
Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ideas to monetize it - Rabidgremlin
A bit of background, I built the app because I was running an old Nexus One and the Facebook app was too large to install alongside my other &quot;essential&quot; apps (15mb at the time, its now 38mb!). So I spend about an hour or so and cobbled together the app.<p>For almost a year and a half it had less than 1000 installs and then in Feb this year it started to rapidly gain installs. It is currently sitting at 241,000 installs (with 55,000 active users).<p>I figure I should take advantage of this and figure out some way to monetize the app.<p>Unfortunately the app is all about size and trust (as it sandboxes the FB web app) so most of the ideas I&#x27;ve come up with don&#x27;t seem to be in the spirit of the app.<p>Some of the ideas I&#x27;ve had:<p>* Put in ads and add an in-app purchase to turn them off 
* Put in a &quot;donation&quot; in-app purchase
* Add support for other social networks but only enable them after an in-app purchase<p>The app also has some pretty interesting demographics. Most users are from non-English speaking countries: Turkey 18.14%, Philippines 8.38%, Mexico 7.46%, Morocco 6.52%, India 5.27%, Indonesia 4.10%, Brazil 4.04%, Thailand 2.72%, United States 2.59%, Colombia 2.44%, Others 38.33%<p>The app is called &quot;Social Lite&quot; see here for more info https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.rabidgremlin.sociallite<p>My current go-forward plan is put a survey in place and poll the users on what they want and what they would pay for
======
kriro
I'd approach this differently and from reading your replies you seem to be a
fairly laid back (non "cutthroat") guy so this might be interesting for you.

Use it as a fun experiment to see how much you can grow it not how much you
can monetize. Formulate some assumptions and test them. I'd personally pick
one of the countries and see if I can push installs in that country hard
(might be difficult due to language issues). Try to figure out how people
learn about your app and install it. Figure out what phones it is installed on
and write a blogpost on using your app on that phone etc.

55k active users isn't bad. If you keep on growing someone will get interested
even if you didn't monetize before (possibly even because you didn't)
especially since it's not a "fad app" but something sustainable as long as
there's low resource phones. [worst case you can use it if you ever want to
apply at Facebook]

tl;dr: use it as your private growth-lab and learn a lot :)

~~~
scyllax
Totally agree if you don't need the money it's the way to go.. it may become
something even bigger.

~~~
amelius
On the other hand, if it generates some money, it can perhaps allow you to
work on it full-time, and you can make it grow even bigger! :)

------
aaronbrethorst
Unlikely to succeed. Your users won't want to be monetized and they're from
countries that are relatively unmonetizable. You don't say what you do for a
living, but—personally—I'd slap this on my resume as a 'look at the awesome
user base my apps have had' sort of event, and move on. Great way to gain
better leverage for the next job move or raise request, but not likely to be
more than that at present.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Good point. I'm a software dev by trade. Considering the opportunity costs,
perhaps I should just use the app's success for brag rights.

~~~
Sektor
Silly question perhaps but is the app able to display notifications?
(primarily for 'messages' from facebook) as this is the main reason most
people install the official apps. Perhaps you could build a messaging client
that works in conjunction with it and that could be your income stream?

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Unfortunately this wouldn't be technically possible as the app just wraps the
FB mobile web app.

~~~
gardnr
technically it is possible.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Tell me more... I suppose one could do some form of page scrapping in the
background and then generate a notifucation

------
polyvalent01
Hi OP I'm from morocco and I can tell you that NOBODY in Morocco will pay your
app. Why ? I'll tell you why.

Here in the 3rd world countries we don't have credit card unless we get a job,
and when I say "get a job" I mean 28 and up . Morocco is very different from
Europe and US because we don't have unemployement and just to make a living is
really hard.

Also Piracy here is something commun because our ISP ( and we have only one
lol who fuck the market with their High price and low value) Doesn't block
torrent, as long as you stay out of Illegal stuffs...

Also even if I have a credit card at 21 ( I worked in a call center in the
last summer so I can afford it) I will never lose money on apps. First: I'm
poor Second : We only have 10 000 Dirhams ( 900 Euro ) to spend in a whole
YEAR. Wich means we're very careful on what we spend money on.

