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Ask HN: My free app has gone slighty viral – looking for ideas to monetize it

121 points by Rabidgremlin ↗ HN
A bit of background, I built the app because I was running an old Nexus One and the Facebook app was too large to install alongside my other "essential" apps (15mb at the time, its now 38mb!). So I spend about an hour or so and cobbled together the app.

For almost a year and a half it had less than 1000 installs and then in Feb this year it started to rapidly gain installs. It is currently sitting at 241,000 installs (with 55,000 active users).

I figure I should take advantage of this and figure out some way to monetize the app.

Unfortunately the app is all about size and trust (as it sandboxes the FB web app) so most of the ideas I've come up with don't seem to be in the spirit of the app.

Some of the ideas I've had:

* Put in ads and add an in-app purchase to turn them off * Put in a "donation" in-app purchase * Add support for other social networks but only enable them after an in-app purchase

The app also has some pretty interesting demographics. Most users are from non-English speaking countries: Turkey 18.14%, Philippines 8.38%, Mexico 7.46%, Morocco 6.52%, India 5.27%, Indonesia 4.10%, Brazil 4.04%, Thailand 2.72%, United States 2.59%, Colombia 2.44%, Others 38.33%

The app is called "Social Lite" see here for more info https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgremlin.sociallite

My current go-forward plan is put a survey in place and poll the users on what they want and what they would pay for

142 comments

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ceejayoz
Be mindful of what Facebook's lawyers will think of you monetizing their logo and their website.
Rabidgremlin
I'm careful to never mention Facebook anywhere in the app or its description. FB is in logo and of course it does load the Facebook app so a very thin line I think :)
reagan83
Hey Rabid congrats on the success. If interested, you should email me @ rbw at fb dot com. Edit: not a lawyer :)
aaronbrethorst
Unlikely to succeed. Your users won't want to be monetized and they're from countries that are relatively unmonetizable. You don't say what you do for a living, but—personally—I'd slap this on my resume as a 'look at the awesome user base my apps have had' sort of event, and move on. Great way to gain better leverage for the next job move or raise request, but not likely to be more than that at present.
Rabidgremlin
Good point. I'm a software dev by trade. Considering the opportunity costs, perhaps I should just use the app's success for brag rights.
vishaldpatel
I'd definitely try to leverage the success of this app towards something else. The reason why this app is so popular is because it is simple and free. The good will is kind of a big deal.

That said, I think adding support for other social networks may be a fair unlock. How about a "Social Lite+"? A separate paid app that supports more social networks?

Rabidgremlin
I'm thinking this is the way to go. Leave the existing app as is and use it to up-sell.

So do I add the photo upload feature (most requested feature/bug) to the existing app or put it in the paid only app???

Good guy me says put it in the free app, evil me says make em pay...

violentvinyl
It sounds like you've produced a solid, stable piece of software that's been actively used by 55,000 people. That's a comendable thing, and I don't think anyone can rightly fault you if you decide you'd like to be compensated to improve on it further.

My suggestion would be to have a premium version, but charge a minimal amount for it (especially considering your demographic). Your goal should be a high conversion rate of your existing user base at a very low price. I would suggest waiting to launch until you have a more expanded feature set though (image upload probably isn't enough, but if it supported multiple new features and multiple social networks, that should be an easy sell).

ableal
> So do I add the photo upload feature [...] to the existing app or put it in the paid only app???

Give it for free to all your existing users. Going forward, any user who has the feature can also gift it (at zero cost) to new users. Otherwise paid purchase.

> Good guy me says put it in the free app, evil me says make em pay...

I'd say this is generously evil, or avariciously good ...

P.S. I'd suggest making the app produce use-once gift codes (say up to three at a time) that people could post.

vishaldpatel
This is really up to you and how well you know your users.

Like some have said, you're not being evil by making all new FEATURES to only in the paid app. Alternatively, you could make this app as full-featured as possible, and make the new app for multiple platforms only. What do you think is the right thing to do, both for yourself (how much time and money do you have?) and your audience?

