10 monetization mistakes that hold back subscription apps

Hi, I’m Natalia. I spend my days helping mobile apps scale revenue from operational strategy and optimization all the way to fixing the monetization funnel: value offers, onboarding, paywalls, pricing, and retention.

Over the past decade, I’ve worked hands-on with 50+ subscription products, from indie apps and startups to global corporations, including Apalon (part of Mosaic Group), Impala Studios, and Quiet. Along the way, I’ve seen what makes growth stick (and what makes it stall), and I enjoy sharing those lessons so founders can unlock sustainable, compounding growth. Today, I support teams as a Fractional Growth Lead and Growth Advisor, helping them turn potential into predictable revenue.

Revenue & ROI are the primary focus for any business, yet <highlight-pink>monetization remains one of the biggest blind spots<highlight-pink> for many founders & Product teams. Too often, it’s treated as an afterthought. Like something to add on later, when the features are done and the product feels complete.

But monetization is not separate from the product. It is a crucial part of the user experience. How you onboard users, frame value, when you introduce pricing and how you design your paywalls can be the difference between a product that grows sustainably and one that stalls.

Below are ten of the most common mistakes teams make about monetization and how to avoid them.

1. Waiting too long

One of the most common phrases I hear from founders is: “I just want to build a good product first.” The intention is noble, but it overlooks a simple reality: people are happy to have fun and use any tool possible for free. However, they behave differently when they are asked to pay.

<highlight-pink>If you never test willingness to pay, you run the risk of building features no one would ever purchase.<highlight-pink>

How to fix it

Monetization is a feature. Not a side quest. And a serious part of the budget has to go into making it smooth and engaging.

When I talk to teams still building, I usually tell them: the moment your product looks half of what you imagined and you feel a bit embarrassed to show it to friends, that’s the point to stop building features and switch focus to monetization.

Your product isn’t Evangelion. Your paywall shouldn’t look like a crayon sketch because you run out of the budget on the last episodes. It worked for Evangelion, but let’s be honest, it won’t work for your app. That’s why <highlight-pink>monetization experiments need to start early.<highlight-pink> Even small ones. Just enough to see if the problem you’re solving actually is important enough to pay for.

2. Setting low bar

Many teams believe low pricing will lower the barrier to entry and drive conversion. In practice, it does exactly the opposite.

RevenueCat’s 2024 Subscription Benchmarks show that high-priced apps have a median trial conversion of 9.8%, compared to just 4.3% for low-priced apps. In fact, the top quartile of high-priced apps reaches trial conversion rates as high as 25.1%.

<highlight-pink>Pricing with confidence would improve both conversion & revenue<highlight-pink>. Go too low and it doesn’t just cut your income, it makes your product look cheap. And no one’s excited to commit to something that already feels like it doesn’t value itself.

How to fix it

Do the competitor research. Get a sense of the standard market rates and start with it. Then start experimenting with slightly higher & lower pricing.

If you’ve got enough traffic, play with regional pricing too. You’ll be surprised how much lift a “local fit” can bring.

Find what brings your product the best performance and never go for less.

3. Being shy with paywalls

Adapty’s subscription report shows that up to 90% of conversions happen during onboarding. Not exactly breaking news, but that’s why we all focus so much on onboarding and paywall optimization (type me if you need help). But many apps stop at just one paywall in the funnel.

The best-performing health and fitness apps don’t stop at one paywall. They don’t even stop at two. They show 3 or even 5 different ones during the first time experience, each highlighting a slightly different value proposition and timed at the right moment. Different persuasion techniques, different angles, all working together to convert more effectively.

Think of it like a K-pop album release: multiple versions, different covers, same core product. And fans buy them all. Users can’t subscribe five times, but they will find the version that clicks.

How to fix it

Be creative with your onboarding. It’s not just a welcome tour, it’s your biggest sales opportunity.

Play with different iterations, build curiosity, mix in tactics & value presentation types. Pull in your offers in between those interactions.

There’s no better time to convert than onboarding. The user is fresh, curious and still believes your app might change their life. Don’t waste that moment and definitely don’t be shy.

4. One paywall to rule them all

Everyone loves to preach about “the power of customization.” You’ve seen those 50-screen onboardings promising the most tailored experience ever. And in 99% of cases? The data collected has zero impact on the paywall users see at the end. That’s a massive miss.

Look at dating apps. They tailor offers and features for gender-specific audiences and generate millions in extra revenue from it. If they can do it, so can you.

How to fix it

Personalization doesn’t have to be complicated. Even a small tweak, like pulling a user’s goal from the onboarding survey into the paywall copy or illustration, can move the needle. In one of my cases, just showing the user’s goal on the illustration boosted trial conversion by +34%.

That’s not just a win. That’s a 100% win.

5. One-size-fits-all approach

Most apps stick to a single paywall for onboarding and all premium features. It’s fine. It’s safe, consistent, easy to test and easy to maintain. But it also creates “paywall blindness.” Users see the same screen again and again and quickly learn to tune it out.

But when someone actively tries a premium feature, they actually want to see how it works. That’s the perfect place to highlight the value of that specific feature: give a preview, explain the benefit and nudge them to get a trial. A generic paywall doesn’t do that.