So the best thing I can tell you is to add a banner and one or two Interstial
ads and NOBODY will bat an eye .

Hope I gave you an insight OP :)

~~~
neil_s
I'd say the same about Indian users like myself. The sort of people who are
downloading this app on their last-generation hardware are unlikely to pay for
in-app purchases, and definitely not for donations. Although you do have
reviews on the Play Store claiming to the contrary, so your call to make.

Also worth evaluating whether the PPC network you're thinking of using will
pay you the same rate for audiences in these countries as they do for
audiences in the West (which is already very little)

------
BinaryIdiot
This is tough. When webOS was announced I got into the early Palm developer's
program and created an application. It was kinda neat but also not incredibly
complex. After the Pre was released within about 6 months it had over 100,000
downloads (which, for a new OS and device, seemed kinda awesome!). It was a
free app but I thought I could try to monetize it a little.

First step was to try ads. It went from highly rated to about 3 stars because
everyone hated the ads (understandable). I tried putting them at the top,
bottom, middle; nothing worked at all.

There were no in-app purchases for webOS (or really any platform at the time)
so I did what everyone else started doing: when they launched being able to
pay for apps I provided my app for $.99 with no ads. After 2 years of running
I made $9.

Essentially I destroyed the user-base my app initially had by trying a couple
of ways to monetize them that provided poor user experience. I'm not sure what
the best solution is here but don't make my mistake and worsen your user
experience to make money; it won't work.

FYI for anyone curious my app on webOS was a take on the tip calculator. I
know I know "why would you try to charge for a TIP calculator!?" but I thought
the spin I had was novel, you could rate different parts of your restaurant
experience to get an exact amount to tip rather than dealing with percentages
at all (it only showed you the percentage after it calculated the tip). I had
done a ton of tip research at the time and thought the idea might be worth
something (plus I was young and dumb). It even had bill splitting! But yeah in
the end I really shouldn't have charged for it I mostly wanted to experiment
to see if I could monetize it and I ended up completely destroying it.
[http://www.webosnation.com/dumb-waiter-free](http://www.webosnation.com/dumb-
waiter-free)

~~~
adhambadr
I think nowadays "experimenting" monetisation methods and pricing strategy can
be done in a much safer way than back then. for example geographical rollout,
A/B testing on a small non-important niiche (that won't probably monetise
big). Its very normal (or essential) to experiment stuff like that without the
fear to "destroy the user base the app initially had"

------
gabchan
SocialLite is a great name btw.

Monetization via end users is not realistic. This is my hypothesis regarding
your user profile: (1) low-income or no-income aka cost sensitive, (2)
possibly bad mobile data infrastructure, (3) pay-as-you-go mobile data or
limited wifi access.

Your app is valuable because it is a REPLACEMENT for the company's real app,
because the real deal (as you put it nicely) is too large.

I would perhaps develop clones of your app for other social networks, and have
a constellation of SocialLite apps for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr,
etc...

Why?

Because the value is in how lightweight you are but still be able to satisfy
end user needs. Do not add ads, or in-app purchase bullshit. Your users don't
want that. And customers are gods.

Why?

Because you are collecting DATA. Usage patterns and quantifiable habits. The
companies would be interested in that. Even just Facebook _might_ be
interested in what stats you have now, and having data on their frienemies
adds proportionally more value.

But

Before you write another line of code, please reach out and get some feelers
to see if the companies indeed want data and what data they are looking for.
Since you are in developing markets, and companies want to expand there, you
are providing a unique and rare insight into those markets. Data driven
insights are better than anything else.

P.S.:

I would not survey the users. Bad UX (specifically bad information timing) and
whatever little data you ascertain will not be actionable anyway.

~~~
brador
How would you price the value of data? Who do you go to to sell data?

If you had to guess, how much would FB pay for this apps data?

Are there any hot startups in this data space?

~~~
abannin
I fear that FB (or any other company) would not view this as a wonderful
opportunity to purchase data about it's users, but rather another company
stealing it's data. Remember when there were companies who made money off
Twitter's API? FB is infinitely more territorial.