A way to promote the new app inside the old app:

- Add a button that says, "new features!" that you keep updated whenever you 1) release new bug fixes or features to either the regular or the beefed up version. This way, all users of the regular app will stay updated on whats going on in both the regular and the beefed up versions. Many of them will buy the beefed up version.

Sektor
Silly question perhaps but is the app able to display notifications? (primarily for 'messages' from facebook) as this is the main reason most people install the official apps. Perhaps you could build a messaging client that works in conjunction with it and that could be your income stream?
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Rabidgremlin
Unfortunately this wouldn't be technically possible as the app just wraps the FB mobile web app.
gardnr
technically it is possible.
Rabidgremlin
Tell me more... I suppose one could do some form of page scrapping in the background and then generate a notifucation
abannin
The first question to be answered is where do you want to go with this app? Do you want it to be something you can brag about? Or do you want it to be something that you nurture and grow from one stage to the next? Either is fine, and there are lots of other options. But knowing the answer to that question will determine your next features in the app.
rogeryu
Keep the app free, and if ad-free, keep it like that. Try to make it bigger. This is your investment in the future. If you have an app with +1 or +10 million installs, that's a beautiful item on your resumé. If you really want to use that app for money, create new functionality via in-app payments, or give all old users a life-time free version that can be transferred to other devices. Better use it to attract attention from investors and let them give money to you for a second app.
MrTortoise
it is but a bird int he hand is worth 2 in the bush. Got to wonder how many people saying use it for resume have had a similar experience, used it for resume and then gone on to their dream life vs people who tried to monatise, maybe failed but learnt something along the way. Personally no experience of either but when you have soemthing its always worth attempting to leverage it, you still have the figures later even if you fubar
universaltest
Demographic indeed is a useful piece of information on your monetizing model. Good to know.
hyperpallium
And the first appeal is to users without enough storage.
egwor
I don't think anyone would object if you added a 'Please donate' plash screen or had a page that advertised your other apps (get them to click anywhere on the screen but the donate button to continue to app. Delaying loading the app for x seconds is annoying). Users can ignore it easily if they can't/won't without impacting your user base.
downandout
I strongly disagree. Since he has access to the DOM of the FB mobile website (he can definitely load custom JavaScript into any page, which is all he needs), there is a ton of stuff he can do to monetize. For one, he can inject ads into FB timelines, which wouldn't piss off his users..Facebook itself does this and people are fine with it. He could pre-roll video ads on any videos that are played. These are just two of several possibilities. He can have monetization on every single page viewed through his app, integrated directly into the FB interface.

The trick would be getting access to offers targeted at these countries, but a major mobile ad network like MobPartner could easily give him some.

abannin
This is probably the quickest route to a cease and desist from FB. If you choose this path, you'll need to take a scorched earth strategy because you will not get a second chance. Lots of ways to inject ads into someone else's content, and all of them are against TOS.
downandout
It is incredibly unlikely that FB could actually litigate this - it falls under the same legal doctorine that protects ad blockers. Also, a few years ago there was a company called Sambreel that had a product called PageRage. They modified FB pages and inserted ads. Facebook never sued them. In fact, Sambreel actually sued Facebook [1] because the only thing that Facebook could do was pressure advertisers not to work with the company [2], and the company felt wronged. Their lawsuit against Facebook was dismissed, but Facebook was never able to do anything legally against them. One interesting quote from the lawsuit:

"...between July 2009 and October 2010, PageRage grew significantly, and was regularly garnering more than 1 million users per day, and generating more than $1 million in monthly revenues....by mid-July 2011, PageRage had grown to more than 4 million users per day"

In this case, however, there aren't 4M installs. We're talking about less than 300K installs. Facebook would probably not bother with such harsh tactics here.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/114953759?access_key=key-1...

[2] http://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/sambreel-locked-ou...

kohanz
Regardless of whether they would have legal ground to stand on, it doesn't sound like the OP has the time or money to get into litigation with FB. If they were to send a cease and desist letter, not many people would dig their heels in and take things to the courts out of their own pocket.
scg
Injecting or substituting ads is shady.

