, I think I'll buy this.

When it comes to buying games or apps me or our kids the "Unlock All" option
is more than just a nice to have, it's a necessity. For me personally it
doesn't have to do with convenience or perceived value: Rather it's because I
feel that I am not buying into a scam.

If I see item (X) on the market for "Free" \+ in-app purchases I'm flat out
not going to spend any time on it. You offer the same (X) for $5-$20 with
everything unlocked and no gimmicky BS sales tactics then I'll pick it up
without hesitation.

There are too many applications out there designed to be time and money sinks.
The focus tends to be on giving the user just enough and then stalling until
they spend more money. It's a dirty, scummy industry.

If you're selling a product (game, book, series, otherwise) and feel it can
stand on its own merits then offer a fair price for the complete item with no
strings and I'll most likely purchase it.

~~~
Pxtl
Yup. Especially if you're handing the app off to somebody who's just learning
to read - even if the tablet is locked-down, the kid will be frustrated and
need help if they get trapped in the "unlock" content while they were tapping
around randomly and exploring the app.

I'm disappointed so few app developers don't offer a "I just want to pay for
this so you can stop marketing at me" option. Free/Freemium/pay-up-front are
not mutually exclusive revenue streams for an app, release with multiple
revenue strategies.

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msacca
We actually released a version of the app that was $2.99 upfront with no in-
app purchases to test which model worked better for us.

The $2.99 version netted us less than $20 in the lifetime of the application.
It never was ranked anywhere in the app store and thus was virtually DOA.

I agree it would be great to charge upfront - We didn't have a budget to
market these applications to them to show them the value before they reach the
store which would be essential in that business model. The freemium model was
our only way to leverage the rankings in the store and give parents the
ability to see the value in the application before buying.

~~~
Pxtl
That's surprising to me, as a user. On Android I often search for apps, find
the "free" one, read all the reviews and (if it has positive reviews) I seek
out the "pro" version and buy that without ever having installed the "free"
version. That is, I know the "free" version will have the top placement and
the good user-feedback info so that's the one I can quickly get info about,
but I skip the middle-step of installing the "free" one and move straight to
the pay-up-front thing.

I guess my workflow is unusual.

~~~
gdilla
It's really because of Apple and their rules. Apple discourages Free and Pro
versions of the same app (they may have loosened that up recently, but at one
time, in an effort to combat app clutter and promote IAP, they would reject
you). On iOS, there is no real way to try-and-buy without Freemium. At least
in Android, and I think WP, you can get a refund within a certain time frame.
Couple this with users generally seeking out free or super cheap apps and
treating them as fairly disposable, just having a premium app for an upfront
price, not being an established known brand, is basically a death wish.

~~~
Pxtl
Ah. Yes, WP actually has built-in support for offering both a "try" and "buy"
version of each app, allowing two apps to coexist as the same entry... but in
practice, most follow the "free" and "pro" naming-convention and offer two
separate apps.

I hadn't realized that Apple's strict curating prevented these patterns.

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MBCook
You also can't return an app in iOS. If there is something grossly wrong you
might be able to talk support into it, but in general that $5 purchase is
final. I've heard that as a popular reason for the IAP model after people
stopped buying apps after buying real duds for real money.

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programminggeek
Over and over again I see the pattern that if you reduce friction to let
people pay you, you will make more money. Also, discount bundling is smart and
works all over the place. Smart combination.

~~~
mathattack
Very true, especially for parents. If I find an author that I like and trust
and my kids will read, I'll buy everything they write before going through
trial and error again.

Now we just need to see Bilingual Child in other languages and I'll be a
buyer!

~~~
msacca
What languages are you looking for? We have a Mandarin version and we're
working on a French and Portuguese version.

~~~
mathattack
The latter two.

My observation of NY is that parents here don't have cars, so our conspicuous
consumption is how many languages we force our kids to learn.

I'm sold!

~~~
msacca
haha! I love it.

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ssmoot
Didn't see this comment:

We have an 18mo and a 4yo we read books and play games with on the iPad. The
4yo gets to play games or read books on his own as well.

Any app that doesn't let us unlock everything to remove IAP or Ads gets
uninstalled.

For one I don't want my 4yo racking up $$$. But it's also frustrating for both
of us when he clicks a button and gets taken out of his app and doesn't know
what to do now.

So for us at least it's not that "parents can't resist". It's that $13 or
whatever isn't all that much to spend if our kids like it, and we don't want
IAP buttons and/or Ads in front of our 4yo. Perceived "value" has almost
nothing to do with it.

Apple generally gives a 10% discount for buying a season pass. I'd be fine
with that. A greater than 50% discount is surprising.

A better model might be something like FarFaria, where we pay an iTunes
subscription fee to unlock everything and get rid of the ads. So recurring
revenue ($4/month). You might consider it.

I don't claim we're super typical but I doubt we're all that special in
regards to letting our children play with Adware either.

~~~
jwr
You're not that special :-) I do the same thing. And I complain to developers
that place buttons like "see our other apps" or similar on the main screen of
their app.

There aren't many good apps for kids. If your app is good, I will actively
search for other apps done by you — no prompting needed. This is how I
purchased a number of Toca Boca apps, for example.

I also think most good apps for kids are priced too low. I'd have no problems
paying $15 for an app like "Little Digits". In general, I think $5 is fine for
apps which are just fun/games, $10 or more if the app teaches something
useful.

I think smartphones and tablets have a lot of untapped potential as
educational tools, but I'm worried we'll never get there with $1.99 apps.

