You work hard to convert your non-spenders (or at least I do in my apps and games). But have you ever thought about turning non-converting users into agents of positive change? Or did you realize that you could earn more money as a result of doing good. I didn't!

But then I learned about Seeds, and a discovery they made: giving non-payers the opportunity to make in-app purchases for good could be the most powerful conversion tool there is. Seeds found that non-paying users are 58% more likely to spend when their purchase is for good. And these newly converted payers go on to spend an average of $25.

The kicker: Seeds focuses on for-profit, sustainable forms of social good such as microloans. These microloans are a form of sustainable social good because they’re interest-bearing, and the capital can be lent out again and again as loans are repaid. In most regions, default rates are lower than 2%.

This sounded interesting, but when I discussed Seeds with my colleagues, we assumed it would be a pretty hard sell to convince developers who are already struggling with low IAP conversion rates to give up some of those earnings to support a for-profit organization, regardless of how noble the cause may be.

Rachel Cook, Seeds founder and CEO, helped enlighten us. She believes that in order to build a truly virtuous cycle, everyone must gain, and that when we transcend the concept of zero-sum thinking—the idea that in order for you to make a dollar, I have to lose one—we can create an engine for higher overall economic growth. This is how she does it:

Creating an everyone-wins engine for sustained growth

Traditionally, when a developer wished to convert more players to payers, the most common route was to tweak the game mechanics and introduce IAP choke-points. Not really the best experience for the players you are trying to convert. With Seeds, you can offer an IAP item at its regular price with the extra bonus that a portion of the proceeds from that purchase go on to fund a microloan to an entrepreneur in a developing economy.

Here’s how it works:

1. Register with Seeds to receive your custom ad and app keys.
2. Drag-and-drop the Seeds SDK to your project. It takes about 20 minutes to set up.
3. Create or tag any IAP item that is $10 or less as a Seeds purchase. For example, a $9.99 Gem Pack.
4. The Seeds SDK shows an interstitial promoting your Seeds IAP item to the 97% of users who have not yet made a purchase.

   

    

5. The user decides that this is a pretty good deal; they get Gems, they get to help someone in need, and they feel great about the app. The reticent user becomes a spender.
6. The Amazon Appstore takes its 30% of that $9.99, leaving $7.00, of which $2.00 goes to the microloan (capital that is re-lent in perpetuity), and $1.00 goes to Seeds. This leaves $4.00 in new money for the developer, from the newly converted user.
7. So, everyone wins. A nice story, even if it ended there. But it gets better

Growing good for developers

According to Seeds data, once a player buys their first item, their Lifetime Value (LTV) tends to match the LTV of every other player in the game. In other words, the player that Seeds helped convert goes on to buy more regular, non-Seeds IAP items, generating revenue on par with other users—an average of $25. Because Seeds has seen an uptick in percent of users spending as much as 1/3, this can become a substantial revenue increase for developers.

The Seeds product also has a social sharing feature, so that your users can let their friends know that they’ve contributed to Seeds through your app. This drives new, typically high quality user acquisition—tackling another perennial developer challenge.

So, everyone wins, but developers do particularly well. And that is a scenario that I can bring to Amazon and to our developers!

With a solid story to tell our customers and our developers, we were happy to oblige when Rachel asked that her senior developers talk to the Software Architects here in Seattle to work on integration. Fortunately, Seeds needed to do no material engineering to be compatible with Amazon-In-App Purchasing. They were equipped to help developers in the Amazon Appstore bolster revenue while helping others in no time.

Getting started

If you’d like to get started with Seeds, go to their website and click on the Get Started link to download the SDK.

You can also learn more about Rachel Cook, former futures trader in Chicago, current microlending champion, at these links:

https://vimeo.com/120379655

https://www.themuse.com/advice/i-left-my-job-to-help-women-the-microlending-film-project

https://www.fastcoexist.com/1680519/seeds-a-microlending-game-where-farmville-meets-kiva

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/14/startup-seeds-makes-a-game-out-of-micro-lending/