My Users Say They'd Cry If My App Disappeared. None of Them Pay
Key topics
None of them pay. Most won't respond to emails.
Here's the data and what I'm missing.
THE NUMBERS
Revenue: 35,238 installs over 3 years, $86 MRR from 20 subscribers, $4,091 lifetime revenue, 0.8% free-to-paid conversion, $905/mo burn (day job subsidized).
Retention: D1 4.2% (industry 40%+), D7 1.1% (industry 25%+), D30 0.9% (industry 15%+), 130% monthly churn.
The Paradox: 9 users reached Level 100+ (10,000+ XP). 6 still active, using it daily. 1 interviewed (PhD + PM): "I'd cry" if app disappeared. Payment status: 0 paying, 4 on expired promos, 1 can't pay (SWIFT blocked).
POWER USER ANALYSIS
Analyzed usage patterns for 3,000+ users by calculating coefficient of variation (CV = std dev / mean of daily completions).
Success archetype (User A):
- CV 0.33 (very consistent daily pattern) - 580 completions/month - 465 days active - Regular professional schedule - High cognitive load (PhD + PM) - Job-to-be-done: "Eliminate decision fatigue"
Failure archetype (User B):
- CV 0.86 (boom-bust cycles) - Still paying subscription - Stopped using 7 months ago - Quote: "Life is too irregular, alarms ring at wrong time"
WHAT I TRIED
Retention fixes (none moved D1 from 4.2%):
- Rebuilt onboarding 4 times (current: v4, takes users through creating first ritual + habit + completing it once) - Added AI coaching (GPT-5, personalized habit advice, agentic tool calls) - Added gamification (quests, XP, levels, streaks) - Built WearOS app (rituals on your wrist) (more for myself as it was half a day of work, but still) - Added analytics dashboard - Daily notifications - Early wins in first session (complete habit in onboarding), streaks
Features built that didn't help:
- AI chat (11.54% conversion when discovered, but only 2.4% of users find it despite being literally in the bottom navigation bar) - Journaling - Habit timers with on-screen overlays - Streak widget with goals and focus on small wins/future progress
Interview attempts:
- Emailed all 9 power users for 15-20 min interviews - Offered 6-12 months free Pro - Got 2 responses after multiple attempts - User C (Level 177, active daily): no response - User D (Level 148): no response - User E (Level 236, ADHD coach, agreed to call): ghosted - 3 others: no response after 2 weeks
Paying customer analysis:
- Queried DB: only 15% of paying customers match "power user archetype" (CV <0.5 or Level 100+) - 4 of 5 known power users DON'T pay, the other pays but doesn't use the app. - Pattern: random trial conversions, not established users - 30% of subscribers have 0 activity (forgot to cancel)
Cancellation reasons (analyzed all churned subscribers):
- 43% "don't use it enough" (avg 63 days before cancel) - 30% cost concerns (avg 33 days before cancel) - 12% found better app (avg 19 days before cancel)
WHAT I THINK I KNOW
1. Product works for people with regular schedules + high cognitive load 2. Fixed-time alarms break when life gets irregular 3. Power users love it but won't pay or engage 4. Random people pay briefly then churn 5. Feature additions don't fix retention (D1 stayed at 4.2% through AI, quests, WearOS, etc.) 6. No monetizable pattern after 3 years
THE QUESTION
Not asking what to do. Asking: What am I blind to?
I have extreme PMF for 9 people who won't monetize. Is this:
- A pricing problem? (tested $1-6/mo PPP) - A positioning problem? (marketed as general habit tracker, should niche down?) - A feature problem? (wrong features locked behind paywall?) - Unfixable? (category too hard to monetize - results take weeks, requires discipline users lack)
Happy to share queries, GA4 exports, whatever helps.
The author built a habit tracking app with dedicated users, but struggles to monetize it, sparking discussion on user behavior, retention, and revenue models.
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Tech stack: Kotlin Multiplatform, Compose Multiplatform, targeting Android/iOS/WearOS. 99% crash-free rate, 4.2* rating. The app works - users just don't stick or pay.
The regularity pattern (CV) analysis was eye-opening: active power users have CV <0.5 (consistent daily routine), churned power users have CV >0.7 (boom-bust). But when I analyzed paying customers, only 15% match this pattern. Most revenue comes from people who try it briefly and churn within 1-2 billing cycles.
If anyone wants to dig into the data, I'm happy to share: - Anonymized GA4 exports - SQL queries for usage pattern analysis - Onboarding flow breakdowns - Retention cohort data
Posting this because after 3 years I'm stuck between "one more pivot" and "shut it down." Hoping someone sees what I'm missing.
At least one super-famous bestselling author tried to serialize his novel online with voluntary payments, and had to abandon the experiment. Nobody payed.
I even ran an A/B test (hard vs soft paywall):
- Started by "recommendation" from popular entrepreneur - 3 months, 3k users - Baseline (soft paywall, can skip): 0.8% conversion - Hard paywall (must activate trial): 0.6% conversion - Revenue tracking broken (Firebase showed $0 both variants) - Killed experiment yesterday.
They have a bunch of features that I don’t care about and never use (AI, their web browser, ...). I just need their core search product (because Google is useless). Instead of putting features behind a paywall, they offer search free of charge up to a certain number of searches per month (I think). It’s enough to learn if their search is good enough to pay for. I pay to continue to use their core service more frequently (and I guess it’s the same with most of their paying customers).
Your customers seem to find value in your core service but don’t want to pay for the extras. Maybe you could apply the Kagi model?
Kagi model applied to Respawn would be: free tier gets 50-100 completions/month. If you're crushing it like the Level 177 user (800/month), you pay to keep using the core.
