Evernote shares the insider secrets of free apps | Hacker News Reader

Evernote shares the insider secrets of free apps

mobile.venturebeat.com

33 pointsterpua8 comments

I wish my app was anything near that sticky. The vast majority of my users are filling an immediate need, so I get something like 75% of sales within 24 hours of trial signup, 85% within a week, and 95% within a month. (Despite being surprisingly regular, those are the actual numbers straight out of my Rails console.)

I suppose that is the "trial user as picked flower" model, as opposed to the "trial user as fine wine" model.

I'm not sure what the secret actually is. Are they saying that the secret to consumer freemium is to have a sticky app with good monetisation? Isn't that true of any kind of app?

Did anyone else figure it out?

I think the take away lesson is to keep your your variable costs low

If subscriptions start pouring in, don't go and hire 10 more engineers.

Aren't engineers fixed costs? Unless they're support or operations engineers...

The cost and the labor used to produce units isn't always the same.

You're right, on paper.

Make application useful for users.

You don't need virality built into application: "There was no built-in sharing function in the software that would have made it inherently viral. The app was simply useful and users shared it with their friends. "

Keep your variable costs low.

They ommited keeping all other costs low.

I'm pretty sure the secret here is to refer to a secret in the title of an article in order to build interest and incoming links, and then just provide a few statistics that, though mildly interesting, are hardly useful in the way that "insider secrets" are expected to be.

> There was no built-in sharing function in the software that would have made it inherently viral. The app was simply useful and users shared it with their friends.

What kind of narrow definition of viral advertising is that? I mean if they shared it by email, it was because the product had viral capability.

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