📱 How profitable are subscription apps?

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The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is hiring three seasonal workers to run its “penguin post office” in Antarctica. The world’s southernmost post office, it processes up to 80k messages annually thanks to cruise ship passengers. Employees will not only sort mail, but also care for the area’s ~1.5k gentoo penguins.

In today’s email:

Sub-par: Subscription apps struggle to make big bucks.
Screen time: Fun and fights for the whole family.
Weird week: Cicada pee, mini organs, and more wild stories.
Around the web: A wiki on roads, a nice rainy day, dolphin behaviors, and more.

👇 Listen: Are there just too many apps?

The Big Idea

Most subscription apps don’t make bank

Bummer news if you were planning on quitting your day job to become an indie mobile app developer: Most of them don’t make that much money.

A new report from RevenueCat, which offers subscription tools for mobile app developers, looked at data from the 29k+ apps it supports, per TechCrunch.

It found:

The median monthly revenue for apps at least one year old is less than $50.
The top 5% of apps generate 200x more revenue than the bottom quartile one year after launch.
Just 17.2% of apps ever exceed $1k in monthly revenue. Of those that do, ~35% grow to $5k/month, but only 3.5% hit $10k/month.

Any good news?

The industry is still growing, despite subscription fatigue and consumers spending less amid inflation. There are also other ways for apps to make money — a 2024 prediction surfaced by Revenue Cat and the experts it consulted in its report.

For example: While games have long offered in-app purchases, Dan Layfield, founder of Subscription Index, pointed out that Tinder monetizes by allowing users to buy “super likes.” Other strategies could include in-app ads or affiliate marketing.

Cool. Any other cool predictions?

Here are two:

Jenny Kay Pollock, founder of Women and AI, predicts an increase in AI features akin to DuoLingo’s new Max subscription, which uses ChatGPT to build personalized language lessons.
Steve P. Young, founder and CEO of App Masters, thinks the move is to build not just one big app, but a portfolio of smaller apps that appeal to niche markets.

Here’s a niche app for free: Merlin, powered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, helps you identify birds.

Free Resource

What a cookieless future means for marketers

For the past 30 years, webmasters have used cookies to personalize your online experience in ways like:

Remembering your usernames/passwords/preferences
Saving all your clothes in a shopping cart
Sending targeted ads based on your browsing habits

This year, Google is finally sunsetting the third-party cookies that allow your data to be tracked and stored for potentially evil advertising reasons. It’s a bummer for scaling companies, but a big win for innocent civilians.

Our 2023 research indicates that 81% of consumers worry about how businesses use their data — so how should brands approach advertising with class in a cookieless world?

See Google Marketing Platform director Steven Yap’s top insights on data privacy, ditching cookies, and embracing AI.

Death to uninvited cookies →

TRENDING

Second time’s a charm? Australian billionaire Clive Palmer announced new plans to build Titanic II, a ship he said would be “far, far superior than the original,” which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Though Palmer announced similar plans a decade ago — he blamed the pandemic for the long delay — he now claims the vessel will sail from Southampton to New York, just like the OG would have had it not hit an iceberg, in June 2027.

SNIPPETS

SpaceX’s Starship exploded after launch for a second time. Thursday’s flight test remained intact for about an hour before breaking up over the Indian Ocean instead of splashing down as intended.

Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he’s gathering investors to bid on TikTok if the US government forces a sale.

In other TikTok news: Italy fined the app ~$11m for endangering minors by spreading harmful content. It’s the latest from European regulators, who ordered the app to pay $368m in September for not protecting children.

OpenAI signed contracts with Le Monde and Prisa Media to use their publications’ French and Spanish news content to train ChatGPT and provide users with real-time updates.

Home Depot is opening four new 500-square-foot distribution centers in Detroit, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Toronto to attract professional customers like remodelers and contractors after sales declined 3% in the last fiscal year.

Under Armour founder Kevin Plank is returning to the company as CEO on April 1, replacing Stephanie Linnartz, who has held the position for the last year. The company’s stock has dropped 85% since its record high in 2015.

Outdoor Voices is allegedly closing all 16 of its brick-and-mortar stores this weekend, according to four employees. The athletic apparel brand, founded in 2014 by Ty Haney, will sell only online moving forward.

Don't miss this...

Since the AI boom, marketers have noticed SEO algorithm shifts, forcing them to adjust their strategies (and budgets). Here’s one expert’s take on how AI has impacted SEO, and what you should be doing about it.

Chart

how American teens feel without devices in hand by feeling and prevalence

Olivia Heller

Don’t get too judgy, parents — teens aren’t the only ones with a screen time problem

Today, ~95% of US teens have access to a smartphone.

