my ios apps made $4,860 in August, here's a breakdown — Transcript

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1. 0:00my apps made 4.8 thousand dollar in revenue in August
2. 0:03this is 44% more than in July
3. 0:05and in this video I'm gonna share what happened
4. 0:08and what I'm trying to do in
5. 0:10September to get this number to 6 k
6. 0:12so I'm really happy about this month
7. 0:14even though I set the goal to be 5K
8. 0:16it's very close
9. 0:17and the best thing that I turned off apple search ads
10. 0:19meaning most of this revenue is pure profit
11. 0:22minus apple tax
12. 0:23so let's talk a little bit details about this month
13. 0:26I built a free tool activation Pal wrap
14. 0:29to help me structure the revenue cat data
15. 0:31you can actually use it for your app
16. 0:33and the best thing that it kind of made for
17. 0:36big app portfolio
18. 0:37so I track all of my apps in one dashboard
19. 0:39alright let's take a look
20. 0:40so first of all
21. 0:41as you can see I have three sources of revenue
22. 0:43I have one time payments new subs and renewals
23. 0:46and the majority of my revenue
24. 0:48coming from one time payments
25. 0:49this is lifetime plan
26. 0:51this month was a very big experimentation phase to me
27. 0:54to understand
28. 0:55what is the best pricing point for lifetime
29. 0:58should I have annual plan
30. 0:59should I have something else
31. 1:01and I tried multiple things
32. 1:02right now
33. 1:03my go to approach is to have lifetime plan and
34. 1:06monthly plan with 7 day free trial
35. 1:08I recorded a big video about the pricing
36. 1:10as you can see it's working fairly good
37. 1:12I don't sell annual plan right now
38. 1:14so if people are serious about the problem
39. 1:16they go for lifetime plan
40. 1:17I think lifetime is great option
41. 1:19it's a win win for me and the user I love it
42. 1:21it's working really fine for me
43. 1:23I have 4 metrics installs
44. 1:25ARPU conversion and trial to paid
45. 1:26all green except the trial to paid
46. 1:28I guess
47. 1:28the trial to paid will need some time to convert
48. 1:32the final days of August
49. 1:33really happy to get more installs
50. 1:35that means app store optimization is working again
51. 1:38I recorded a big video how I do app store optimization
52. 1:41the best news about this
53. 1:42that it's almost entirely automated by cloud code
54. 1:45and you can use my uh
55. 1:47free skill to automate your ARPO is growing
56. 1:50this is a really good number
57. 1:52because it's kinda conclusion from two metrics
58. 1:55the conversion and second the average purchase from
59. 1:58so it's growing
60. 1:59I would really love to push this number to $1
61. 2:03so every install is generating $1 on average
62. 2:06maybe I can get to this number
63. 2:08until the end of the year
64. 2:09and conversion overall is growing
65. 2:11so it means that you know
66. 2:13when people download more
67. 2:14people choose to either select a free trial or lifetime
68. 2:17and I think this is the best way
69. 2:19because they choose to experience the app
70. 2:21and not just finish the onboarding and uninstall it
71. 2:24one more thing about localization
72. 2:26as you can see I have three tiers of countries
73. 2:28tier 1 tier 2
74. 2:29tier 3 this means they get different prices in app
75. 2:33so tier 1 they get 100% of the price
76. 2:35for example 20 dollar lifetime
77. 2:36tier 2
78. 2:37they get 40% discount and tier 3 gets 70% discount
79. 2:41as you can see obviously
80. 2:42tier 1 countries generate most of the revenue
81. 2:45but tier 2 and tier 3 in total generate 1K of revenue
82. 2:49that means almost 20%
83. 2:50so if I didn't do any abstract optimization
84. 2:53I would very likely just lose 1 k
85. 2:56because obviously
86. 2:57some users from these countries would buy
87. 2:59the full price
88. 3:00but realistically most of the people would not buy it
89. 3:03so I think it's really good
90. 3:05it's you know maybe a few hours of work
91. 3:07and a free $1,000 from these countries
92. 3:10another cool thing is most of the time
93. 3:12people think about United States only
94. 3:14but as you can see in my top 10
95. 3:16I have a lot of countries besides the United States
96. 3:18and actually countries like United Kingdom
97. 3:20Germany they have a very big percentage of my revenue
98. 3:24and for me it's really good sign
99. 3:26it means that I have first of all
100. 3:28a lot of space is to grow in United States
101. 3:31but I also enjoy the gains of abstract optimization
