Monetization
Paywalls, trials, pricing, subscription metrics
Start with the playbook: mobile-app-monetization — the rules that matter most, with links into these notes.
- Better Sleep onboarding and paywall teardownScreen-by-screen breakdown of Better Sleep (~$600–800k/month) — sound on during onboarding, quiz, social-proof plan screen, BetterHelp cross-promo, discount ladder and forced email.
- Discount offer right after a trial starts (trial-to-discount)Flow shows a "free gift" 30%-off paid plan immediately after a user starts a free trial; worth testing when trial-to-paid is below the 30–40% norm — decide with simple math.
- Hard paywall only for paid traffic (gating by "How did you hear about us?")Use the onboarding attribution question (or an attribution integration) to remove the paywall X only for users from paid social, keeping a soft paywall for organic users.
- Hard vs soft paywallsWhen to force users to pay or leave (hard paywall) versus letting them close it (soft), with a case where adding the X halved revenue.
- How long should the free trial be?Default to 7-day trials on yearly and 3-day on weekly; 14 days occasionally wins, and longer trials look best when offered as an exit offer rather than the default.
- How many plans to show and how to display pricesShow 2–3 plans so the main one has an anchor (removing a monthly decoy tanked sales), and break prices down per period — a per-month/per-week display lifted conversion 38%.
- Paid intro offers ($1.99 first month that renews yearly)Next to the free-trial plan, offer a cheap paid first period (e.g. $1.99 for month one, then $59.99/year) — a tripwire that lifted conversion 19% → 25% and proceeds +21% in one test.
- Pay-what-you-want discount sliderInstead of a fixed discount, let users slide between the default offer and the max discount; it converts better and drove ~10% of one app's sales, though users drift to the lowest price.
- Paywall before sign-up (account creation after purchase)Moving a forced sign-up screen after the paywall raised paywall views from 40% to 94%, trial starts +190% and sales +52% in a fitness app.
- Paywall content — sell the outcome and add context (long paywalls)Paywalls convert better when they show outcomes (before/after, storage saved) and add scrollable context below the fold — one test went from $200 to $1,000 at 15 downloads/day.
- Paywall CTA and microcopy that convertsTested button and microcopy wins — "Continue" over "Subscribe" (+30%), "Start free trial" on Android, "Unlock…" for lifetime, "No payment now" (+30%), the word "free" (+11%).
- Paywall visuals — video, photos and social proofVideo beats photos beats graphics on paywalls (one app went 2.5% → 4.7% → 6.8%), social proof helps, and a money-back guarantee line was winning in a RevenueCat experiment.
- RevenueCat charts and features worth usingThe RevenueCat views Steve checks — revenue by country/transaction type/product, relative trial conversion, realised LTV per customer, Apple Ads attribution — plus Experiments, Paywalls and web Funnels.
- Reverse trials — converting users who closed the paywallGive users who dismiss the paywall a free week of Pro, push them to enable Pro features, then warn that Pro is ending and offer a discount — Momingo's free-user conversion went 0.4% → 4.5%.
- Showing two paywalls in onboarding (and the 8-paywall-views rule)A no-trial paywall early plus a trial paywall later in onboarding lifted start rate from ~3% to 7.7% and monthly sales ~3x; paywall views keep paying off until roughly 8 views.
- Subscription funnel benchmarks (trial start, trial-to-paid, install-to-paid, LTV per install)Target numbers for subscription apps — 5–10% install-to-trial (10%+ with a hard paywall), 30–40% trial-to-paid, ~2–3% install-to-paid, and ≥$3 realised LTV per install before scaling Meta.
- The three-screen pre-paywall sequence (explain the free trial)A 2–3 screen sequence before the paywall ("try free", "we'll remind you before it ends", trial timeline) that raised trial starts 56% in one app; Blinkist, Rest of Me, Cal AI variants.
- Weekly vs monthly vs yearly plans — and which plan gets the trialMonthly plans usually underperform; test weekly vs yearly per category, and put the free trial on the plan with the highest LTV — moving it from yearly to a 3-day weekly tripled sales in one app.
- What to show when users close the paywall (exit offers)Exit-offer ladder for dismissed paywalls — longer (14-day) trial, discount, discount + trial, free credits followed by a review prompt, and finally a forced email capture.
- Why the paywall belongs in onboardingMost subscription buyers convert on day zero, so the paywall should sit inside the first-run onboarding and be seen by ~100% of new users.