Today we’re talking about HINT - the Soulmate Sketch funnel doing big numbers right now. All the details are inside Consumer App Index PRO:

Now let’s talk about Hint & why Astrology is such a perennial Direct Response Market…

Because here’s the thing…

Direct response advertising and astrology have been married for at least 70 years.

1950s: Newspaper horoscope columns driving mail-order book sales.

1990s: Miss Cleo's "Call me now!" generating $1 billion through $4.99/minute psychic phone chat. (Check the offer: “First 3 minutes free!”)

Today: Nebula doing $50M ARR. CHANI pulling $800K/month on iOS. Astrotalk raising at a $1.3B valuation in India.

The playbook never changes. Mystery products support infinite upsells.

What's your soulmate's name? When will you meet? What about your baby? Past life connection?

Every question opens another paywall.

Miss Cleo proved this worked. Hint is proving it still does.

Hint. The soulmate sketch quiz.

16 million visits last month. (up from 9.9M the previous month)

$3.8 million on YouTube ads in the same period.

Plus thousands of Facebook ads running.

And here's where it gets interesting.

Hint and MyIQ? Same parent company. RLabs LLC.

Same team. Same data.

Combined $85 MILLION just on YouTube ads last year.

And yet...

Each of these Web2App offers have completely different business models after you pay.

MyIQ: clean subscription. No upsells.

Hint: 13-item upsell ladder. Live astrologer calls. Cross-sells.

If there was ONE right way to do quiz funnels, RLabs would do it one way.

But they're not.

Let me show you what they're actually doing.

Their top YouTube ad is 33 seconds long.

Guy on a couch. Dog on his lap. Nothing fancy.

$2.3 million lifetime spend. Still running after 7 months.

$2.3M lifetime spend, $512K in the last 30 days

Here's the ad itself:

Here's what makes it work:

He opens with a REFUND story.

Wait, what?

Every other ad promises amazing results. This one starts with a complaint.

You HAVE to keep watching.

Then the twist: the colleague WAS her soulmate. They got married.

The "problem" was actually proof.

(This is what direct response people call a "negative hook." Start with tension. Resolve it into your strongest testimonial. Works like crazy.)

The rest of the ad is tight:

33 seconds. $2.3 million. Dog on lap the whole time.

(Fun fact: dogs in ads = trust. Sounds dumb. Works anyway.)

You click. You land.

Blurred face with a question mark.

"Ready to finally discover your True Soulmate?"

You can ALMOST see features through the blur.

That's intentional. Maximum curiosity gap.

Click through and you don’t see a question. Instead it’s social proof straight out of the gate:

Before you answer a single question, they hit you with:

Heavy social proof before a single quiz question

They're selling you BEFORE the quiz even starts.

Then come the questions.

31 of them.

Easy ones first. Gender. Who you're into. Age range.

Then emotional ones. Your biggest relationship fear. What scares you about finding love.

Then the identity labeling kicks in.

"People who value Loyalty crave deep trust and lasting connection."

By question 20, you're a "Water element" with a specific love language.

They're not just collecting data. They're making you feel SEEN.

(This is textbook Barnum effect. Generic statements that feel deeply personal. Horoscopes use it. Personality tests use it. It works because we WANT to believe someone understands us.)

By the time they ask for your email? You've answered 25 questions. You've been validated three times. Feels like a formality.

Countdown timer. Check.

Same fine-print pricing: $1 for 7-day trial, then $29.99/month. Check.

Live counter ("988 people joined today"). Check.

Blurred sketch you can almost see. Check.

If you read my MyIQ breakdown, this is identical.

Same urgency. Same social proof. Same price anchoring.

Most people pay the $1.

With MyIQ, you pay and you're done.

$1 trial. Get your IQ score. That's it. Single subscription the rebills $29.99 in 7 days.

With Hint?

With that $1 you're just getting STARTED.

First thing after you pay: "Your sketch will be ready in 24 hours."

24 HOURS?!

You paid. You answered 31 questions. You gave your birth date.

And now you wait?

Here's the thing:

That delay exists for ONE reason.

"Sketch in 30 minutes — $3.99"

Obviously this is a Nanobanana or similar AI-generated image play...

They manufactured impatience. Then sold you the cure.

Once you're in the app, here's your opportunity to learn more about your soulmate than just the sketch:

THIRTEEN upsells. Each $1-3. Each with a "50% off" tag.

Nobody buys all 13.

But if 10% of subscribers buy 3 at $2 average? That's $6 extra per customer.

On a $29.99/month subscription, that's meaningful.

And we haven't even talked about the BIG one.

Live Astrologer Call: $19.99 for 30 minutes.

Here they’re taking a page out of Miss Cleo’s book.

Someone who's already paid $1 for the trial, $3.99 to skip the wait, and bought a couple micro-upsells...

Now they're being offered a $20 call.

The funnel just keeps extracting.

Oh, and there's a Baby Sketch cross-sell too. Same concept, different emotional trigger. $3.99.

Remember how I said MyIQ and Hint are both RLabs LLC?

Same company. Same team. Same data.

Combined $60M+ on YouTube ads.

And yet:

Same subscription price.

Completely different post-purchase strategy.

If there was ONE "best" way to do quiz funnels... RLabs would do it both ways.

They're not.

Here's what I think is happening:

match your monetization to how people actually engage with your product.

On the ad creative:

Start with a problem. Everyone else promises results. A "refund story" that becomes proof? That's pattern interrupt gold.

Specific details make stories real. "Jess." "Three weeks ago." Vague = fake. Specific = believable.

Dogs build trust. (try it)

On the funnel:

Obviously the $1 7-day trial followed by $29.99/mo pricing is working for Web2App. Test it.

Artificial delays = upsell opportunities. The 24-hour wait exists to sell the $3.99 speed-up.

Micro-transactions add up. $1 here, $2 there, across thousands of users.

Promise in the ad, gate in the app. "When and where you'll meet" is in the ad. It's a $2.99 upsell in the app.

On the strategy:

Entertainment products support deeper upsells than results products.

Test both approaches. Even RLabs, with $60M in data, runs different models for different categories.

It’s all inside Consumer App Index PRO.

Updated Weekly with the latest ads + landers + funnel details:

That's Hint. Web2App Funnel #2.

Same subscription as MyIQ. Completely different back-end.

Tomorrow: another breakdown. Different category, same approach.

If you're building quiz funnels, this is what the operators are doing.

See you inside Consumer App Index!