102. 3:34if we compared revenue day by day to July
103. 3:37you will see that on most of the days
104. 3:39we outperform last month that's a good sign
105. 3:41and I like that
106. 3:42the average revenue per day has grown significantly
107. 3:46in the last months
108. 3:47this is obviously a kind of vanity metric
109. 3:49but it's really making me happy
110. 3:51it's a very subjective emotional metric
111. 3:52whenever I wake up for example
112. 3:54and I see already $150 in my revenue
113. 3:57really good for my mental health
114. 3:59I would love to push to $200 on average
115. 4:02in the next month
116. 4:02but this will obviously take more effort
117. 4:05the final thing is per app comparison um
118. 4:07as you can see we have a lot of apps here
119. 4:09and the thing about my portfolio
120. 4:11I have a lot of apps
121. 4:12I shift a lot of different app formats
122. 4:14most of them make some money
123. 4:16we have some clear winners so for example
124. 4:19one app made 1K and two apps made $700
125. 4:22and then we have like a longer tail of you know
126. 4:25midfield apps
127. 4:26but obviously at the same time I have a bunch of apps
128. 4:29I would
129. 4:29I would say probably like a 10 apps that made $0
130. 4:32and this is also reality of building iOS app portfolio
131. 4:35if I would to focus on these apps 100% of my time
132. 4:39I would probably see $0 or you know less than $100
133. 4:43but these apps just suck
134. 4:44there is no sugar coating about this
135. 4:46they are built not in the best niches
136. 4:49and they just don't work it doesn't matter if I
137. 4:52you know work 24 hours a day or two hours per day
138. 4:55I just can't make a significant amount of revenue there
139. 4:59these apps get the
140. 5:00same amount of effort as my top 5 apps are getting
141. 5:04and I think this really puts a perspective into iOS app
142. 5:08you know niche because some apps will make money
143. 5:10some apps won't make money and sure
144. 5:13you have an impact on this
145. 5:15you can do things you can
146. 5:16you know improve your onboarding
147. 5:17improve your pricing but in some niches
148. 5:19people convert just better
149. 5:20because these problems are more significant to them
150. 5:23and definitely if you struggle with revenue
151. 5:26just think about another app
152. 5:28app in a different field in a different area
153. 5:31so you can maybe try again
154. 5:34and hopefully get more revenue
155. 5:35it definitely was a thing for me
156. 5:37these apps
157. 5:38they suck both on the install and revenue level
158. 5:41but you know you can't only launch good apps
159. 5:44this is my August um
160. 5:46a few interesting details so first of all
161. 5:48if you actually compare gross revenue to net revenue
162. 5:51the situation will change dramatically because um
163. 5:55there are a few interesting things obviously
164. 5:57you have Apple Tax 15% on every sale
165. 6:00because I'm in a small business program secondly
166. 6:02you have a hidden VAT in most
167. 6:05I think European countries
168. 6:06so for example when you get a sale from Germany for $27
169. 6:09you will never see this $27
170. 6:11$6 adjust VAT that apple will deduct
171. 6:15and you will not get it in activation pal wrapped
172. 6:17I actually built and
173. 6:18net tab so you can get the real revenue
174. 6:20I'm still very happy with this
175. 6:22number and it's still a 47% higher than in July
176. 6:25but that's a good thing to know
177. 6:26that I'm not that close to 5K in net revenue
178. 6:29and I need to work more
179. 6:31so what is my plan for September
180. 6:33to make this number closer to my goal
181. 6:366 k my biggest job is to improve the final of my ABS
182. 6:40I actually build Activation pal for this
183. 6:43because I realized
184. 6:44I don't really know what happens in onboarding
185. 6:46at what screens people fell off
186. 6:48in what apps people convert better because you know
187. 6:51the onboarding there is better
188. 6:53this is a tool that I built for myself
189. 6:55this is product and revenue analytics for iOS apps
190. 6:58and I already collected some data
191. 7:00and you already can see some insights
192. 7:02so for example
193. 7:02this is all of my apps in the last seven days I have
194. 7:05that's about revenue the onboarding completion
195. 7:08the product usage
196. 7:09my goal for September is when I get more data
197. 7:12maybe two weeks of data I'm gonna give a agent
198. 7:15a task to analyze the best performing apps
199. 7:18and the worst performing apps
