A few months ago, Snapchat gave its users the option to pay to get early access to features, and the first month of this new subscription was simply massive.
The first month's haul totaled more than $6,000,000 of net revenue, meaning after Apple and Google's fees. I was surprised by this number when first analyzing it and speculated this wouldn't continue.
That revenue was back in July. Now, several months in, we have a much better trend to look at and the numbers are... Lower + boring.
Recurring revenue, which crossed $6M in July, dropped to $4.8M in August, according to our estimates.
Not bad you might be thinking, but, it really is. Demand for the subscription didn't grow at all, and of the roughly 2.1M subscribers who opted into Snapchat+ early on, 400K chose not to renew.
That's enough people to fill Madison Square Garden 20 times.
There was a teeny tiny bit of growth in September, but not enough to get excited over and October isn't done but so far it's not looking super awesome either.
What's going on? Snapchat's lackluster performance is a combination of a boring offering + an economic crunch that's making silly luxuries like paying to beta test features.
But, this isn't all bad. Snapchat's ability to earn millions without inventing a new service shows the strength and potential platforms have outside of selling ads.
As App Tracking Transparency continues to demolish the industry, being able to monetize in other ways will become a competitive edge for those who do it well. Snapchat is certainly doing better than Twitter. Let's see if the new chief twit can fix that.
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