Two pricing strategies for mobile apps | Starter Story

When Pat Walls launched PuffCount, a tool that tracks how many puffs you take from a vape, he initially tried to monetize it the same way he had with his earlier games: ads. That strategy had worked for Grid and Wordle because players stayed in those apps for long sessions, generating enough ad impressions to make money. But PuffCount was different. Users opened it, logged a puff, and left. They were on the app for seconds, not minutes. Ads barely earned anything. So Walls switched to a hard paywall — a screen that blocks all functionality until the user pays — and his conversion rate jumped to 20–25%. That one change, he says, "changed my business overnight."

Why ads fail for tool apps and paywalls succeed

The core insight is that monetization strategy has to match user behavior. In a game like Wordle, people play for several minutes at a stretch, often multiple times a day. That creates enough screen time for ad impressions to add up. But a utility app like PuffCount is used in short bursts — open, log, close. There is no idle time to serve ads, and the user is not in a passive, receptive state. Walls explains: "For these tool focused apps like PuffCount, ads don't really work because you're not expecting the user to be on your app for a super long period of time."