------
kirualex
I had the same idea 4 years ago and did the exact same thing for several apps.
This was a bad idea : [https://medium.com/@kirualex/an-android-developers-
nightmare...](https://medium.com/@kirualex/an-android-developers-
nightmare-105cb3f3beef)

Google content policy is now very clear : Do not post any applications whose
primary function is to: generate traffic to a website; or provide an overview
of a website that you do notown and you do not handle (unless you have
permission of the owner / administrator of the website).

~~~
rquirk
Wow, that's quite a surprise. I just checked the terms you quoted -
[https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-
policy.html](https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html) \-
and of course you're absolutely right.

I can see why Google specify this since a store filled with spammy apps
wrapping popular sites would be bad for everyone. But this puts the kibosh on
privacy-focused apps like Tinfoil for Facebook or the Twitter equivalent, and
bloat-reducing apps like the OP's. I imagine that these have yet to be
suspended simply because nobody at Google has noticed them.

------
cvitale
Mr slightly viral,

You priced your app at zero. It became a success. Monetizing your app now will
probably make it less so. Rather monetize by building good will with your
customers (brand) and applying lessons learned towards development of your
app2. If it's good enough you can charge for it.

~~~
andrea_sdl
I second this too.

I wonder why are many advices in this topic don't consider the relationship
between the OP and his users. That trust has a value, and OP should ever
destroy it.

~~~
kagamine
I can't be the only one who clicks on the developer's name in the app store to
see what else they have available when the app I am using from them is good
and free. If I get a good free app I'll be more likely to pay for the next
one.

OP should think long term, he is a developer by trade, a quick buck now isn't
a smart move imo.

------
lsiebert
Don't put third party advertisements in. If you are going to do any
advertising, come up with a second project that might be of interest to your
demographic, but that costs money, and advertise for your own product.

I'd consider some sort of soccer score app that integrates with FB.

------
onuryavuz
Actually there is an official app published by Facebook, for size-sensitive
users. It's called Facebook Lite and here is the google store link :
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.l...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.lite)

------
drawkbox
With a free app you have to have your monetization in before launch. But this
is a great platform to launch other apps from. Apps even next to a popular
free app get more visibility/discovery. Many companies launch a free app
designed solely for users to help drive pay app usage.

Donation is probably the only option as advertising for those areas aren't as
high in payout. Don't be sad by the letdown you will get from donation though,
it is always way lower than expected. Ad supported apps also don't really get
that much money.

The only successful app strategy is to have quality apps and as many as you
can support with quality levels.

------
ceejayoz
Be mindful of what Facebook's lawyers will think of you monetizing their logo
and their website.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
I'm careful to never mention Facebook anywhere in the app or its description.
FB is in logo and of course it does load the Facebook app so a very thin line
I think :)

~~~
reagan83
Hey Rabid congrats on the success. If interested, you should email me @ rbw at
fb dot com. Edit: not a lawyer :)

------
angryasian
I'm not accusing you of anything, but

Tinfoil is a great app thats similar. Also free and open source -
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco.fbwrapper)

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Yes it is.

I actually came across Tinfoil after I released my app. It does the same thing
buts its "marketing message" was different so I did not find it when I first
went looking for this type of app :(

------
rnovak
I am/was in the same situation as far as popularity goes with my desktop
application (for OSX), and I personally went the route of not monetizing at
all. To me, the knowledge gained through every feature I added and every bug I
fixed is/was more valuable than the money I could have made.

Then again, I have a great paying job that I love, and I primarily built it
because I couldn't find a similar application with the features I was looking
for, so other people finding it useful is just a bonus. Plus, it's a great way
to show that I have passion for development outside of work, and that I'm
continually trying to improve myself as a programmer/engineer. I even provided
detailed Arch/Design/Req docs in the github repos, just in case anyone was
interested in looking.

Of the options listed in this thread, I like the idea of adding an "in-app"
purchase for the feature you mention gets requested a lot (photo uploads I
believe). The knowledge that will give you is immensely valuable (being able
to turn features on/off in the same application), if you don't already have
that built in.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, but you should do whatever you think will make
you happy.

------
jmbrook
First of congratulations on the app, it is fulfilling a real need.

You have cracked the first problem of getting people to download + use +care
about the app.