~~~
ssmoot
re: "see our other apps"

You nailed it. Hate that. Thanks for the app tips. :-)

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Oculus
Great Article, _HATE_ the title. I think it gives the wrong impression. The
title should be:

 _How we tripled our revenue by understanding our users better_

Yes by adding a button you tripled your revenue, but what you really did was
understand your customers/users better and identified that you could have them
spend more by offering a certain deal (which you then implemented by adding a
button).

It (title) gives people the impression that they should be A/B testing button
locations/colors/<insert (99.99% of the time) random property/> when what they
should really be doing is learning more about their users and how to provide
the most value for them which in the end gives you more revenue or profits or
candy :)

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freshfunk
My theory with content apps (I've seen this elsewhere) is that the majority of
money comes from a small percentage of users (1-10%).

These users are what typically is referred to as whales. The biggest obstacle
to monetizing whales is new content. Also, whales tend to be less price-
sensitive. That is, they will buy what content you have at a reasonable price,
and that price should be based on what those (paying) users will pay.

I don't really buy the convenience argument. It's unclear whether they
released 10 books and users were still only buying 2. That is, they were
unable to test whether convenience or the lack of new content was the gating
factor. I suspect it was the latter.

~~~
msacca
You're dead on - our "whales" were 3% of our users.

We never released 10 books w/ out the Buy All option so you're assumption is
correct - we have no data on this. You could be correct in that it was solely
content as a gating factor, had we tested incrementally we would have firmer
data in this area.

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madebylaw
Does anyone know what software he's using to display those charts and graphs?
Is that a 3rd party app or a custom in house dashboard? I've been looking for
something like that for my SaaS business.

~~~
ARolek
The charts are from appfigures.com. I'm not quite sure what they are using to
generate them, but I'm sure the developer console in chrome will tell you ;-)

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joelle
"To date — the ‘unlock all’ has been our highest grossing option." Love this.

And although it sounds so simple (just add a button!) there's really more to
the success of it behind the scenes and you did great job highlighting those
factors (ie: perceived value - convenience, etc.)

Super motiving post :)

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conover
Looks like a sound application of the "make it as easy as possible for people
to give you money" principle. Well done.

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mendicant
I will start by saying that the sentiment of this is simple and true. The
value added by the "Unlock All" button in it's simplicity is valid.

But they didn't "just add a button" they also added over 3x the content to
give that button value.

If they had kept their original 3 books and added the button I'm guessing they
would have seen next to no difference in the bottom line.

My point being that in order for an Unlock/Buy All button to work, you need to
have enough content/product/etc to make the button worthwhile. Just adding a
button may not be enough.

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robomartin
Thanks for sharing.

From a technical standpoint I am wondering about the implementation and
scalability of such an approach. Are people sensitive to having to wait to
download content for their kid's apps?

This app only has, as far as I can tell, ten items per subject. Download size
is about 70 MB, which means all the content for the available subjects is
contained in the one download waiting to be enabled. This is OK for a few
subjects and a few items per subject. I can see a more substantial offering
grow to hundreds of MB if a similar approach is used.

The next approach would be to serve new content off a server when purchased. I
really don't have a clue as to whether or not that is seen as a negative when
it comes to toddler or young child apps.

~~~
msacca
The content is all contained in the base download so there is no wait for the
user.

To serve from our own server there would be a delay - Apple also has a serve
that lets you deliver assets from their server, still a delay, but much faster
infrastructure than we could afford.

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Ellipsis753
Hello. Nice article. I just wanted to point out a small mistake where you
forgot to fill in an amount: "our users who would have spent an average of $."

Hope this helps (and that you read this).

~~~
msacca
Thanks! Fixed now

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gtirloni
"With the release of the next seven books we assumed most users would drop off
purchasing around the fifth book resulting in a max purchase of $14.95 for
less than 20% of our purchasing clients."

Did they?

I must be reading this wrong but it seems you added new contents AND a unlock
all button and that increased the revenue.

Did you have a period where you had the new content but no unlock all button?
How were sales at that period?

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goldvine
"Raising our prices and adding a convenience option paid off big time for us."

Since reading this, we've changed up how we're going to handle the pricing for
HookFeed.

Breaking it up into individual feature upgrades, and easy options/discounts
for buying all of the features. Also increased rates.

We won't know until we test it. But it seems like a much more attractive
offer. Thanks for sharing!

~~~
msacca
Awesome! Can't wait for Hookfeed to launch btw!

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criswell
Great read, but I don't see how this wouldn't be implemented from the start.
It's a lot of clicking, adding up what you're spending and authorizing for in-
app purchases. One click and authorization with a discount seems like a
necessity.

~~~
msacca
Agreed - I wish we had the foresight at the time to have launched with it.
Live and learn.

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ZygmuntZ
From the profit chart it seems to me that there was a boost in Q2 and then in
Q3 things essentially returned to how they were before.

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apl002
Often times, its the smallest changes that generate the most success.

~~~
msacca
It's so true. Tinker. Tinker. Tinker. Boom!

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ph0rque
Is there a video of the app for us non-iDevice users?

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ardeay
Nice share! I think all our apps need that button.

