Mobile apps have transformed businesses and enabled them to improvise their workflows and customer experience. Do you ever wonder how do free apps make money? Mobile app not only offers a platform to showcase your business capabilities, but it also helps you facilitate your idea to become a popular enterprise like Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.
It all starts with an innovative idea that people may find useful and want to install on their smartphones. We must think about a problem and then develop an application to solve them most effectively.
Well, people may have different reasons to develop an application, but the most common reason is to earn money and engage more users. However, it is not so easy to develop an app that can generate revenue without devising a robust revenue strategy.
It is important to select a suitable app monetization model for your mobile app and build it around the same, else you could end up wasting efforts, money, and time.
There is a general perception that because we have developed a mobile app, it will generate money, but that’s not true. You can take the analogy of a conventional business, if you initiate a new business, will it starts making money? Not.
Even for the conventional business, you must use strong marketing and sales strategies to engage customers and generate revenue. Mobile app development is not much different, you must follow an effective monetization strategy to get an app that can make money. However, if you are not sure where to begin, then you’ve come to the right place.
We have extensive experience in the mobile app development industry, and with our knowledge and expertise, we can point you in the right direction.
We have drawn the most used monetization strategies that can enable you to get the proven results in the right way. Here is it for your reference.
Advertising Model – An effective Advertising can be defined to generate money from mobile apps. It is slightly easy to implement and that’s the reason why most of the app development forms utilize advertising models to make money on a wider scale.
In this monetizing strategy, the mobile app owner must place the commercials at different sections of their mobile app and upon view and clicks, they can be paid from the commercial advertisement networks and 3rd party agencies.
In this model, the app owner generates money when the user clicks on those advertisements or when the user installs an application via the advertisement.
Merchandise Sales – This is another effective revenue generation method, where the app owner can sell different merchandise via their mobile app. Most e-commerce businesses build mobile apps to sell merchandise such as gift items, toys, clothes, etc.
In this way, they can utilize the app for selling several products by using the common email marketing standards.
This model helps app owners to offer additional products to their customers, which indeed helps them to promote and showcase their work in the right way, enable users to make purchases, avail extra discounts while improving the overall revenue for app owners.
Freemium Upsell – This is a process where the customers can use most of the app features for free but require to make payment for premium features. Such premium features and functionalities can use via in-app purchases.
A new portal is a nice example of this model, where users can access a specific number of premium articles per month. If customers want complete access to the premium services, then they can pay a specific amount for a designated duration.
Custom Android and iOS development services are equipped with several options for making free applications, that helps app owners to attract more users, increase app download rate, and engage more users.
In-App Purchases – In-app purchases are another popular monetization strategy that enables users to make purchases from the apps. It helps app owners to sell their virtual products and services. The In-app purchases also empower the user interaction and make it swifter for them.
The in-app purchase model is among the most popular monetization strategy, that help app owners to acquire maximum engagement and thus effectively assist them to generate revenue. As per Forbes, most app owners use this method to generate revenue and they invest a major portion of their advertising budget on the in-app purchase advertisement.
The trend is only going to gain popularity in the future.
Subscription Model – The application Subscription model is known as one of the finest and most useful app monetization strategies. The app owners can offer freemium content to their customers for a constrained amount of time and then ask them to pay a subscription fee to access the classified and substantial content offered by them.
The subscription fee is usually monthly, quarterly, or annual. The app owners can offer several payment options and offer upfront discounts to encourage customers to opt for a subscription model.
It is the most common method used by most app owners to provide free app access to their customers, and then charge a subscription fee to help them avail additional features and functionalities of the application.
This monetization strategy is utilized by online audio/video streaming, cloud services, online news portals, games, and educational applications.
Transaction Fees Model – In this model, the app owners can charge a fee for making a digital transaction by the customers. A mobile application can include an option to sell the products and services to the users and in return charge a nominal transaction fee for the same.
Application owns can charge a very low fee for the digital transactions made by the customers and in this way, they can generate a considerable amount of revenue without investing much.
Conclusion
Well, contrary to the perception, not all mobile applications earn money. If you are planning to develop an application without having an effective app monetization model, then you are going to have a rude awakening.
Like any other business, you must muster a robust goal and strategy before you start developing a mobile application. You must implement the best monetization model for your app, that can complement your business objectives and vision.
Well, with the above-mentioned app monetization models, app owners can make money and improve their customer engagement. You can reap the maximum out of your application provided if you implement it, as an effective implementation is the key to the success.
If you are still not sure about the implementation of these app monetization models, then you can get in touch with our application development experts, who can offer you a sophisticated and effective solution that can help you earn moolah from your mobile application.