Choosing an app monetization model is crucial to the success of your mobile application. Whether you have developed a free-to-install app or a paid one, developing the right monetization strategy that not only satisfies your users but also ensures that your company remains profitable, is key in the long run.
In this article, we will take a look at seven different monetization strategies that you can incorporate to choose the right revenue model that caters to your preferences.
Monetizing your app with a download fee
For quite a few publishers who are new to this field of mobile app space, charging a certain fee to download the app in the Android Play Store or the Apple App Store is definitely the first mobile app monetization option that they consider. This is a strategy that can seek to bring in substantial revenue, but only when you offer content that seems valuable to the end-user. Unless your content is difficult to find somewhere else, savvy users are more likely to find the content elsewhere rather than paying for it inside an app store.
However, for some publishers, this is the inherent route to go. Particularly, the monetization strategy works well for applications that provide a distinctive gaming experience or some kind of usefulness on smartphones or tablets. Still, the number of publishers that charge money to download their apps is relatively quite low. As of March 2021, 96.7% of the apps in the Google Play Store and 92.9% of the apps in the iOS Store were completely free to download.
App subscription model to bring in consistent revenue
In the event of you not wanting to charge the users to download your app, you can certainly prefer to charge them on a monthly or an annually basis to use it. This is known as the subscription model which is a very popular strategy for mobile app monetization in today’s age.
Because the subscription model makes money for the app publisher, it is clearly popular. App income from these subscription models reached over $13 billion by 2020. Additionally, as of 2019, subscription payments accounted for 97% of all money spent by users within the top 250 non-gaming apps.
Flexible app monetization with the freemium strategy
The freemium app monetization model combines elements of in-app advertising and paid applications with app subscriptions. By charging a one-time or monthly subscription to customers who want the full experience, you may monetize your app using a freemium model, which allows you to provide certain content or features for free.
A freemium app monetization method is to give a free download from the Play Store, App Store, or both but charge a price within the app to consumers who want to use the app without adverts.
Affiliate marketing for your app
What if you could use the app to convince users to download other apps or buy products? This is what affiliate marketing is mainly about. It is a very popular app monetization strategy, and in the world of mobile application development, you can carry this out in two ways:
- Partnering with several companies to sell their products- Many of the companies have affiliate programs that allow you to insert specialized links within your content or ads. Whenever a user clicks those links, they land on the website from where they can buy something. You’ll get a cut for this, and can even present a discount/promo code to offer some percent of discount to your users.
- Using affiliate ads to convince users to download other apps- Affiliate programs are available in the Google, Apple, and Windows App Stores. They detect when a user exits an app after seeing an advertisement and installs that specific software. You are going to get paid every time that happens.
Affiliate marketing can prove to be profitable, but it works best when you have a large audience base that trusts your content and brand enough to take your recommendations of other apps and products.
Monetization through in-app purchases
Even if users are not required to pay any amount to download your app, or you don’t wish to undergo affiliate marketing, you can still sell things inside your app to generate revenue. This is one of the most renowned app monetization strategies when it comes to brands that have products to sell, but it isn’t limited to that sphere only.
By providing a brand-new product—possibly one that is associated with or branded with your app—or by charging for intangibles like in-app cash, more lives, or specific game gear, you too may make money via in-app purchases.
Using in-app advertising to increase user base
Placing ads within your app is often the most effective and fastest way to monetize it. The mobile app ad format has been designed in such a way that it can accommodate all kinds of advertisment formats including banner ads, video ads, rewarded ads, interstitial ads, native ads, and gamified ads among other things.
Whenever you’re choosing to monetize your app using ads, there are plenty of things that you need to consider, especially user experience and satisfaction.
App transaction fees
This app monetization strategy only works nicely for a highly specific type of app known as an online marketplace. The true definition of a “marketplace” in this context can vary, but essentially, your users need to buy or sell something within your mobile application, and you get to cut off each transaction.
Apps that make money via transaction fees are quite visible in the banking industry.
Cryptocurrency and investment apps generally take a small fee every time a user sells or buys an asset.
Final Words
At the end of the day, for the best results, you’ll need to use multiple monetization strategies in conjunction. To make sure that you’re generating the most revenue possible without disrupting the overall user experience, you will be required to develop a strategy that includes more than one of the seven methods discussed in this article.
