How Wowmaking Publisher Boosts Product Monetization and Builds Partnerships with Developers

Anton, not so long ago, we wrote about Wowmaking and even managed to record a podcast with you. But if someone missed it, can you remind me what the company does?

The company is already over 3.5 years old. We are developing our own mobile products and are currently focused on developing applications in the Mental Health and Education categories. During our work, we also managed to upgrade in other areas: entertainment, utilities, social media analytics. We are in the top 10 companies of the Belarusian High Technologies Park in terms of revenue. There are more than 100 professionals in our team now.

What’s your most successful product? In your opinion, why exactly did it take off?

We had more than one successful product, but of those that are now actively developing, I can emphasize two: the Mustread scary story chat and the Habio habit tracker.

We launched Habio about a year ago: The application helps users to improve themselves and contains a lot of useful content related to mental health. We see great promise in such products.

The success of our applications is a merit of the entire team, from testing and development to user acquisition and marketing. When one team is focused toward the goal, then the result is not long in coming.

In May, Wowmaking launched non-gaming app publishing. How many developers have turned to Wow-booster? What products have become your partners?

Since the launch of publishing, more than 40 mobile app developers have contacted us. Among them were both small projects and more serious products.

At the moment, we have started working with four partners whose products belong to the Health & Fitness, Photo & Video, Story Templates, Motivation & Affirmations categories. We are in the process of negotiations with the guys whose products are in the Brain Training and Beauty categories.

What help and expertise does Wowmaking provide to affiliate applications? Are there already any successes that you can tell about?

We help partner products in four areas:

• traffic analytics and attribution;
• monetization, where the focus is on conducting A / B tests and experimenting with subscriptions;
• creation of creatives for product promotion; and
• user acquisition.

There is nothing to brag about yet; we are in the process of launching and first tests. There are gaps in this process, both on our part and on the part of our partners. But we try to solve them every day. Next time, I will be happy to share my successes and failures, as well as specific cases.

Tell us in more detail how your work with analytics and hypothesis testing is organized.

For the analytics of financial indicators, we use our own BI. Partners install it and also get access to it, and we see the data taking into account the forecasts for paying users.

When choosing hypotheses to increase product monetization, we immediately start from our best practices. We carry out A/B tests on three to four hypotheses. The budget for such testing is usually two to five thousand dollars. All hours of drafting technical specifications for monetization, creation of creatives, and user acquisition are on our side.

First of all, we test and see what CPA and volume comes out. Most often, the first time, you can’t reach the desired numbers, so we continue to search and try.

As for preparing creatives to attract users, our motion designers and creative managers prepare new solutions every two to three sprints. The user acquisition team, after testing and working out the creative, gives feedback on them, assesses whether they have potential, and then moves, based on the data obtained, to create new creatives.

What products are you currently looking for cooperation? What metrics should they have?

If we talk about niches, then these are educational products in the broadest sense, from music-themed apps to learning how to manage your Instagram account with the right tools. We also focus on the Mental Health category. It is, of course, the most difficult, since there are many nuances when working with the psychological state and the user’s brain. And I really want to help people solve their problems (or at least get closer to solving them).

We are ready to work with teams of at least three to four people and are focused on working on their project. The retention of the first day should be 30+, and by the 30th day, it should not be equal to zero. It will be a plus if the team already has experience with subscriptions and monetization, but this, of course, is not a key requirement. If the team had attempts to work with user acquisition and have preliminary figures, then we can understand ARPPU.

If you summarize the experience of working with startups, you can probably make up the top mistakes that developers make when communicating with a publisher. What can negatively affect the decision to partner?

Perhaps we can single out things that are likely to push us to refuse to cooperate with the developer, even if the product looks interesting at first glance.

First, the developer doesn’t understand the purpose. If he just wants to make money and there is nothing more behind it, then there is little chance that our partnership will take place. Second, the developer must have a vision for product development. Unfortunately, small teams often don’t have it. Third, the developer must have a good team and technical expertise.

At the moment, we do not work with guys who see their product in their free time from their main work. Conversations with them come to a standstill when we need to focus on the product and we need their time.

What are the conditions for cooperation between Wowmaking and partner applications?

As stated in the podcast, the profit received during the collaboration can be divided in different proportions from 80/20 in our direction to 50/50. It all depends on the product, the team, and the owners of the product.

What does the full picture of cooperation with Wowmaking look like? The developer submitted a request through publishing.wowmaking.net. What’s next?

When we receive an application from the developer, we will contact him within one to three days and, as a rule, ask for additional data. In their applications, some guys prescribe basic metrics, and we are always happy about that, but for a complete picture of the product, we most often need more information.

Then we on our side analyze the product and its metrics for several days, after which we make a decision. If, in our opinion, the communication is worth continuing, then we call the developer and talk about all possible formats of partnership.

When the agreement on publishing is reached, the test period begins. The developer implements our recommendations on monetization and analytics, and we prepare the first creatives for user acquisition and launch the first tests.

Usually the whole process takes three to four weeks. If something starts to work out, then we are already moving on to the stage of full-fledged publishing: We solve legal issues, negotiate the conditions and sign contracts, and develop a plan for scaling the product.

Resource: AppTractor