How to fix it

Pick your most popular premium features. Build custom paywalls that showcase their value or use a single paywall with a carousel that presents them one by one. Map each paywall (or a carousel slide) to its feature so when users try it, they see the value right there.

And yes, enjoy the uplift.

I had the pleasure of working with a top-grossing weather app with tens of millions in revenue. By introducing this approach, <highlight-pink>they managed to double their conversion after onboarding<highlight-pink>. And improved the results after with additional tests & improvements.

6. No discount policy

Discounts are often dismissed as “cheap tricks.” Some teams argue they waste resources that could go into new features. Others see them as “losing money” offers. But it’s always better to convert users with a discount than not to convert them at all, right?

On average, 10% to 30% of subscription revenue in consumer apps comes from discounts and downsells outside of onboarding. Not to mention the potential impact of seasonal campaigns like Black Friday. Ignoring them means leaving money on the table.

How to fix it

Offer discounts! Limited-time offers, spinning wheel mechanics, discount sequence, welcome back discounts. There are plenty of options. Pick the one you like more and test it.

You don’t need to cut 90%. Even 30% can perform well. The exact number is less important than the presence of a discount. Some users never consider paying full price, but a small deal can flip the decision. They feel good about the purchase, you secure the conversion. Win-win.

7. Skipping seasons

Consumer spending follows predictable cycles and the apps that plan for them win disproportionately.

Sensor Tower reports that in-app spend during Black Friday and Cyber Monday rose 24% year over year. It’s MASSIVE. With these numbers, there is no excuse for skipping seasonal promotions.

How to fix it

Make a calendar of relevant events. Start with the global ones like Christmas and New Year. Add product-specific ones like back-to-school for learning apps. And don’t skip the weird ones, National Junk Food Day can be a perfect special for a calorie counter app.

Plan in advance, be prepared and enjoy the ride.

8. Waiting for the “big idea”

Many teams delay experimentation until they feel they have a clever test idea. A game changer. The Hypothesis. The reality is that sustainable growth is built on volume, discipline and small steps.

<highlight-pink>Only 10-12% of A/B tests show statistically significant positive results.<highlight-pink>

Of those, only a fraction are true “big wins.”

According to the latest Adapty subscription report, apps running 50+ tests see 10–100x uplift compared to those that don’t.

How to fix it

Invest in a continuous learning process and treat it as the main priority. Don’t wait for the mythical big idea. Build test plans, run them and test the unsexy changes like copy, font size or UX structure. Measure, learn and iterate. Again and again. Treat every small uplift as a building block for bigger outcomes.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Or, as Naruto says: “A lesson learned from the smallest leaf can save the entire village.” Growth works the same way: small, consistent steps add up to something much bigger.

9. Lack of product & marketing connection

Product and Marketing both work hard to hit results. Same funnel, same experiments, same fight for revenue and user attention. And sure, that works. They share info, sync here and there, push things forward. But it rarely hits full potential.

The best results I’ve seen always come when Product and Marketing act like one team. Not “separate teams that share slides once a month.” Actually one. When they share ideas, share hypotheses and even half-baked results to strengthen each other and maximize performance. That’s always my goal when I build teams.

How to fix it

Bring your marketer into backlog grooming and planning. Treat them as part of the dev team. Sync often and exchange everything. Back every hypothesis and test it from both the product and marketing sides.

What does that look like in practice? In one utility app, we implemented deeplinks that sent users into onboarding flows matched with top UA creatives. That lifted conversion to trial on +40% for users who allowed IDFA access. With a 20% IDFA acceptance rate, it doesn’t sound exciting. But when you’re making millions of installs, we’re talking about serious money.

10. No paywall builder

For the final one, I have a simple tip: use a paywall builder.

It covers about 80% of cases. There are plenty of options on the market, all offer great flexibility, all have their own pros and cons and, of course, some limitations. Sometimes it also means an extra payment. Not great, but fair.

Let’s compare the process together:

🥲 Without a paywall builder:

• come up with a hypothesis,
• design it,
• write a task for development,
• add it to the backlog,
• go through grooming and planning,
• maybe deliver in the next sprint if there’s space, if not then two or three sprints later.

Waiting time: almost forever.

🕺 With a paywall builder:

• hypothesis,
• design,
• build in a few hours,
• live in production the same day.

I’ve had cases where we had an idea in the morning, prepared a design around lunch and were already looking at numbers the next day. It really is a no-brainer.

Final thoughts

How you design onboarding, what features you lock and when you show pricing are product decisions. Monetization isn’t an add-on. It’s part of product design. It needs to be cherished, planned and implemented with care and dedication.

Growth in subscription apps is never static. Regulations change, funnels shift, user behavior evolves, niches rise and fall. As Master Oogway said in Kung Fu Panda: “There are no accidents.” The strongest teams don’t hope for growth to happen. They have a plan and build for it. For revenue growth, it comes with systems: testing, alignment and a clear focus on monetization.

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And if you’re looking for a tool that shows your subscription app’s revenue with full accuracy, book a demo with Campaignswell.

We’ll walk you through how it works in real time.

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