Because those customers are superstars, they’re willing to spend money on your app, so why let them fly away forever to make a quick buck? We should:
1- Monetize them for MONTHS through microtransactions
AND
2- Get them hooked on our future apps through house ads. You can’t put up house ads on an app if you’ve already promised it’s the “ad-free” version.
There’s 2 main strategies for paid apps:
A) Ad-free version
B) More featured version
Version A is obviously a bad choice because you’re throwing away your absolute BEST customers FOR LIFE, just to make a couple of dollars.
Version B is better, but is again shortsighted, because with a liiiittle more creativity you could come up with a way to monetize that user for life (and for MUCH more money per month) if you just broke up those functionalities into consumable microtransactions (Or leadbolt offers, too).
Here’s my 2 bold statements that will surely generate discussion :
-We NEED to stop calculating the long-term value of a one-time sale based on how long it would take to monetize that user through ads. The real value of that use is MUCH higher and generates money for MUCH longer if you intelligently implement microtransactions.
-Selling an app for a one-time fee these days is THE least profitable monetization decision you can make.
It’s not just me saying it, it’s the leaders of the video game industry including titans like Blizzard and Sony. Microtransactions aren’t the future, they are the PRESENT.