5 Effective Ways to Monetize Your Mobile App

5 Effective Ways to Monetize Your Mobile App

As we’ve reiterated plenty of times before, to develop a mobile app is just the first step in the rather long journey of establishing a successful online presence and brand awareness. However, if your mobile app is already developed and out on the market – salutations! It’s oftentimes the hardest thing to do.

Being an experienced mobile application development team, however, we at Swag Soft, truly care about your business. We believe our job is not just to develop a mobile app, but also to help our clients succeed afterward.

Hence, we’ve taken the liberty of going through one of the most challenging parts which follow the development of a mobile app – its monetization. While there are plenty of ways to monetize your mobile app, it’s important to scope out those which are truly effective and put the initial priority on them. That’s why we’ve devised a shortlisted choice of a few things you can do in order to start gaining the monetary value of your mobile app.

#1 Advertising

This probably doesn’t really come as a shock to you, but if you aren’t including ads in your mobile app, you’re likely to be missing out on quite a lot of monetizing opportunities.

People spend a lot of time on their phones – a rough average of 90 minutes per day. That’s the time you can take advantage of. It’s also true, however, that they don’t like to pay for their apps either. So, the way around it would be to make your mobile free to download and take advantage of in-app advertising.

There are a few different types of ads that you can take advantage of. These include:

    • Notification ads which tend to pop up in the status bar of the mobile device. These, however, aren’t always perceived well by the users so you have to be particularly careful.
    • Capture Forms which represent opt-ins which offer certain incentives. For instance, if your app requires points or tokens to spend, you can grant some of these as an incentive for users to fill in the capture forms. These are oftentimes used in mobile games.
  • Banner Ads. Naturally, these are almost always found at the top or bottom of the screen of the mobile device. These can be seen as distracting, but are also generating the most impressions.

 

  • Full Screen Ads. These are usually placed at a pause point which is considered natural. For instance, when the user moves between your menus. It’s a very effective strategy because they don’t interrupt the user’s experience and tend to generate a lot of clicks.

 

#2 Partnerships and Sponsors

Regardless of the field that you’re in, it’s always all about proper networking. Establishing valuable partnerships can help you net a lot of sponsor deals and incrementally increase the monetary value of your app. You can partner with other brands and promote them through your mobile app. It’s one of the most commonly used, as well as sought-after monetizing strategies.

Additionally, you can also play the trade-off card. By securing strategic partnerships, you can have your own brand or mobile app displayed on your partner’s venues. This will help you improve your own presence and reputation. In the end, it’s important to determine your current stage in your business journey, as both strategies are effective and can help you gain value from your mobile app.

#3 In-App Purchases

It goes without saying that in-app purchases are one of the most commonly used strategies to extract monetary value from your mobile app.

As we said above, most of the mobile apps are free. This doesn’t, however, mean that the users won’t be presented with a sweet opportunity to spend their hard-earned cash on in-app purchases, of course.

In-app purchases can help you make as much money as possible from your mobile app. That’s because they allow your user to interact directly with your fully-fledged product. It’s a huge part of what most people tend to refer to as “freemium” mobile apps. It’s also one of the most important mobile app metrics that you have to keep track of in order to determine its performance.

#4 Free and Premium Versions

If you don’t want to use in-app purchases, that’s fine. There’s another way you can take up. You can create an entirely separate version of your mobile app which includes features that provide for complete user experience.

In this scenario, the free version will only provide your user with a taste of what your mobile app can do. You can think of it as a teaser. This version should cause your users to realize that the mobile app can serve a very important role for them.

If your mobile app manages to do that, you’re golden. Here comes the premium version. That free one that your users enjoyed so much – in the premium one it comes with a whole lot of fully-fledged and irresistible features.

Hence, if you’ve managed to gain their trust with your free version, the conversion to a premium one shouldn’t be as challenging and the cash should start flowing.

#5 Multiple Payment Options

Now, this one is tightly associated with mobile apps which run some sort of a subscription. This is typically done for applications which roll out content regularly and provide constant updates.

It’s also a very preferred method of monetization because it’s typically billed on a monthly basis and the cost of it is inconsiderable. However, when you start gaining popularity and adoption, the numbers will quickly start adding up.

Now, when you do this, however, you have to account for the fact that everyone has a preferred payment option. While market research can provide you with a lot of information, it’s very important to add as many payment options as you can in order to essentially allow more users to go for it.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is just the first step. We know we’ve said this, but it’s just so important that we have to repeat.

With the above monetizing strategies, however, you will definitely be able to start extracting monetary value from your app, which will help you to further develop your business and planned endeavors. Being the devoted mobile app development team that we are, we’d love to help you map out the entire journey. All you have to do is get in touch.