In this digital era, apps became so much important in our daily life.
You go on Instagram and can’t post your pictures without editing on VSCO or Facetune. You can’t listen to music without music apps.
Your favorite way of passing time is to play on video games on your phone. And so many other things, so how do these apps win money?
Before we answer that question, you should know first that there are two types of apps In the stores:
You’ve got free Mobile apps & paid mobile apps.
To download paid mobile apps you’ll need to invest a little bit of your money to pay them. While free mobile apps are downloaded without any cost involved. But you might notice that they have a premium version that needs money.
Apps being more common these days and in this era, will certainly include them in the “money-making business”. But mind you, not all apps make money, while some others make BILLIONS of dollars.
In 2018, it’s been shown that adults consume 3.6 hours of their time on digital media, and it’s on their phone to be exact. Nowadays desktops and laptops and every other device that’s not a phone is trying to keep up with this rivalry.
The mobile market has known such an exceptional growth that everyone’s trying their best to get a piece of the same pie as well. Just in 2018 more than 50% of website traffic has been known to be mobile traffic.
And if that doesn’t show how important the mobile industry is, then I don’t know what will.
So now, let’s answer the main question that any app developer will ask, how do apps make money?
The Android platform is certainly in the lead when it comes to the average salary developers get paid. Android developers get paid on average $97.6k which is a huge amount. The Android platform is considered “Top heavy” when it comes to earning and that’s why android app developers get paid so high.
If you’re not working for android and just want to develop an android app by yourself, then this is how you’ll be able to earn money from them.
Advertisements
Now it’s no surprise that this is the first one on the list because it’s the most common way. Just like YouTube and blogs, the most common way to make money on these three is to display ads.
But, being the most common way means it’s the least one to make money. To make a lot of money through ads on your app you’ll have to drive very high traffic. This high traffic is the one that will see your ads and in turn, will help you generate money from them.
Here is every different type of ads you can use on your app:
- Video Ads:
Which are the most common way of advertising, and the most interesting ones. Ads are displayed on your app for a matter of seconds. And you either get paid by PPV or CPC, PPV is for views, and CPC is for clicks. - Banner Ads:
These come in a rectangular graphic shape and are displayed in every place possible, whether it’s the side, the bottom, the top etc. You’ve got three ways of payment with these banner ads, either cost per impression, cost per click or cost per action. - Interstitial Ads:
These ads show up between activities or in each pause between levels. And they usually take up and cover the full screen.
CPI or Cost Per Install
Cost per install is exactly what it seems, every time someone installs apps advertised on your app, you get a commission, it actually pays very well on the contrary of pay per click or per view, which offers a pay no that exciting.
The pricing for CPI ranges from $0.80 to $3.00, so if you choose this kind of payment, every time someone installs an app displayed on your app, the app will pay you in this range of payment.
CPI is a very new marketing mechanism, so there’s not a lot of companies who pay per installation, but there are a lot of new CPI companies that are now showing up. So if you’re interested in this method you can discuss with them the price and what you’re interested in.
Sponsorship
Just like the world of Youtube and blogs, one of the most high-paying ways to earn money from apps is by winning a sponsorship. You get paid up front and you offer your users another great app or website that is very useful.
To land a sponsor you either approach the company, and suggest them your app idea and your business plan, or the sponsor will approach you if your app get recognition and exposure.
So if you’re able to come up with a great business plan and a great app that will drive traffic and be addictive, then landing sponsorship will be an easy deal. But on the other hand, if the idea behind your app is quite normal and isn’t that interesting and won’t land much traffic, then getting a sponsor can be very hard.
Freemium strategy
The Freemium strategy is a very common one, and it’s actually the most interesting one. The freemium strategy is creating a free app that doesn’t require money to be downloaded, but that has a paid version of it.
If you do this strategy then you’ll enable users to get a sense of what your app is about and what it offers, this way they’ll be more encouraged to spend money on the paid version. The paid version usually is more interesting than the free one.
You get access to more functionality in the game or app and everything becomes much clearer, it’s an upgraded version. So you’ll more likely to win big bucks from this strategy than display ads.
In-App Purchases
Have you ever played those games on Facebook? Where everything is free until you want to level up or buy something nice and don’t have enough money on the game. Then they’ll ask you to buy more coins for such a symbolic number, do you remember now?
That’s what In-App purchases is, you can purchase more money or things or unlock more features if you pay $2 for example. I remember Hay Day putting the same concept each time I tried to build something and found I didn’t have enough elements in my inventory. They’d ask me if I want to buy ‘this’ for ‘this price’ so I can complete building.
Subscriptions:
Now, this is for those who want to create a paid app, this means anyone who is interested should pay a monthly fee for your app’s services. Although this is a very great way to make money and can certainly help you rack so much revenue. It’s not that easy to implement.
For people to pay money without trying your app or without your app being so famous and has high traffic already, it’ll be really hard to convince them to pay you for downloading your app.
So you’ll need to have an AMAZING idea for your app for this to happen. Or can offer a free trial before trying the paid version.
And that’s how you’ll be able to earn money from your app if you’ve got other suggestions to leave them in the comment.