200. 7:20and kind of implement best practices
201. 7:22to improve the revenue activation pal is built for this
202. 7:25I have a specific onboarding table
203. 7:28with all of the insights
204. 7:29what choice do people make in what steps they fall off
205. 7:32and it's really interesting in terms of pricing too
206. 7:35because a user can select a plan
207. 7:37but not complete the sale
208. 7:39a user can
209. 7:39dismiss a payable a user and see Paypal multiple times
210. 7:42and I think Activation Pal
211. 7:44does a really good job at showing these insights to me
212. 7:46secondly I want to obviously improve my apps
213. 7:49and this is a feature coming soon to Activation Pal
214. 7:52I'm gonna analyze retention of different cohorts
215. 7:55and I want to understand in what apps
216. 7:57I have recurring users and what apps are more
217. 8:00tried once and never opened again
218. 8:02because obviously we all get some revenue
219. 8:05from people who subscribe to apps
220. 8:06and forget about this
221. 8:07but this is like not the best strategy to grow
222. 8:09you can't build a very successful app portfolio
223. 8:12with this mindset yes
224. 8:14sure these people will always exist
225. 8:16but my end goal is to build great apps
226. 8:18that people love to use
227. 8:20and they actually come back every week or every day
228. 8:22and finally a big thing is definitely
229. 8:24to increase the number of installs for some apps
230. 8:28because you know
231. 8:28if your best performing app gets 1,000 installs
232. 8:31it's easier to work with this
233. 8:33but if your app only gets 50 installs per month
234. 8:36it's just it's really hard
235. 8:37there is not that many users yes
236. 8:39sure at least one of these user should convert
237. 8:42like if it not converting
238. 8:43that's usually a very bad sign
239. 8:45but I definitely think that some of my apps need and
240. 8:48you know a better keyword research approach
241. 8:50maybe a different main keyword
242. 8:52maybe some apple Search ads boost
243. 8:54because the thing with apple search ads
244. 8:56at least what I kind of realized is
245. 8:58even if you run ads for some time and then stop it
246. 9:01a boost terms of users
247. 9:03a boost at terms of reviews and sales
248. 9:06I think that's usually
249. 9:07good signal for apple to boost your apps
250. 9:09in organic rankings too
251. 9:11I'm gonna try
252. 9:12to do some experimentation with these apps
253. 9:14I don't wanna have $0 apps in my portfolio
254. 9:16and if the app still
255. 9:18is getting less than 100 installs per month
256. 9:21I need to do something with that
257. 9:23and I feel like I'm really good at keyword research
258. 9:25and keyword research is a thing that I want to do more
259. 9:28I recorded a big video about this
260. 9:30I have actually two tools
261. 9:32I have free tool in activation pal
262. 9:33to validate good keyboards
263. 9:35and I have Astro which I use for keyboard research
264. 9:37so I think in September will be a big month to kind of
265. 9:41pivot some apps that are not performing well
266. 9:43and hopefully see more sales in these apps
267. 9:46alright that's it for today
268. 9:47August has been a great month
269. 9:49it feels really great to grow revenue every month
270. 9:52and when I was starting in January
271. 9:54and just got my first 5 dollar sale
272. 9:56I could not you know
273. 9:57believe that I will be here
274. 9:58very close to my comfortable range of monthly revenue
275. 10:02I hope to use Activation Pal more in my workflow
276. 10:06to optimize conversion of my app
277. 10:08if you struggle with conversion
278. 10:10if you don't understand how to improve your funnel
279. 10:12you should give Activation Pal a try
280. 10:14because it's free for the first 10,000 events
281. 10:17so if you have a few apps and not that many users
282. 10:20you will probably be comfortable on three tier
283. 10:23so definitely give it a try
284. 10:25it's very simple to install
285. 10:26it's one swift file 0 dependencies
286. 10:28your AA
287. 10:29agent can wire everything up in just a few minutes
288. 10:32as soon as Apple Store
289. 10:33review team approves your new version
290. 10:35you will get insights about how your app is doing
291. 10:38and let me know if anything is missing in Activation
292. 10:41Bell because I'm using it and I'm improving every day
293. 10:44my hope is to make it the best tool to optimize
294. 10:47conversion but keep it simple
295. 10:49and not as bloated as a lot of analytics tool