I like the idea of doing the survey however from my experience (we did a paid
for Google Customer survey) our users want more content and for price of free
which wasn’t hugely useful.

Personally I think you have three easy options:

1\. Add some low level not too obtrusive adverts in (you will get a nice
trickle of money in)

From my own experience of putting adverts into a util app
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teazel&hl=...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teazel&hl=en))
no-one minds at all. The key is to not go overboard. We have banners that
don't refresh too often, disappear if they going to draw over a dice. The
number of apps I see show full screen adverts at start up, every page
transition etc - all very icky.

2\. As others have said try and grow it and use it for Resume/CV building. My
one reservation on this is make sure you actually try and capitalise on it.
I’m reminded of friends staying in awful jobs due to the training/experience
and years later never really harvesting the rewards.

3\. Use it to cross promote another app (either by yourself or sell the
space). Getting an app to be downloaded is so hard now having this to kick
start the next project is a great de-risker.

I would go for option 1 or 3 depending on whether you have other apps in the
pipeline.

As an aside is this lightweight wrapping of a webapp model work for other
providers? LinkedIn etc?

------
Gustomaximus
Nice app. Developing countries love their saving data (I used to work with an
app in a similar vein). In your shoes Id likely move forward in 3 stages;

1) Bug Fix - if you can build momentum on growth your really onto something.
Given the 80% inactive rate, have you looked at why people are uninstalling (I
saw a bunch of no photo upload button on my quick look)? Improving scale if
probably the best way to make money if you don't really need the cash now.

2) Insert reasonably unobtrusive ads and see how they go. Given the countries
involved you'll be surprised that even with a large number of users you're not
hitting big money. Possibly try a few different ad placements to see the user
experience vs. clicks vs. payments.

2) Once you have ads and know how many clicks you are getting, look for local
opportunities for the bigger country(ies). Things like sponsorship of
affiliate/offer type deals. These should pay more but come with a real time
cost.

3) Once you have a view how much a customer is worth, decide if you want to
take the cash out or re-invest back into growing the app. Ideally if you can
spend $X on recruitment and get back $X+Y you should chase growth. If not,
enjoy riding the organic wave.

Regarding the poll, I'd not bother. What people say and do are often very
different. I'd be more inclined to test ads and placement for real response.
Monitor for feedback and possibly make a ad free version if people want.

I've heard donation buttons don't really work.

Adding additional social support sounds good but at a price? Not sure there.
These markets are super cost conscious so I'd personally look to focus on
growth first and secondly monetising the user at no cost to them.

Good luck

~~~
pbreit
The app page indicates that it might actually use more data since it wraps the
web site.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
It does.

------
ggurgone
Here's how you could play it:

1) Play dirty: serve high resolution media (pic an videos) to the users - this
results in more data downloaded = costs more money to your users. Here is
where you ask them to pay a fair monthly subscription that would cost them
less than $x-internet-provider-money (you can make tailor made plans depending
on the stats)

2) Make it faster for who pays! At the very top of the page you could add a
speed indicator (something like a thin progress bar) to indicate the speed of
the page. Then make one of the views (the profile page for example) super fast
to tease your users! and the ask for upgrade to premium to get all teH things
fast :)

No matter how you play it I would "re-brand" it and remove any reference to
the FB UI - which I guess is (c) Mark Boy

~~~
woah
All of these ideas will make your users hate you.

~~~
collyw
They are using it because its lighter. Lighter means faster. So taking away
those two features and you are left with no reason for users to use it.

------
makuchaku
Script the build & make such tiny apps for all popular permission hogging apps
with websites. Then cross-promote them within your app.

This is what I would do :)

------
jcoffland
Many apps or softwares are successful because the price is right. Often the
right price is free. You need to consider if your user base even has money to
give you. Your best bet is to use traffic from your current app as a way to
sell another related service.

------
fpvracing
Looks like a cool app and you've got some great reviews.

I would not add advertisements as you will risk damaging the good relationship
you currently have with your users. Try adding a donation button and just see
whether it brings in enough money. Adding support for other social networks
also seems like a good idea, but a lot more work.

I'm actually in the process of developing my first Android app for our
community at [https://fpvracing.tv](https://fpvracing.tv). Any tips /
tutorials you would recommend?