You're degrading the experience with less targeted and lower quality ads at the expense of Facebook's brand and perceived quality of service. The end user assumes the crappy experience is from Facebook itself.

How's this different from malware that injects/substitutes ads?

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abannin
I strongly disagree. In my experience, people are more than willing to pay for a service that they view as valuable, regardless of where they live. But understanding the value proposition is key. You'll need to find ways to engage users at lower price points in those geos. Your users are spending money, you just need to convince them to spend it on you.
saint_fiasco
I live in the third world. The greatest obstacle to paying for apps I like was never the money (compared with the smartphone, good apps are cheap), but the payment method.

Banks hate poor people and we hate them back, so not many people have internationally valid credit cards where I live.

tashmahalic
What payment methods do you like?
saint_fiasco
I like the debit card from my credit union, but nobody outside my country would accept it because it's not affiliated to any payment network like Visa or Master Card.

Other popular payment methods are mobile payment networks provided by the same companies that provide the cell phone service. It's a pre-paid phone service that lets you use your phone credit (that which originally only let you buy talk minutes and text messages) and transfer it to a different phone number. Lots of people accept it as actual currency, and you can even pay utilities with that.

nudpiedo
> "they're from countries that are relatively unmonetizable"

all them got a smartphone, what makes you think they (the people) are not monetizable? Any reference/study about spend on apps per country?

saint_fiasco
A common problem in those countries is that you can buy a phone in a store, but you can't just throw your money to the developer through a phone screen.

You need an internationally valid credit card to purchase apps.

itsybitsycoder
I know in some places they rely heavily on pay-by-phone services as a credit card alternative, even for face-to-face transactions. The cost of whatever they're buying gets subtracted from their phone credits and the phone company passes the money on to the actual business. I'm not sure how one would go about integrating this as a payment option for a phone app though, or if it's possible to do this without violating the Google Play agreements.
saint_fiasco
That would be awesome. I think if it were possible to buy apps through the pay-by-phone service, the local phone companies would have offered that service long ago.

In my country, you can use those to pay utilities and even some taxes. But you can't buy anything from outside the country (or really, from anywhere that doesn't have cellphone coverage for that particular company), and you can't pay in foreign currencies.

emilioolivares
This kind of happened to me. I've tried building serious apps with limited success and traction. I'm a huge reddit/imgur fan so a built a hobby site for myself using reddit's api to browse through their images: http://www.flipmeme.com. Currently gets 100k uniques per month, can't monetize!!! In other words, the stuff you really work on doesn't get anywhere, random stuff you build as a joke suddenly takes off?!
deciplex
Why can't you monetize? You could stick ads in there, at least.
emilioolivares
It's against Imgur's terms of service. You can't show ad's and direct link to their images. Any other ideas :).
deciplex
Ask for donations. If the donations don't at least cover the cost of running the site, shut it down (unless you're happy paying out of pocket).
fpvracing
Looks like a cool app and you've got some great reviews.

I would not add advertisements as you will risk damaging the good relationship you currently have with your users. Try adding a donation button and just see whether it brings in enough money. Adding support for other social networks also seems like a good idea, but a lot more work.

I'm actually in the process of developing my first Android app for our community at https://fpvracing.tv. Any tips / tutorials you would recommend?

Gustomaximus
Nice app. Developing countries love their saving data (I used to work with an app in a similar vein). In your shoes Id likely move forward in 3 stages;

1) Bug Fix - if you can build momentum on growth your really onto something. Given the 80% inactive rate, have you looked at why people are uninstalling (I saw a bunch of no photo upload button on my quick look)? Improving scale if probably the best way to make money if you don't really need the cash now.

2) Insert reasonably unobtrusive ads and see how they go. Given the countries involved you'll be surprised that even with a large number of users you're not hitting big money. Possibly try a few different ad placements to see the user experience vs. clicks vs. payments.

