Mobile F2P Monetization is "pretty easy" in 2024

IF you do this

  1. Choose a proven economy model
  2. Congrats! "Monetization performance" won't be the thing that tanks your project

What almost certainly will? Retention and *gasp CPI?

In other words, product-market fit.

We've been asked... 50 times? to improve monetization

Most of the time, the real problem was

  1. Flabby retention, and
  2. Lukewarm market interest ('normal' CPI)

Case in point

My team has 2x'd to 9x'd revenue for 10 games,

and … many of these STILL couldn't scale profitably

...because they lacked potent product-market-fit.

Think about it.

99.9th percentile ARPDAU performance won't save you,

if 90% of players leave by d7 after $10-$20 CPI.

Focus instead on

  1. Deep user research (recruit ideal target players)
  2. Aggressive IPM testing (hunt POWERFUL resonance)
  3. D7R testing (delightful core loop, progression)

Use KPI targets + hard time gates for accountability.

Focus on velocity of experimentation

Purge the unhelpfully antiquated terms: 'soft launch' and 'hard launch' from your vocabulary (for now)

You don't 'launch,' you 'test' marketing (CPI & IPM) or retention (D1 & D7)

You'll know you're on the right track when you've killed your 20th prototype.

May the odds be ever in your favor.