~~~
Rabidgremlin
That is awesome! I'd suggest:

1) You work you way through all the Android dev YouTube vids from Google:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/androiddevelopers](https://www.youtube.com/user/androiddevelopers)

2) Use the app compat and app design support libraries

3) Test on real devices with different versions of the Android OS

------
eddiedunn
Kickstarter campaigns often charge people extra money for getting access to
Alpha and Beta builds. People are impatient, many want stuff sooner rather
than later, so they pay for it.

You could offer a modified version of this; allow premium customers access to
new features earlier, but roll out the updates to your free subscribers
eventually as well. After a delay of 3 months perhaps?

It will gently encourage people to upgrade, but those who don't want to pay
won't feel cheated as they will get the features eventually as well.

------
sdernley
Congratulations on the success of the app!

When i've been in similar situations i've tried to look forward and not back.
By that I mean, if it's getting a lot of downloads then let the people who
have already downloaded it have it, don't change their experience by adding
adverts in or damaging parts of the experience. Charge for new people to get
the app. Saying that, I've never had it with as many people already downloaded
the app, but i'd like to think i'd still do the same thing.

I have an app that I originally charged for and it got very little downloads,
I made it free for a while and didn't pay much attention to the downloads,
went back to it at a later time and noticed it had a lot of downloads so I
started charging for it just to see what would happen, I expected to make it
free again within a week due to no downloads. Downloads obviously dropped a
bit, but still kept a pretty consistent level and have done ever since. I make
a point of always improving the app though, so maybe that helps too but I just
think it comes down to timing and having those previous downloads could help,
it seemed to help me.

I'm not sure if you can turn a free Android app into a paid one though, I
don't think you used to be able to, so that might all be pointless and you'd
have to make a new id for it, but you've proved people definitely want it.

Whatever you do, good luck. I'm sure having a high downloaded app will help
you at some point even if you don't manage to do as much as you want with this
one. I hope you do.

------
RossTech
Instead of all the pop ups, or ads etc, how about just a simple message to
users asking for a contribution. It's a much more direct, and far less
abrasive approach, plus it's personal and seems reasonable. I'm betting it
will convert at 5 - 10% of users aged 16+.

E.g. Hi, I hope you are enjoying this app and finding it useful. Could you
support this app by paying a one-time fee of just $1? It will allow me to keep
the app updated and best of all running ad-free! Thanks in advance.

~~~
speedyapoc
Based off of OP's user demographics, I'm really doubtful that a donate option
would convert 5-10% or make him any considerable money at all.

I own a similarly popular free app and I offer an option to pay a very small
fee to remove ads and get other features within the app. The income from this
purchase (which actually benefits the user as opposed to a donation) takes
about 5 months to equal what I do in a day off of ads.

------
blazespin
Rather than monetize, I think instead you should try to get more people to
install it. Make it better. Add features to block ads or something. Clearly
you've built something people want. Find a way to engage with your users and
build more trust with them. Your next app will be quite popular with them, I'm
sure.

You're trying to monetize too early. Get real traction first. A million
dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.

------
samet
I developed and maintained a game for Android devices for 3 years and the game
was for Turkish players only.

80 percent of my time was spent for optimizing the game for low-end devices;
low-end devices lead the market because of those are the ones that majority of
high school (or even primary school) students' parents could afford.

Not surprisingly, revenue coming from low-end devices segment was almost zero
because young people using these devices are usually under 18 and were not
allowed to have credit cards. Even relatively older ones (such as college
students) didn't spend any money because they were trying to survive as
students with a limited budget.

Nexus One is a great smartphone with an acceptable large screen and you can
still buy a working one from the second hand market. The weakest point of this
cheap-heavy duty device is the limited memory, which is you focused on.
(Actually it can be hacked to extend internal memory to micro SD card, but
still hard for many people.)

Another example of low-end devices is Samsung Galaxy Ace. That is, my friend,
a time and effort killer with almost no returns except always complaining free
users.

------
lucaspiller
I have an app in the Google Play store, it has around 1,500 active installs
and I decided to do a bit of an experiment last year by releasing a paid pro
version. It was exactly the same, it just had a different colour icon and
'Pro' branding. I put the price at 99c/99p, and put a link to it in the free
edition description (the descriptions were the same other than that). I was
pretty surprised when people actually bought it...

I think I made about $5 before I realised after a couple of weeks, and then I
took it down. The app hadn't been touched for a few years and wasn't the best
quality, so I didn't feel happy for basically scamming people. I was
considering doing the same for a donate version, but wanted to improve the app
first - which I never got around to.

I think you could get some income by doing something similar, but it's very
unlikely to replace your main income.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
I don't consider it scamming to provide a paid version without extra features.
There are other software products that have this, like Winrar and Cyberduck.

Additionally, if I see a "free" and "paid" version of something I think I
need/want, I always get the paid version, because I don't want ads. I'd rather
pay 99c~2,99c for no-ads then having those freaking annoying ads.

I want an ad-free home. No ads on my PC, TV or phone. Nowhere.