2) Once you have ads and know how many clicks you are getting, look for local opportunities for the bigger country(ies). Things like sponsorship of affiliate/offer type deals. These should pay more but come with a real time cost.

3) Once you have a view how much a customer is worth, decide if you want to take the cash out or re-invest back into growing the app. Ideally if you can spend $X on recruitment and get back $X+Y you should chase growth. If not, enjoy riding the organic wave.

Regarding the poll, I'd not bother. What people say and do are often very different. I'd be more inclined to test ads and placement for real response. Monitor for feedback and possibly make a ad free version if people want.

I've heard donation buttons don't really work.

Adding additional social support sounds good but at a price? Not sure there. These markets are super cost conscious so I'd personally look to focus on growth first and secondly monetising the user at no cost to them.

Good luck

pbreit
The app page indicates that it might actually use more data since it wraps the web site.
BinaryIdiot
This is tough. When webOS was announced I got into the early Palm developer's program and created an application. It was kinda neat but also not incredibly complex. After the Pre was released within about 6 months it had over 100,000 downloads (which, for a new OS and device, seemed kinda awesome!). It was a free app but I thought I could try to monetize it a little.

First step was to try ads. It went from highly rated to about 3 stars because everyone hated the ads (understandable). I tried putting them at the top, bottom, middle; nothing worked at all.

There were no in-app purchases for webOS (or really any platform at the time) so I did what everyone else started doing: when they launched being able to pay for apps I provided my app for $.99 with no ads. After 2 years of running I made $9.

Essentially I destroyed the user-base my app initially had by trying a couple of ways to monetize them that provided poor user experience. I'm not sure what the best solution is here but don't make my mistake and worsen your user experience to make money; it won't work.

FYI for anyone curious my app on webOS was a take on the tip calculator. I know I know "why would you try to charge for a TIP calculator!?" but I thought the spin I had was novel, you could rate different parts of your restaurant experience to get an exact amount to tip rather than dealing with percentages at all (it only showed you the percentage after it calculated the tip). I had done a ton of tip research at the time and thought the idea might be worth something (plus I was young and dumb). It even had bill splitting! But yeah in the end I really shouldn't have charged for it I mostly wanted to experiment to see if I could monetize it and I ended up completely destroying it. http://www.webosnation.com/dumb-waiter-free

corywatilo
I wouldn't take all the blame. Put it on the gradual but continual failure of webOS. Cool idea though!
adhambadr
I think nowadays "experimenting" monetisation methods and pricing strategy can be done in a much safer way than back then. for example geographical rollout, A/B testing on a small non-important niiche (that won't probably monetise big). Its very normal (or essential) to experiment stuff like that without the fear to "destroy the user base the app initially had"
lsiebert
Don't put third party advertisements in. If you are going to do any advertising, come up with a second project that might be of interest to your demographic, but that costs money, and advertise for your own product.

I'd consider some sort of soccer score app that integrates with FB.

kneonx
You could add a 1 second splash count down whenever they open the app from multi tasking, and a simple payment can disable that. It's not an ad. Just a countdown timer with an unlock feature. For a typical user, it wont be that big of a pinch, but for power users who cycle between apps and check back it could be worth monetizing.

Once again you're not putting ads, you're just exercising your right to monetize something you built ;)

OR if there are premium features you can push out that are not ad-removal related you might stand a chance at converting 1% of your users (freemium model)

makuchaku
Script the build & make such tiny apps for all popular permission hogging apps with websites. Then cross-promote them within your app.

This is what I would do :)

jcoffland
Many apps or softwares are successful because the price is right. Often the right price is free. You need to consider if your user base even has money to give you. Your best bet is to use traffic from your current app as a way to sell another related service.
gabchan
SocialLite is a great name btw.

Monetization via end users is not realistic. This is my hypothesis regarding your user profile: (1) low-income or no-income aka cost sensitive, (2) possibly bad mobile data infrastructure, (3) pay-as-you-go mobile data or limited wifi access.

