When you have an excellent app, you can interact with your customers and efficiently market your brand while turning the app into a profitable revenue churner. All you need to do is monetize your app right. Your mobile app has the potential to become so much more than just a tool for your business.
Google Play Store has reported 98% of mobile app revenue gets generated from free apps. Go through the article to learn the most effective ways of making money using your mobile app.
Before we start learning how to monetize a mobile app, let us first have a clear understanding of what app monetization is.
What is App Monetization?
App monetization is a combination of multiple strategies that are aimed at leveraging the user base of the app so that the app owners can earn money from it. This is the most effective way for app developers to generate additional revenue within the app.
App monetization strategies can vary depending upon the type of app you have created. You can go through the App Monetization course on Appy Pie Academy to learn various methods and choose the one that best suits your business needs.
Best Ways to Monetize an App
Here are a few major app monetization methods that you can apply to make more money from your app.
1. In-App Purchases:
This is one of the most effective app monetization strategies and the most popular one in the app industry. As per a recent study, in-app purchases make up around 47% of the total revenue generated by app developers worldwide. On most of the multiplayer apps like Clash of Clans, Subway Surfers, etc., users tend to purchase in-app items to move a step ahead of their opponents.
2. Offer Free and Premium Versions:
You can offer the basic version of your app for free and offer some special features with a premium version. The free version of your app can be a teaser for the consumers to get them hooked. If your users like your app, they will consider going for the paid version.
Most of the apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store are free to download. There are both pros and cons to this app monetization strategy. While free downloads attract more users to download your app, there is a possibility they easily lose interest as they have made no monetary investment in the download.
3. Paid Apps:
Creating a paid app seems to be one of the easiest and quickest ways of making money through the mobile app you built. It may seem like a paid app can help you turn a profit and recoup your app development costs in no time, but you could prove to be wrong.
As per a recent study, only 20% of the total paid apps get more than 100 downloads. So, make sure your app is priced in the most common range and has a better chance of becoming successful. This increases your chances of recouping your costs and achieving a reliable revenue stream.
If used right, app monetization using the paid model is the best idea for making money using an app. Try creating a truly unique app and promote it well on the app marketplace using engaging descriptions, amazing screenshots, and plenty of five-star reviews to make a good amount of money.
4. App Development Partnerships:
You can find a potential partner with an almost similar target audience and offer to cross-promote each other’s mobile apps. You can use your partner app developer’s email lists to promote your app. If they don’t have a specific email list, you can help them create an offer that they can exclusively offer their audience while mentioning your brand name. This helps you funnel the audience to one of your CTAs.
5. Ad Revenue:
You can post ads to monetize your mobile app. Digital advertising can help you improve communication between consumers and advertisers. There are three sorts of ad revenues that you can consider.
· Cost per Click
· Cost per Action
· Cost per Thousand Impressions
Cost per thousand impressions is the most popular type of ad revenue as it doesn’t need the user to click on the ad for the mobile app developer to make money. The charges are less but they are also less dependent on the user experience.
6. Upgrade to Remove Ads:
People don’t like seeing ads in their apps and they always try to find an option to remove them. You must create two versions for your app – free and paid. In the free version, you can include ads to make money. However, in the paid version, you can offer an excellent user experience to your users with no ads at all. The paid version will help you make revenue from direct app downloads and sales, rather than ads.
7. Affiliate Programs:
Various businesses have affiliate programs for app developers that help them promote their apps. With affiliate programs, you don’t earn a big commission, but you get to choose from a wide range of apps that you can promote. You can find the most popular apps and promote them in your app to make good commissions.
8. Mobile Marketing Automation:
Mobile marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your mobile app. An effective mobile marketing strategy includes text messages, push notifications, personalized campaigns, in-app messages, social media advertisements, and much more. A mobile marketing strategy loaded with these ways helps you keep your users engaged with your app.
With mobile marketing automation, you can convince your app users to spend money inside your app. They can go through your product advertisements on their social media profiles using their smartphones and can visit your app at the same time to avail those offers.
You can study your users’ behavior and create personalized campaigns, text messages, or push notifications based on their preferences. Sending out push notifications and in-app messages can help your app users know about attractive deals and offers and stimulate them to make a purchase.
You can try creating and monetizing your app using Appy Pie’s AppMakr. The software comes with various amazing features and lets you send up to 75000 push notifications per month per app to help you connect better with your app users.
9. Strong Content Strategies:
Make sure you regularly refresh your app content to keep your users engaged. For example, if your business posts news stories, make sure the news is always updated and if it has a blog page, you can make the most recent and updated blog post available for the users through your app.
With constantly updating content, you can make your paying users keep coming back to you. The reason behind this is simple. Most users after making one or two in-app purchases think that they have used your app to its full potential. However, a constant stream of new content can help you keep your users connected to your app.
With an updated app and its updated content, you can retain your existing app users and help them make more purchases. It can also attract new users with its advanced features and up-to-date information.
10. Text Message Marketing:
You can also gain your users’ attention by sending notices for contests, reminders, app updates, promotions, etc. using simple text messages. This is one of the most effective ways of driving users back to your mobile app. With text message marketing, you can easily reach and retain your high-value users.
When it comes to SMS marketing, the best you can do is send your users the coupons for currently running offers. As per the statistics, 90% of the app users read these messages within three minutes of receiving them. And they use these discount coupons ten times more often when compared to the coupons received from other sources.
Conclusion
A mobile app, if monetized right, can help you expand your business and improve your customer base. Not just that, it can also become a considerable source of revenue for your business. Make the best use of these app monetization strategies to grow your business and generate more app revenue than ever!
One favorite integration of ours is Appy Pie AppMakr as it help you create an app that is already monetized. Subscriptions, advertisements, and in-app purchases are the best ways of making money by using a mobile app. The software helps you with all including push notifications and in-app purchases. It allows you to customize your app as per your needs without writing even a single line of code.
Appy Pie’s AppMakr also helps you promote and optimize your app to gain more and more downloads. The more downloads you get, the more money you will be able to make with your app. Also doesn’t hurt that they have a solid support team to help you out.
Now, the last but not the least decision for you to make – Would you charge your users for downloading your app?
