Comment by yccheok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yccheok | Hacker News Reader

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Thank you for sharing your success. I hope I can learn one or thing from your sharing.

Currently, I'm selling a consumer productivity app (Android only) in Google Play store.

The characteristics of this category are large consumer demand, and low barrier to entry. Because of this, there are a lot of players in this category.

My pricing model is pretty simple - $20 one time payment to unlock everything. I know I can earn significant more by having subscription / in-app advertising. Since I can make a living with current income, I will leave it that way. I want to sacrifice short-term good profit, in exchange for long term growth.

Initially, I get the first 10k users, by promoting the app, via forum self-post. Later, we notice this is not something scale-able. As, you can only get that much of users from forums.

Right now, I have around 500k users. That mostly attributes to Google Play store organic/search traffic. Because of this, I spend a lot of time in optimizing Google Play store page listing - provide proper localization on product description, performing A/B testing on different product screenshots.

However, that is pretty much risky. What if Google stops sending traffic to my Google Play store page?

I spend some advertising dollar each day in Google Ads, with the hope able to keep our app ranking afloat.

Do you have any suggestion, how I can have a better marketing strategy?

From your post, I will start by purchasing

- "Rework" by Basecamp

- "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin

I also like your suggestion "Write articles that teach people something". Do you have suggestion which publishing platform I should use? Since I don't have a good writing skill, should I hire a freelancer to help me do so? How can I get an idea what to write about?

Thank you, and BIG congratulation on your achievement.

500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!

It's hard to say anything about your pricing model. If it works for you, there's probably no need to optimize. However, 500K users with a $20 IAP – I wonder if you could introduce subscriptions for something like $1-2 per month. Maybe make it cheaper per year, but more expensive on the long run. But this depends heavily on how often your app is used. If it's used daily, it provides daily value and this makes people appreciate it more. If you use it only occasionally, a one-time fee is alright. Just from my gut feeling: a single unlock-all $20 fee is quite high for an IAP and I wonder if there's a way to price it better.

> "What if Google stops sending traffic to my Google Play store page?"

Yeah, that is a very good question for all indie developers. My app is somewhat detached from Google's hand, because a) it used to be a webapp, b) there's also an iOS version, c) I could make it a progressive web app in no time. But still, it'd reduce convenience and discoverability. This is a complex question. On the one hand, I don't think many legitimate apps are kicked out of the Play Store for no reason. There are horror stories, but well, they are rare. Maybe you could find a way to make it more distributed. Offer an iOS app. Offer a web app. Or do make sure to keep Google happy at all times.

> "I spend some advertising dollar each day in Google Ads, with the hope able to keep our app ranking afloat."

It's similar with SEO. If SEO is the only strategy, you get dependend on it. So diversification is the key here. Paid apps + SEO + occasionally forum promotions + maybe a good website with good content for a loyal fan base (but it depends on what kind of app this is).

> "Do you have any suggestion, how I can have a better marketing strategy?"

Not really, depends on the kind of app. Read indiehackers.com for inspiration and the books I recommend. I don't do paid ads, because the CPC is way too high / the conversion rate too low.

> "Do you have suggestion which publishing platform I should use? Since I don't have a good writing skill, should I hire a freelancer to help me do so? How can I get an idea what to write about?"

Absolutely! I wrote probably over 200,000 words and invested a lot of time in improving my writing skills. Good content is easy to read. If your app is in English and English is not your native language, get someone to write for you or someone to correct your rough English. This is about brand perception and if you want to teach someone something, it helps if your written voice doesn't sound off. On a forum/comment site like HN, this is less important ;)

But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users. This makes for more stable income and lets you focus on improving the app and stressing less about marketing.

> "500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!"

Not quite :) As, majority of them are from tier-2 countries. Purchasing digital goods is not part of their culture.

> "But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users."

Thank you for your suggestion! What you have mentioned are valid.

Maybe at some point, I want to introduce "ads" + "subscription" model. However, this is a competitive landscape. Most of the similar apps are using ads model. At this moment, I want to offer a compelling reason, for user to use my app instead of others. Luckily, this landscape has high stickiness, because user generated personal data are stored within the app. If they use the app for long enough, the cost is high, when they want to switch to other apps.

So, my hypothesis is that, as long as the free users are using my app, there will always be an opportunity to monetize from them, one day.

Yes. You're right. Currently, there is stress to do marketing. I need to keep attracting new users especially from tier-1 countries, so that new users' one-time purchase can help to cover my monthly living expense. I try to control the CPI cost to USD0.10 for Germany, Japan, Korea. I didn't invest for US, because the high cost is not justifiable. I do notice higher cost is required, if the tier-1 countries are English speaking country. My guess is that, less language barrier, will encourage more players in the market, and drive up the advertising cost.

> Absolutely! I wrote probably over 200,000 words and invested a lot of time in improving my writing skills

I really wish I can build a long term traffic like what you have done. Can you recommend me a publishing platform to publish all writings?

Currently, I am already using google sites (Because I do not have website design skill), to build a landing page to introduce the app features, hosing FAQ, and showing video on how to use the app. But, I don't think that is the suitable platform to host long written article.

When you write your writing, do you need to hire some graphics designer, to help to decorate your writing with nice graphic assets, to attract more readers?

Thank you!

Sounds like you have a plan, good :)

> "Can you recommend me a publishing platform to publish all writings?"

Whatever works best for you. Wordpress, Ghost, whatever. It doesn't matter. I have mostly static files.

I think you need a somewhat okay design. Doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be clean and professionally-looking. I do design myself. I'm self-taught. If you can't do it, get someone who does it. You don't need a lot of images, but yeah, it should look clean and good. There are millions of themes, which are alright if you just start. Don't stress too much over the design. The message is more important.

Also: This is a bit out of scope of this discussion. There's probably a lot of discussion on the internet for designing articles or blogs :)

I honestly can learn a lot from you.. just launched an app struggling to get users. Would you be able to mentor me and provide some insights??

“ So, my hypothesis is that, as long as the free users are using my app, there will always be an opportunity to monetize from them, one day.”

Yeah, but each day those users are churning out and you will have missed the opportunity to monetize them forever - that lost revenue will never come back.

I would be interested in writing blog posts and articles for you. Send me a message at [redacted] for some samples and ideas.

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