Your app is valuable because it is a REPLACEMENT for the company's real app, because the real deal (as you put it nicely) is too large.

I would perhaps develop clones of your app for other social networks, and have a constellation of SocialLite apps for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc...

Why?

Because the value is in how lightweight you are but still be able to satisfy end user needs. Do not add ads, or in-app purchase bullshit. Your users don't want that. And customers are gods.

Why?

Because you are collecting DATA. Usage patterns and quantifiable habits. The companies would be interested in that. Even just Facebook might be interested in what stats you have now, and having data on their frienemies adds proportionally more value.

But

Before you write another line of code, please reach out and get some feelers to see if the companies indeed want data and what data they are looking for. Since you are in developing markets, and companies want to expand there, you are providing a unique and rare insight into those markets. Data driven insights are better than anything else.

P.S.:

I would not survey the users. Bad UX (specifically bad information timing) and whatever little data you ascertain will not be actionable anyway.

brador
How would you price the value of data? Who do you go to to sell data?

If you had to guess, how much would FB pay for this apps data?

Are there any hot startups in this data space?

abannin
I fear that FB (or any other company) would not view this as a wonderful opportunity to purchase data about it's users, but rather another company stealing it's data. Remember when there were companies who made money off Twitter's API? FB is infinitely more territorial.
Rabidgremlin
Thanks, the name was a (rare for me) bit of genius :)

I like your thinking but I wouldn't begin to know how to shop this idea around. I'm on the otherside of the planet from say SF so door knocking would be a little tricky.

Interestingly as mentioned in another comment, Facebook appear to have their own "Facebook Lite" app so perhaps they recognize they have a problem? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.l...

ggurgone
Here's how you could play it:

1) Play dirty: serve high resolution media (pic an videos) to the users - this results in more data downloaded = costs more money to your users. Here is where you ask them to pay a fair monthly subscription that would cost them less than $x-internet-provider-money (you can make tailor made plans depending on the stats)

2) Make it faster for who pays! At the very top of the page you could add a speed indicator (something like a thin progress bar) to indicate the speed of the page. Then make one of the views (the profile page for example) super fast to tease your users! and the ask for upgrade to premium to get all teH things fast :)

No matter how you play it I would "re-brand" it and remove any reference to the FB UI - which I guess is (c) Mark Boy

woah
All of these ideas will make your users hate you.
ggurgone
I would pay for the 2nd option, I just mentioned the 1st because it popped in my mind but I agree with you there.

Personally I hate ads or having my data sold to 3rd parties.

Paying for an improvement in the speed is fair instead, it is a way to thank the developer.

collyw
They are using it because its lighter. Lighter means faster. So taking away those two features and you are left with no reason for users to use it.
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cvitale
Mr slightly viral,

You priced your app at zero. It became a success. Monetizing your app now will probably make it less so. Rather monetize by building good will with your customers (brand) and applying lessons learned towards development of your app2. If it's good enough you can charge for it.

andrea_sdl
I second this too.

I wonder why are many advices in this topic don't consider the relationship between the OP and his users. That trust has a value, and OP should ever destroy it.

kagamine
I can't be the only one who clicks on the developer's name in the app store to see what else they have available when the app I am using from them is good and free. If I get a good free app I'll be more likely to pay for the next one.

OP should think long term, he is a developer by trade, a quick buck now isn't a smart move imo.

mastercoms
When I think light, the last thing I think of is ads. Ads will make your app feel bloated to users.
pbreit
How about the WhatsApp approach: first year free, then $0.99 per year?
ChicagoBoy11
WhatsApp has a distinct advantage in the fact that it can rely on lock-in since the app itself is responsible for the connections that are made within it; Once the .99 price-tag comes along, you are faced with paying for it or losing your entire WhatsApp chat network/groups/etc. With OP's software, all of those connections are handled by FB, not his app. Therefore, if he were to charge something, people could simply opt for the next-best one that is free.
z3t4
You can take the opportunity to build your brand, or someone else's. Gaining peoples thrust and building a reputation is hard, but very critical! Fifty thousands active users are worth about one million dollars.
Rabidgremlin
A million dollars? How so ?
z3t4
It's generally what's people are willing to spend on exposure, in lets say commercials, calculated for one year. It's an estimate on what you would earn from adds in one year.

