Monetization Newsletter

I used to think that driving big impact came from shipping really big projects. I was wrong.The big projects are certainly what everyone talks about. These are what get added to your resume and mentioned in company all hands decks. Its the small, fast optimizations that drive more value than you think.

Everyone who runs a subscription business has to eventually decide if they’re going buy a subscription manger.They are expensive, can definitely be worth the money, however they work best for subscription products a a certain scale. If you are considering one, this post will help. If not, it will be the most boring post you've ever read.

Are you building a lot of features but you're not seeing the revenue growth? You might have fallen into one of the classic traps for new start ups. The only way to increase revenue in a subscription products involves moving 3 core things.

There is no easier way of making more money than just charging more for your product if your users will pay it. Sometimes, it really is that easy.In the growth phase of all consumer startups, they start to (rightly) question if they are priced “correctly”. When you head down this path, you might learn that you are prices “correctly” in some parts of the world, but not others.

Most founders are building companies with the dream of one day selling them, but they have very little insight on how the M&A process works until they get there. This week we're talking with Eric Crowley, arguably the leading investment banker for subscription products on how the process of M&A works.

For a subscription product, your cancelation flow is your last chance to turn users back from the abyss. If you can make them the right offer at the right time, you just might be able to salvage enough of them to make a difference in your business.

A better understanding of how your business model works allows you to design better growth strategies that actually work for your company. This week, we'll be talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the subscription business model. By understanding these, you can better figure out where to focus your growth efforts and expect a solid return.

This week, we're discussing one of the hardest things to get right: sequencing projects. The order in which you do things matters in all businesses, but especially in subscription business. Because subscription products take so long to gain momentum, the order in which you do things matters a lot.

When a company isn't growing as much as it should, it's either because they don't know what to do and/or they don't know how to do it effectively. If your company has a great vision, has the resources to get it done and somehow its still not working, its probably because you don't have a strong enough product management function.

Getting as many users as possible into your longer-term plans is hands down one of the most effective ways of scaling a subscription product. This video covers just about everything I know about maximizing your annual plan sales including pricing tactics, conversion tactics and other considerations on how to raise your prices.

Metrics Reviews are one of the few processes that I believe 100% of companies should be doing. Its also unfortunately one of the least common processes that I have seen in early-stage companies. Once you figure out what makes your numbers actually move, you can start to actually move them and grow your business.

A/B testing is a valuable tool in product development, but its use should be carefully considered. While it allows for more accurate measurement, it can slow down the overall speed of a project. A/B testing is most effective when there is potential risk that is hard to detect and a clear hypothesis to test. It is not ideal for proving someone wrong, isolating the impact of every change, or making difficult decisions.

Every recurring revenue business alive is trying to reduce their churn. The best advice overall is that churn has to be fought as early as possible in the user's lifecycle. The better that you are at getting users to adopt your product and see the value quickly, the lower your churn will be. That said, there are some tactics and scenarios that you should be aware of and that do work in some scenarios.

99% of companies that are good at product development have a clearly defined set of metrics that they are trying to move. If you are just looking at new signs and revenue, you are going to miss out on the subtly of what makes your business work and how you can improve it.

2023 was a bit of a rough year for the tech world, particularly B2B SaaS. Honestly,2024 doesn't look much better, that said there is still a lot of opportunity out there.

A “try before you buy” sales experience has become a pillar of the Product Lead Growth/self-service sales world, however getting a trial right is more nuanced than you might think. We implemented a credit card upfront trial at Codecademy and had a huge conversion win, which taught me a lot about what makes an effective experience.

More companies struggle with quality problems than they know about. Bugs, lack of clarity, and too much friction are relatively easy problems to fix and have an immedate impact on the conversion of your product.

While it's great to hit home runs, you can also build a big business by consistently hitting singles. This we we're talking about projects that don't take long and can deliver solid conversion & LTV gains for years.

Facebook is building a subscription product that will remove ads in the EU. They are not the first company to layer a subscription product with another product line. What can we learn watching this happen?

In subscription products, the early days can feel much harder but once you have the moment, predictable growth is much easier. As someone running one of these companies, you need to plan for this journey. Its very easy to feel behind when you might not be.

Early-stage subscription companies often try to run paid media on top of a free tier. This often kills those companies. They often don't understand why.

This week we take a deep dive into the annual plan to monthly plan pricing trick and what that means for subscriptions businesses.

One of the lessons that I ​wrote about​ from my time as head of growth at Codecademy is that there are no "silver bullets" for growing a subscription business. Subscription businesses grow by getting five core things right and then aggregating hundreds of small wins across the product. The five core things are what I call the brass bullets.

Will a free product work for you? Maybe, maybe not. But if your company doesn't pass these checks, then it definitely won't

Payment Processing is hands down the most powerful and least understood growth level for subscription business. The money is there; you just have to collect it. p

When building something, its always tempting to make it more complicated in hopes of improving it. This, however, can go very very wrong.

Every company puts endless effort into their pricing page. Pricing pages do matter, but are we sure that they matter as much as everyone thinks?

Price is one of the biggest levers you have to increase revenue, how and when should you think about charging more? In this post we'll cover how I think about this problem and how to run pricing tests.

Just because you have a product that everyone wants doesn't automatically mean that you can built a great business around it. Lets take a look at some of the biggest products that failed to monetize effectively

LTV is a common concept in businesses, subscription businesses make this concept harder to apply than most people think.

Checkout pages are the most powerful place in your funnel and the only page where conversion wins turn into dollars immediately.

A common questions that I get from founders is "How how much should I discount my annual plan?"‍Most choose 20%, because everyone else seems to choose 20%. Because of that, should you choose 20%?‍ It kinda depends, but probably not.

How have the biggest brands in the world grown by giving away a "Free" product and why did they all stop?

Checkout pages are crucial for successful subscription companies as they directly impact revenue generation, with even a small increase in conversion leading to increased revenue.

How do you give enough away to capture attention while still building a powerful business?

Lowering CAC can only get you so far, the best businesses in the world find ways of increasing LTV, which allows them to afford more expensive customer acquisition.

Payments Processing and Churn mitigation are the most boring and also most powerful place to work for mature recurring revenue products

Lessons from helping grow Codecademy from 10M ARR to 50M+ ARR. The importance of early monetization, prioritizing speed, fixing barriers to payment, minimizing complexity, and focusing on improving clarity where users convert the most.