~~~
concerned_user
It really depends on how it was worded, if it was saying that paid version is
exactly the same and is there to express your support, then it is not a scam.

------
raverbashing
Don't monetize the app, but build from the success of it.

You have an App with 240k installs, that's very good in a CV or when pitching
your services.

This demographic is not going to pay you, sorry.

Now, developing apps that are light and work in older phones can be a
marketable skill.

------
philbarr
I wouldn't bother with ads. One of my apps [1] has about 13,000 active users
and I make ~£20 a month with it. Ads just don't make you any money. Although
this is just my experience, obviously, and there may be reasons why the ads in
my app aren't as successful as yours could be.

Still, I think it's probably not worth annoying your users for the paltry
amount of cash you'll raise.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplyappe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplyapped.sayit)

------
kneonx
You could add a 1 second splash count down whenever they open the app from
multi tasking, and a simple payment can disable that. It's not an ad. Just a
countdown timer with an unlock feature. For a typical user, it wont be that
big of a pinch, but for power users who cycle between apps and check back it
could be worth monetizing.

Once again you're not putting ads, you're just exercising your right to
monetize something you built ;)

OR if there are premium features you can push out that are not ad-removal
related you might stand a chance at converting 1% of your users (freemium
model)

------
garagemc2
☻ I'm sure everyone else has gone through the pro's and cons of different
monetisation and product strategies.

☻ But having looked through the thread, I don't believe anyone has asked you
to think about Why the app is getting traction.

☻ You can come up with your own hypothesis or you can ask your users.

☻ Once you've understood why, you'll be better placed to take the next step.
Whether that involves monetisation, creating clones, developing the app, not
developing the app - that is up to you.

☻Tl;dr Find out why users like your app and try to strategise based on that.

------
emilioolivares
This kind of happened to me. I've tried building serious apps with limited
success and traction. I'm a huge reddit/imgur fan so a built a hobby site for
myself using reddit's api to browse through their images:
[http://www.flipmeme.com](http://www.flipmeme.com). Currently gets 100k
uniques per month, can't monetize!!! In other words, the stuff you really work
on doesn't get anywhere, random stuff you build as a joke suddenly takes off?!

~~~
deciplex
Why can't you monetize? You could stick ads in there, at least.

