Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
10 tactics from Tammy Taw
How to Unlock Revenue Growth on Google Play — Tammy Taw, Google
Watch the full episode“In eastern markets Asia Africa the Middle East that the buyer types look different not all users are buying subscriptions and instead they're buying consumable APS... almost half of users are buying consumable APS versus subscriptions and that they're not just buying these consumable APS one time they're buying it over and over again.”
Eastern Markets Prefer Consumables: Nearly Half of Buyers Skip Subscriptions
Google Play's internal data shows that in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East roughly half of paying users prefer consumable in-app purchases over subscriptions — and repeat-buy behaviour means lifetime value tracks close to subscribers. Apps targeting global growth need to rethink the assumption that subscriptions are the only monetization lever.
“Users who buy both typically spend three times more than a subscriber and three times more than users who just buy APS... you're capped with a subscription model those users can't buy anymore so they can't spend any more even if they wanted to.”
Hybrid Buyers Spend 3× More Per Year Than Subscribers — The Revenue Ceiling Problem
A subscription creates an artificial ceiling: once someone pays their recurring fee, they have no path to spend more even if they're power users. Google Play's data shows hybrid buyers — those who subscribe AND buy consumables — spend three times more annually than pure subscribers. The ceiling only hurts the developer; adding consumable options breaks it without breaking the existing base.
“It a small percentage of buyers the average stat that we see is that they make up 7% of total buyers but they can bring in a quarter of the revenue which is pretty impressive.”
7% of Buyers Can Generate 25% of Revenue in a Hybrid Model
Google Play data shows that hybrid buyers — the small slice who both subscribe and purchase consumables — average just 7% of an app's buyer base but can account for a full 25% of revenue. This power-law distribution means a modest hybrid offering unlocks disproportionate upside without restructuring the core subscription product.
“I like to think that we can optimize the area under the demand curve with different price points that fits users needs so thinking through you know these buyer cohorts will help with some of those concerns about cannibalizing.”
Optimize the Area Under the Demand Curve — Different Price Points for Different Wallet Sizes
Once a subscription offering is saturated, every remaining non-buyer has either a different budget or a different preference. Framing this as 'filling the area under the demand curve' — adding lower price-point consumables alongside the existing subscription — neutralises cannibalization fears: the incremental buyers were never going to convert on a subscription regardless.
“Localizing the prices in those top markets so emerging market prices are about 40% lower than developed markets and so be very cognizant especially in markets that you see rapid new user growth that you are fitting your prices to that market.”
Emerging Market Prices Are ~40% Lower — Localise Before You Lose the Growth Wave
Google Play's benchmarking shows emerging-market willingness-to-pay sits roughly 40% below developed-market prices. Apps that see rapid new-user spikes in markets like India, Brazil, or Southeast Asia but haven't localised pricing are leaving most of those installs as permanently non-monetised. Price localisation is not a nice-to-have — it's the unlock for turning install growth into revenue growth in those regions.
“Repeat purchase mechanics are great for that consumable transaction that you want users to do so it is a little harder when you're trying to offer like here's this paintbrush for a lifetime then you don't have much left to offer and so you're kind of limiting the use there.”
Repeat-Purchase Mechanics Make Consumables Work — Avoid the Lifetime Item Trap
Consumables generate LTV through repetition, not one-time purchase — that's the entire mechanism. Selling a feature 'for life' destroys the monetization loop because there's nothing left to sell. The dating-app model (boosts that expire, flowers that get spent) is the archetype: each use is inherently temporary, naturally driving repeat purchase without feeling coercive.
“You give your users so many options or choices on ways to convert they probably will have some decision paralysis and they will probably take a whole year to decide what they need... what you can be strategic about is how you offer it during their user journey.”
Present Paywall Offers Progressively — Decision Paralysis Kills Conversion
Adding a hybrid monetization menu risks overwhelming users if all options appear simultaneously. Google Play recommends treating offer presentation as a decision tree: surface the SKU that matches each user's behavioural signals at the right moment in their journey rather than flooding a paywall with every available option. Fewer choices at the right time beats full transparency all at once.
“AI is a great example of that in terms of like the number of messaging or inquiries a user inputs so that takes computational resource... for certain business cases especially those like really high resource intensive things like AI these kind of models work really well.”
AI and Compute-Heavy Features Are a Natural Fit for Consumable Pricing
Consumable pricing aligns cost with value for features that have real marginal costs — particularly AI inference. Selling a pack of 25 AI generations maps the pricing to the compute consumed, avoids underpricing heavy users on a flat subscription, and gives light users a low-commitment entry point. For any AI-powered app feature, a consumption-unit model is worth testing alongside or instead of subscription access.
“If you can look at metrics and KPIs and your performance across these two separate platforms or other platforms you'll notice that the behavior is very different no one solution fits all users.”
Split iOS/Android KPIs — Platform Behaviour Differences Are Not a Rounding Error
Tammy's first principle: analyse iOS and Android as entirely separate products. User behaviour, willingness to pay, preferred SKUs, and retention curves diverge meaningfully by platform. Blending them into a single dashboard hides which strategies actually work where. Platform-specific funnels are prerequisite to platform-specific monetization optimisation.
“There's a lot of information in the Play Console i think people forget what you can find there we actually have a lot of benchmarking data in there so if you want to see how you are performing against a peer set or a different category outside yours you can look at some of your KPIs especially around play store conversion rates.”
Play Console Has Free Benchmarking Against Peers — Most Developers Ignore It
Google embeds competitive benchmarking data directly in Play Console — store conversion rates compared against peers in the same and adjacent categories. Most indie developers don't check it. It's a free, no-third-party-tool-required signal that shows whether underperformance on conversion is an industry-wide issue or a fixable outlier specific to a given app.