Running an LTD on AppSumo: $400K in revenue and a 2.5% conversion to subscribers

I ran a lifetime deal (LTD) on AppSumo for my product for 15 months. It generated over $400,000 in revenue and converted about 2.5% of lifetime users into recurring subscribers. Here's how it went, what I'd do differently, and whether I'd do it again.

tl;dr

  • I would definitely do it again if I was starting out with the same product. It was my first six-figure year from a product, and it showed me the power of the internet.
  • LTD buyers can be cheap users, but a small fraction (~2.5–5%) do convert to recurring subscribers.
  • LTDs tend to be heavy users and catch product bugs before your recurring subscribers do.
  • You must optimise your support to reduce load from LTDs — it's mostly repetitive stuff, so an AI support agent backed by a knowledge base article does the job.

Quick context

  • The product I ran the LTD for: transcript.lol
  • My LTD page: appsumo.com/products/transcript-lol
  • This is an AI product, so monthly costs are real!
  • The deal ran from November 2023 to January 2025 — 15 months total.
  • Generated over $400,000 in revenue (gross sales through AppSumo) from the deal.
  • 35% refund rate over the campaign lifetime — considered very low for AppSumo.
  • Converted 2.5% of LTD buyers to recurring subscribers — 1% on annual plans and 1.5% on monthly plans.
  • I continue to make money from these users via one-time top-ups etc.
  • Rated 4.85 at the time of campaign close.

How it started

AppSumo reached out to me multiple times to run an LTD, but I was apprehensive: I have real costs per usage, while LTD buyers only pay once. And that's before factoring in the insane cut AppSumo takes per sale — typically 80% to AppSumo, 20% to the builder. It can be different though; more on that below.

I finally decided to go ahead after reading a couple of founder stories of people doing over $20,000 and $70,000 from their campaigns. More importantly, since I was just starting out, I figured — worst case, I'll learn something. I also believed the cost of AI would go down dramatically (and it did), so my cost concern worked itself out.

AppSumo deal options

AppSumo offers two types of campaigns:

  • SumoSelect campaign: They take a large cut and promote your product heavily — Google and Meta ads, newsletters, featuring on the site, and so on.
  • Standard campaign: They take between 25–40%, with no heavy promotion — but you still get access to their large pool of LTD customers.

My initial deal

Since AppSumo had reached out to me, I had some negotiation power. I went with a Standard campaign to test the waters, and negotiated a progressive, performance-based cut:

  • Started at 60% to me per sale.
  • Bumped to 65% to me after $50K in sales.
  • Bumped to 75% to me after $100K in sales.

It did surprisingly well! During Black Friday 2023, my cut alone was $30,000 for the month. That also happened to be my first month — great first impressions overall.

Refunds were under 20% in those early months, and the AppSumo folks told me that's very low. Shocking! They crept up to 35% over the campaign's lifetime, which is still considered very low for AppSumo. I continued this deal for about 10 months.

The follow-on deal

As sales started to slow down to around $4K–$5K per month, AppSumo reached out to move me to a SumoSelect campaign, with the upsell that it would unlock a bigger pool of buyers who only purchase from the SumoSelect program. I figured, why not. Again, performance-based:

  • 25% to me at the start.
  • 30% to me from $50K in revenue.

Post campaign

  • LTD users still post questions on my AppSumo page and expect me to reply there. I stopped after I got my last payment.
  • AppSumo says purchases must be redeemed on your website within 60 days, but many people fail to do it.
  • Despite allowing redemptions for the entire 15 months the deal ran, plus 2 more months after, I still get users complaining that I should let them redeem. Ignore them.
  • Never take away something promised in the deal. It's bad form and loses trust.

Support: automate it or drown

  • You get lots of repetitive support questions from LTDs, specific to the AppSumo deal. I maintain a dedicated help page answering each recurring question: AppSumo plans help.
  • I auto-redirect questions from LTD-only users to that page, and reserve live chat and direct support for paid upgrades. LTD users can still open a bug report or feature request for anything not covered there.
  • Any duplicate requests are closed automatically.
  • LTD support requests aren't all bad, though. If an update breaks any of my features, LTDs tend to catch it early and reach out — free smoke testing for your product.
  • I still respond to LTD users for actual bugs and non-LTD feature requests, to stay engaged and understand how my product is being used.
  • Many LTD users can be cheap and cause support headaches, but with the right setup in place, you can handle them peacefully.

Converting LTDs to subscribers

  • You can convert some LTDs to recurring subscribers — just keep adding more value to your product, and keep some of it behind a subscription upgrade.
  • You do get bad reviews on AppSumo if you don't include some of your new features for LTD users. Ignore that — this is exactly how you incentivise some LTDs to upgrade to paid monthly plans.
  • Always stack the benefits of the subscription on top of the LTD plan, so LTD users are more open to testing the upgrade for value.
  • Always provide a way to unsubscribe and go back to the LTD-only plan — these are still your early supporters, and they promote you.

The human side

  • The CEO, Noah, is very approachable — he slid into my inbox on multiple occasions to resolve issues with some problematic users, refunding the bad ones out of his own pocket, well after our deal ended.
  • Noah also sends me positive notes occasionally when I send product update emails to my users — a nice touch, again well after our deal ended. (He's a user of my product.)
  • AppSumo users do some word-of-mouth promotion for you, which is nice.

Would I do it again?

For a new product, absolutely. The revenue was real, the early user feedback was invaluable, and a slice of those lifetime buyers became genuine recurring customers. AppSumo has reached out multiple times asking me to come back for a limited-time deal — but for an established product with steady subscription revenue, I don't see the point anymore. Which tells you exactly when an LTD makes sense: at the start.