Developing apps can be an exciting pastime. But, of course, they are rightly expected to increase revenue. A commercial app is useless without the monetization.
Therefore, the question “How can you make money with apps?” is always relevant. A good app is always a top performance in design and development disciplines, but how much an app is really worth will only be revealed when the app hits the market.
Before proceeding to possible options, we would like to present a Software monetization strategy we consider one of the best. It’s the monetization of user data. As a rule, SDK is used for this purpose. This option can be easily combined with other ones, which is a huge plus. We recommend SDK Infatica – one of the best options now. So, let’s now take a look at some other desktop software monetization options.
In-app advertising
In this model, a company offers its app for free. Marketing tools are built into the app that collects and uses information about user behavior. This data can be offered for sale or used to display user-relevant advertising.
Customers often criticize In-app advertising because it is admittedly a disruption. Even so, many customers would rather accept the advertising than being asked to pay for the app.
In-app purchase (sale of virtual or physical products)
This model makes it possible to buy real or virtual products in an app. The purchases generate the company’s income. Often books and pictures are sold this way. However, many products are offered as in-app purchases. In this case, an app works like a direct sales channel or as a mobile shop window for the product. Variants of in-app sales where you can buy the advertising-free version of the app are very common.
Freemium (basic product free)
The basic product is offered free of charge in this business model, but the full version and additional features are only available for money. Such an approach is very common. Skype and Spotify can serve as examples.
Often the basic functions are needed by a very wide group of users, as is the case with Skype, whereas the business versions are more suitable for use by companies in terms of price.
Paywall (payment barrier with subscription offered)
This one is similar to freemium: part of the product is offered for free. With this business model, it is not the functions that are chargeable but the content. The model is widespread in the marketing of newspapers and magazines. Even with games like Lumosity, more content is only activated after purchasing the subscription. This model is particularly interesting because it allows you to limit the usual in-app advertising or do without it. For example, the Austrian daily newspaper “Der Standard” uses a model in which the ad blockers are activated when a monthly entry is paid for. If no payment is made, the advertisement appears again.
Paid apps
Without payment, such apps cannot be downloaded from app stores. A user who wants to install the app has to buy it. The app has to be something special to convince a user that it is better than applications offered for free. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be afraid to offer a good app for money. People are eager to buy quality products! Just make sure your product is worth it.
Voluntary donations
Almost equating with a hobby, there are several providers who rely on voluntary financial contributions. Usually, an advertisement appears, similar to the well-known Wikipedia call for donations, which encourages the user to support the app developer financially. The example of the TAZ, which introduced this model in spring 2011, is interesting. According to its statements, the newspaper had earned an average of 10,000 euros per month until 2014. Another example is the Laws im-Android.de project, the development of which is also made possible through voluntary donations. So if you want to make your app accessible to a broad audience and possibly also have other sources of income, you could definitely consider the model of voluntary contributions when choosing the desktop monetization model.
Conclusion
Which model do you find the most exciting now? Often it is only the combination of different monetization models that works properly within a marketing strategy.