That means a lot of arguments with parents about screen time, social media, and online safety. According to new data from Pew Research Center, technology use is affecting the whole family:

Nearly 40% of parents and teens report regularly arguing about phone screen time.
Forty-six percent of teens say their parents get distracted by their phone when trying to have a conversation, while only 31% of parents say the same.
Fifty percent of parents say they’ve looked through their teenager’s smartphone, and 43% say it’s hard to manage their teen’s screen time.

Amid all that commotion, some parents and teens are aware that it might serve them well to step away from the screen — 38% of teens and 47% of parents say they spend too much time on their smartphone.

Of course, experts have long been raising serious concerns about social media’s effect on children. The Senate recently held a hearing with tech CEOs to discuss the ramifications.

While legislation is slow to pass…

… change might first come from inside the home. As it turns out, some teenagers are not so interested in their phones — or, at least, recognize the negative consequences of being on them too much.

Seventy-two percent of US teens report often or sometimes feeling peaceful without their smartphones (while 44% say it causes anxiety).
Thirty-nine percent of teens say they’ve cut back on their time spent on social media, and 36% say they’ve lowered their screen time.

Don’t get us wrong, the numbers show that most teens are content with the amount of time they spend on their phones.

But those who are feeling burnt out by tech might explain some recent trends. Gen Zers have shown interest in outdated tech like flip phones, digital cameras, and even landlines; some are trying to ditch tech entirely.

Ultimately, 70% of teens think the benefits of smartphones outweigh the harms. So, buckle up parents — it appears the arguments will continue for the time being.

FIT THE BILL

There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?

Clue 1: This company’s board of directors has multiple guys referred to as “His Excellency.”

Clue 2: This company makes barrels and barrels of cash every year. Like, to an absurd degree — it occupies four spots on the list of top 10 largest-ever corporate annual earnings.

Clue 3: You know Neom, that bonkers $500B city of the future being built in the middle of the desert? It’s being funded in part by a 4% stake in this company.

👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇

That was odd

Cat pics are also our preferred method of payment. A Massachusetts public library’s “March Meowness” program will allow people to clear their account balances for lost or damaged items with cat photos or drawings. Heck, it’ll even take depictions of “honorary cats,” which is to say dogs, orcas, or other animals. The program, inspired by a pandemic-born uptick in fines among young patrons, runs through the end of the month. Over 400 accounts have already been cleared.
What is this, a lung for ants? British researchers have grown mini organs, known as organoids, using stem cells extracted from pregnancy fluids. Unlike other stem cells, these cells are collected from active pregnancies and raise few ethical concerns, according to bioethics expert Alta Charo, who says the new method doesn’t seem to present any risk to the mother or the fetus. Some human organs successfully created thus far include the lung, brain, liver, and kidney, which scientists hope will aid research on new medical treatments, including those for prenatal conditions.
The UK finally gets its own mysterious monolith. A ~10-foot-tall silvery structure was discovered on a Welsh hillside over the weekend, representing the first such reported occurrence since 2020 when a nearly identical structure appeared in Utah, followed by similar occurrences across California, Turkey, and Romania. As with those cases, this monolith has got the internet talking, with many questioning its origins: Could aliens be behind it, or just some pranksters with too much time (and immaculate welding skills) on their hands?
And the award for “the strongest stream of pee relative to their size of any animal that scientists studied” goes to: cicadas. Small insects typically only produce droplets of urine, according to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which attributes the clamorous bugs’ very full bladders to their diet of xylem sap: a liquid that’s light in nutrients, requiring cicadas to consume it in high volumes for proper sustenance. So, this spring — when two broods representing 1T cicadas emerge for the first time in 13 years — “April showers” may mean something entirely different.

AROUND THE WEB

🖼️ On this day: In 1901, 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings were exhibited in Paris, 11 years after the painter’s death. In his lifetime, the now-legendary artist only sold one painting.

🛣️ That’s cool: A wiki guide about nothing but roads.

🗞️ Newsletter: Get your no-fail, must-read free guide to the latest and greatest in TV, music, and movies delivered right to your inbox.

☔ Chill out: with this rainy day simulator.

🐬 Aww: What’s your favorite behavior?

SHOWER THOUGHTS

There’s no biological flying thing a human can ride. SOURCE
SOURCE
Anyone can create a word if they get enough people to start saying it. SOURCE
SOURCE
Your mind can speak in any voice imaginable. SOURCE
SOURCE
Hitting a bong is using all four elements at once. SOURCE
SOURCE
Dogs are mostly human colored. SOURCE
SOURCE

via Reddit

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Today’s Fit the Bill answer is Saudi Aramco (Market cap: $2.01T)

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Ben “Too much screen time” Berkley.

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