This makes more sense than what I'm doing. I'm trying to monetize peripherals when the core is what they value.
The risk: does limiting completions kill the habit-building momentum? If someone hits their limit mid-month, breaks their streak, do they just churn instead of convert?
But worth testing. It's at least aligned with value - heavy users pay, light users stay free.
The Kagi model Lee mentioned above would flip this: free tier is limited (50-100 completions/month), heavy users pay to continue. Then paying makes you smart (you're getting 800 completions/month for $5), not a sucker.
But that requires confidence the core is worth paying for. And based on my conversion data (0.8%), most people try it and decide it's not.
So maybe the real issue is: the core isn't valuable enough to limit. And if I can't confidently say 'this is worth paying for after 100 uses,' then I don't have a product.
Power users use alarms + timers heavily according to interviews. But two of them (Level 148 and 177) have zero subscriptions (never paid), so either they found workarounds or alarms aren't as critical as I thought.
The weird part: AI Chat has 11.54% conversion rate when users discover it (vs 0.8% overall). But only 2.4% of users even find it. So there's ONE feature that works, but it's buried and most power users never see it.
Maybe the answer is: make AI chat the core experience, not a locked bonus feature?
- Age: 40% are 18-24, 20% are 25-34 - Gender: 50/50 split (males have 2x longer sessions) - Location: Was mostly US/UK/Russia historically, but had an organic viral spike in Poland (June 25) that I can't trace - install referrer tracking broke. Source unknown (YouTube/TikTok?), ~2k installs. - Platform: 92% Android, 8% iOS (iOS converts at 6.88% vs Android 1.07%)
The 9 power users I described are from the pre-spike era. The actual bulk of my users now might be younger/different demographic from Poland, but I can't interview them to find out.
Such is life. I do the same with so many little tools that make my life better. Why pay for something if I can get it for free? There are so many things asking for my money. I say no whenever I can.
There are not many solutions here. Either sell your services, sell your users, or sell to your users. If people aren't upgrading to the paid version, the free version might be enough. You might need to adjust what they get for free.
You nailed it: 'If people aren't upgrading, the free version might be enough.' That's exactly my problem. Level 177 user completes 800+ habits/month on free tier.
So I either:
1. Lock core features - risk losing the 9 power users 2. Keep it generous - accept it won't monetize 3. Shut down
Question: on your website, did you experiment with limiting free usage? Or accept it's a free tool with optional donations?
However, my business model is different. For software, you need to give people enough to fall in love with your product, but not enough to keep using it for years without paying.
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How many of your DAU have used the app on 7 of the last 14 days, say?
Being brutal, if you’ve only got 10-20 daily active users after 32000+ installs then all the data analysis you’re doing is just hocus pocus.
You’re focusing on entirely the wrong problem. Your issue isn’t monetisation, it’s user acquisition and retention.
Of those 10-20 DAU, probably 8-10 are the power users who use it 7/7 days (Level 100+ users, CV <0.5). So yes, sticky users exist but they're <0.1% of installs.
I'm not 'focusing on monetization' - I gave up on retention months ago. Tried:
- 4 onboarding rebuilds - AI coaching - Gamification (quests, XP) - WearOS app - Daily notifications - Early wins in first session
D1 retention stayed at 4.2% through all of it. Nothing moved the needle.
So I shifted to: 'Can I monetize the 10-20 who stuck?' Answer: No. They won't pay because free tier is complete.
You're saying I should fix retention first. Fair. But after months of trying and 0.0% improvement, at what point do you accept the category is broken or the product doesn't work for 99% of people?
The 'hocus pocus' analysis was trying to understand if the 1% who stick have patterns I can replicate. They do (regular schedule + high cognitive load). But I can't find more of them or get them to pay.
If you truly believe that regular schedule and high cognitive load are the “sticky” that makes it work then you need to market to people using those points.
What’s your marketing strategy currently?
On the “when should I give up” point… who are your competitors?
Marketing strategy: None, really. 99% organic from Play/App Store discovery. Spent $1,300 on ads over 3 years, negligible results. No content marketing (tried, spent ~20k$ on an instagram account, gained 50 followers), no SEO, no outreach (apart from irregular reddit shills). Just ship features and hope App Store algorithms pick it up.
Had one viral spike in Poland (June 2025, ~1,600 users) but don't know the source - maybe a YouTuber review, maybe App Store featuring. GA4 misattributed it to paid ads which didn't exist.
Competitors: - Free: Habitica (gamified), Todoist, Google Tasks - Freemium: Productive, Habitify, Strides (3-5 free habits, pay for more) - Paid upfront: Streaks ($5 one-time) - Coaching: Fabulous ($70/year), Noom ($60/month) - Niche: Focus Bear (ADHD), Routinery ($4/mo, routines focused)
The irony: I think I accidentally built something that works for a specific archetype (regular schedules + decision fatigue), but I've been marketing it as a general habit tracker to everyone. Which explains the 4.2% D1 retention - 95% are wrong-fit users.
But I can't niche down based on 9 users who won't even respond to my emails.
That aside (as it isn’t necessarily important) I think you need to find three things that represent the “sweet spot” for your app and try marketing around those.
Sadly I don’t think it’s possible to scale what is effectively a commodity app with plenty of competition without having a strong purpose, and without actively marketing.
I’m not sure todoist is your competitor. I use todoist. I use it because it allows me to create tasks and assign them to people and then it gets out of the way. I pay for the team plan (pro plan?) where I can assign to half a dozen folk.
Fabulous is very interesting - I got sucked in on a deal. Quickly realised it is VERY woo woo and aimed at a certain female focused audience. As a very non woo woo non-female I found the ‘coaching’ very not for me.