~~~
emilioolivares
It's against Imgur's terms of service. You can't show ad's and direct link to
their images. Any other ideas :).

~~~
deciplex
Ask for donations. If the donations don't at least cover the cost of running
the site, shut it down (unless you're happy paying out of pocket).

------
pbreit
How about the WhatsApp approach: first year free, then $0.99 per year?

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
WhatsApp has a distinct advantage in the fact that it can rely on lock-in
since the app itself is responsible for the connections that are made within
it; Once the .99 price-tag comes along, you are faced with paying for it or
losing your entire WhatsApp chat network/groups/etc. With OP's software, all
of those connections are handled by FB, not his app. Therefore, if he were to
charge something, people could simply opt for the next-best one that is free.

------
qwz
Looks like the same kind of users as Opera Mini which has high number of users
in Indonesia, India, Pakistan etc. They face similar problems as you do. Many
users which don't have much money.

Idea 1) Sell it to Opera Software Idea 2) Do like Opera and sign deals with
mobile network operators to include operator content Idea 3) Sell Internet
access through your app. Internet access is normally sold by hour in these
countries. Sign deals with operators and similar. Idea 4) Advertising in app

------
pratyushag
Given your motivations and comments, I would recommend that you have a
whatsapp like subscription in place. One can get around paying for the
subcription by inviting friends. For best results, make it easy enough to
select all for the invite [you will soon realize that you'll get most of your
users from such people who don't mind inviting a friend to an app they like a
lot]. At some point in the next 1-2 years, you would likely get to 1 million
downloads!

------
ghosh
Looks like fb got the same idea now.
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/04/download-facebook-
lite/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/04/download-facebook-lite/) wrt
monetization you can try adding a splash page, which the users can see they
when login/log out of the app. Can connect you to some Indian app / game guys
if you are interested.

------
fabiandesimone
Why not put 'App Recomendations' messages that drive installs for other apps?

There's a ton of CPA networks that pay anywhere from .5 to $3 for an app
install.

------
Raphmedia
1\. Do not touch the current app. As everybody said, you will simply lose
people.

2\. Create extra features for a PRO version. Perhaps simply a tab that let you
switch between Twitter and Facebook? From what I understand, your app is
pretty much a wrapper with a mobile site inside of it. Add tabs for other
social websites. Pinterest, Twitter, etc. Something simple that people are
going to be willing to pay a few extra coins for.

------
aniketpant
I was looking around and I found
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.l...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.lite)
which comes from Facebook itself. Strangely it is incompatible with all my
devices and I think this is due to a play store location based restriction (I
am based in India).

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Yeah I noticed that... very interesting

------
unicornporn
If you do this I suspect most users will move to "Tinfoil for Facebook". It
does exactly what you describe and is popular and open-source.

------
andreasvourkos
Rabidgremlin since you are planning to put a survey in place to understand
what your users need, you can actually integrate Pollfish
([http://www.pollfish.com](http://www.pollfish.com)) which actually allows you
both to survey your users for free easily, and also monetize in a different
way than classic ads!

------
nait
You could try adding a "Social Lite Deals" page where you put affiliate offers
(e.g. stuff with reduced prices from Amazon).

This way you provide some kind of additional value and don't risk offending
your user base. Granted it won't be as effective as ads but perhaps it's a
good starting point to figure out what your users like and accept.

------
crdoconnor
Add an upgraded app that lets users redirect their traffic via servers you
control. If they installed your app for privacy reasons, give them a reason to
pay you for more privacy.

If Turkey is very popular that tells me that your users might want to conceal
the fact (from their government) that they use facebook at all.

~~~
mavromatis
May I ask why you think that?

------
whalesalad
One of your recent reviews: "Cool! (mainly because there're no ads) To
developers: keep ads out please -- willing to pay for it. Android ads are
getting extremely intolerably utterly annoying and painful and stupid. Also,
please keep network traffic minimal."

------
adam12
Create a supporting website and put ads on that. Blog about updates and maybe
even your experience creating the app. If you had that right now, you could be
getting a lot of traffic from HN.

I'm afraid if you put ads in the app you will lose a lot of users and get
negative feedback.

------
mastercoms
When I think light, the last thing I think of is ads. Ads will make your app
feel bloated to users.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Agree

------
rajington
Monetization just got a little tricker :(
[http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/04/facebook-lite-
app](http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/04/facebook-lite-app)

------
bond
My opinion is not to listen people telling you not to put ads. Remember, your
demographics is not first tier so that advice doesn't apply... You'd be
surprised what a banner or an interstitial can bring on those countries....

------
bthornbury
I have very similar install numbers to your app on one of mine and I have had
excellent monetization off a single banner ad across the bottom.

It reduces the usable screen area by only a little and is hardly intrusive to
the experience.

------
tlogan
55k active users is super! Since you are popular in 3rd world countries I
would suggesting adding something your users can earn some extra money
directly from phone. Maybe fiverr integration, odesk, amazon turk, etc.