Introducing ads might make the users leave though, so be careful. There's also a risk Facebook would have something to say about your monetizing on their product.

So my suggestion is to implement that feature ppl want, let them know about the awesome dude behind it, and that you care about their user experience. Then leverage the goodwill it creates to get free exposure and users to your other product(s), that are monetized. Basically you can use the app to build a loyal user base.

An example is the dude who made Flappy Bird. He also got lots of downloads and exposure for his other games just by having his name on it.

Intoo
50K DAU won't get you more than 500k$ in annual revenues from ads
angryasian
I'm not accusing you of anything, but

Tinfoil is a great app thats similar. Also free and open source - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...

Rabidgremlin
Yes it is.

I actually came across Tinfoil after I released my app. It does the same thing buts its "marketing message" was different so I did not find it when I first went looking for this type of app :(

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lucaspiller
I have an app in the Google Play store, it has around 1,500 active installs and I decided to do a bit of an experiment last year by releasing a paid pro version. It was exactly the same, it just had a different colour icon and 'Pro' branding. I put the price at 99c/99p, and put a link to it in the free edition description (the descriptions were the same other than that). I was pretty surprised when people actually bought it...

I think I made about $5 before I realised after a couple of weeks, and then I took it down. The app hadn't been touched for a few years and wasn't the best quality, so I didn't feel happy for basically scamming people. I was considering doing the same for a donate version, but wanted to improve the app first - which I never got around to.

I think you could get some income by doing something similar, but it's very unlikely to replace your main income.

tobyhinloopen
I don't consider it scamming to provide a paid version without extra features. There are other software products that have this, like Winrar and Cyberduck.

Additionally, if I see a "free" and "paid" version of something I think I need/want, I always get the paid version, because I don't want ads. I'd rather pay 99c~2,99c for no-ads then having those freaking annoying ads.

I want an ad-free home. No ads on my PC, TV or phone. Nowhere.

concerned_user
It really depends on how it was worded, if it was saying that paid version is exactly the same and is there to express your support, then it is not a scam.
kirualex
I had the same idea 4 years ago and did the exact same thing for several apps. This was a bad idea : https://medium.com/@kirualex/an-android-developers-nightmare...

Google content policy is now very clear : Do not post any applications whose primary function is to: generate traffic to a website; or provide an overview of a website that you do notown and you do not handle (unless you have permission of the owner / administrator of the website).

Rabidgremlin
mmm, very informative. Need to go look at those policies again.
rquirk
Wow, that's quite a surprise. I just checked the terms you quoted - https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html - and of course you're absolutely right.

I can see why Google specify this since a store filled with spammy apps wrapping popular sites would be bad for everyone. But this puts the kibosh on privacy-focused apps like Tinfoil for Facebook or the Twitter equivalent, and bloat-reducing apps like the OP's. I imagine that these have yet to be suspended simply because nobody at Google has noticed them.

crdoconnor
Add an upgraded app that lets users redirect their traffic via servers you control. If they installed your app for privacy reasons, give them a reason to pay you for more privacy.

If Turkey is very popular that tells me that your users might want to conceal the fact (from their government) that they use facebook at all.

nait
You could try adding a "Social Lite Deals" page where you put affiliate offers (e.g. stuff with reduced prices from Amazon).

This way you provide some kind of additional value and don't risk offending your user base. Granted it won't be as effective as ads but perhaps it's a good starting point to figure out what your users like and accept.

blazespin
Rather than monetize, I think instead you should try to get more people to install it. Make it better. Add features to block ads or something. Clearly you've built something people want. Find a way to engage with your users and build more trust with them. Your next app will be quite popular with them, I'm sure.

You're trying to monetize too early. Get real traction first. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.