------
z3t4
You can take the opportunity to build your brand, or someone else's. Gaining
peoples thrust and building a reputation is hard, but very critical! Fifty
thousands active users are worth about one million dollars.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
A million dollars? How so ?

~~~
z3t4
It's generally what's people are willing to spend on exposure, in lets say
commercials, calculated for one year. It's an estimate on what you would earn
from adds in one year.

Introducing ads might make the users leave though, so be careful. There's also
a risk Facebook would have something to say about your monetizing on their
product.

So my suggestion is to implement that feature ppl want, let them know about
the awesome dude behind it, and that you care about their user experience.
Then leverage the goodwill it creates to get free exposure and users to your
other product(s), that are monetized. Basically you can use the app to build a
loyal user base.

An example is the dude who made Flappy Bird. He also got lots of downloads and
exposure for his other games just by having his name on it.

~~~
Intoo
50K DAU won't get you more than 500k$ in annual revenues from ads

------
dutchbrit
Don't do ads, people will uninstall it in a jiffy. Create a second app, call
it Social Lite Plus or something, and have some extra options - bit of a
freemium version, but not sure if that's a possibility?

------
ranrub
Is this really just a webview that loads m.facebook.com?

------
abannin
Congrats! This is really awesome. You've found some amount of product-market
fit, and that is really really amazing. I think you should keep going, as this
is when things start to get hard. You've cleared a few hurdles, and now you
need to clear some very different obstacles.

From the countless hours that I've spent trying to figure out how to get users
to give me money, I can confidently say that a surveying your users about
monetization is the worst data you will ever see.

I can also say, with 200% confidence, that ads are not the right decision at
this point. Here is why: 1) They aren't your users. These are FB users, and if
you start showing ads to them, FB will view this as stealing ad space from FB.
Not a good spot to be in. 2) The geo distribution seems pretty clear that the
light weight solution is a compelling feature. Ad SDKs are notoriously heavy
on the binary, sometimes 20MB. Ads also use a large amount of data and are
often slower than everything else. Most web pages could load in a fraction of
time if they dropped the ads. So, putting in ads seems to kill the biggest
feature of your app.

I don't buy the argument that you can't monetize that geo distribution. It's
true that those geos are overlooked by larger companies, but that also means
less competition. Just know that you're fighting for low ARPU users. Whatsapp
used this strategy wonderfully. When their competitors were fighting over
iPhone penetration in the US, they were building for feature phones in similar
geos. They also kept the price point low, keeping in mind they had lower ARPU
users.

I suspect that your best solution would be to find a compelling in-app-
purchase (IAP). To do this, you'll need to start knowing everything about your
users. What features do they use? What features do they not use? When do they
use the app? What do they want to accomplish with the app? Remember, Line
started selling stickers when everyone could use emotiacons. Sometimes the
winning business model is the thing that no one thought to try or everyone
thought was too dumb. What is FB missing from the experience that you could
add? I've always been impressed at how user's actions can be the opposite of
what they say. Your users will reveal their intent by what they do, so watch
them very carefully.

I suspect a very telling analysis would be to start comparing users who hit
the day-7 mark and leave vs those who hit the day-7 mark and stay. My guess is
that you'll start seeing some patterns about how retained users are
interacting with the app, and then double down on that.

As a side note, your DAU to installs ratio seems to imply poor retention for a
social app. This may be because the growth is targeting the wrong type of
user. Regardless, this is a number that you'll probably want to get to know
very well. If you do have lower-then-average retention, find a way to turn it
into a strength with other numbers that are really impressive, such as
engagement.

This is really, really awesome and you should be proud of what you have
accomplished. The next stage of growth will be harder to scale, but the
bragging rights are a few orders of magnitude higher up there. Keep it up!

~~~
Rabidgremlin
Thanks for your comments, lots to think about

------
antigirl
Wouldnt the users get a better experience using the browser rather than using
webview wrapped site?

------
maerF0x0
Do the whatsapp thing. Free for 1 year. $1 afterwards. Its affordable even in
all those countries.

------
zkhalique
Yes, add google admob and facebook audience network ads, and a way to turn
them off

------
mbesto
Make a pro version with a few extra features and sell it for $2.99.

------
julienmarie
FYI, Philippines is an English speaking country.

------
codecamper
You spent an hour to write an app? ok.

~~~
Rabidgremlin
I know, the app is embarrassing simple, maybe a 100 lines of code but
apparently people find it useful.

