Ever thought how to make money from free apps? This article is for entrepreneurs who want to learn – how to create and monetize an app or make money with apps to earn passive income by publishing free apps in the mobile application market.
Once the app development process is completed, you’ve got to make a crucial decision before you make it available on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
Will you make it available for free?
How It Makes Money
In-App Purchasing
In-app purchasing refers to the buying of goods and services from inside an application on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. In-app purchases allow developers to provide their applications for free. The developer then advertises upgrades to the paid version, paid feature unlocks, special items for sale, or even ads other apps and services to anyone who downloads the free version. This allows the developer to profit despite giving the basic app itself away for free.
In-app purchasing allows application owners the ability to up-sell application users from within the application itself, rather than through other marketing channels. For example, a game application may offer the user the ability to skip a particularly difficult level for a fee or the owner may provide consumers with the ability to view premium content that is behind a pay-wall.
The developer hopes to make enough money from these small transactions and the advertising revenue to cover the costs of creating and maintaining the app.
The developer hopes to make enough money from these small transactions and the advertising revenue to cover the costs of creating and maintaining the app.
Ads
Most of the free apps generate income from running ads and promoting other businesses. If you want to apply this most common way of free app monetization, you can charge:
There are five ways you can display ads to your app users:
Interstitial Ads. This type of ad looks like full-screen pop-ups
displayed when the user opens or closes the app. Thus, the user can
either close the ad or click on it to learn more about the promotion.
Banner Ads or Display Ads. The banner ad appears at the top or bottom of the mobile device screen so the app users can freely use your app. However, the engagement rate of such ads is quite low (0.1%).
Native Ads. Native ads, including sponsored content or videos, are
integrated into the app layout and do not distract app users. Thus,
users consider native ads less irritating compared to other types of
ads.
Video Ads. Such ads appear during natural pauses of app usage and last 10-30 seconds. This ad category also includes rewarded video ads when the app user is rewarded for watching a full ad video.
Sponsorships
This is an advertising package that offers your partners the same reach, only in the digital space, and with considerably less effort and expenditure. Sponsorships are a smart addition to sponsorship packages, or as a standalone offer outside of the confines of an event. An advertiser pays to have both ads and content on an application. These are commonly used when sections of applications will receive extra traffic
Affiliate Income
Steps to becoming an online affiliate marketer
Similarly, there are also 4 steps that you can take to start your journey as an affiliate marketer.
First, you need to start reviewing products in your niche. That can be done on a YouTube channel, on a blog or even just using live streams.
Second, you have to collect emails, so that you can connect with your audience at any time you want and don’t have to hope for them to see your content.
Third, you can use joint venture webinars to make a lot of sales in a short period of time, while simultaneously growing your email list and creating new content.
Finally, once your affiliate marketing business starts making money, you can scale your growth with pay per click advertising in your application.
First, you need to start reviewing products in your niche. That can be done on a YouTube channel, on a blog or even just using live streams.
Second, you have to collect emails, so that you can connect with your audience at any time you want and don’t have to hope for them to see your content.
Third, you can use joint venture webinars to make a lot of sales in a short period of time, while simultaneously growing your email list and creating new content.
Finally, once your affiliate marketing business starts making money, you can scale your growth with pay per click advertising in your application.
Amazon Underground
Amazon Underground is a one-of-a-kind experience where apps, games, and in-app items are 100% free for customers, and Amazon pays developers based on the amount of time your Amazon Underground app is used. With Amazon Underground, you can turn all of your Android users into revenue-generating customers. Get paid starting from the very first minute your Amazon Underground app is used while your app is part of Amazon Underground. With Amazon Underground, you can focus less on how to monetize your apps and focus more on creating great user experiences. Most Android apps are Amazon Underground-eligible. Getting started is easy. Just create a developer account and submit your app today.
Product Sales
It refers to the process of selling products or advertising products on your Application. This basically means selling products through digital media - that is without seeing the customer directly. Some of the examples include the Amazon, ebay app.
Subscriptions
Paid subscription is just one of many app revenue models, but subscription-based apps have become increasingly more popular and prevalent in recent years.
In this revenue model, when users subscribe, they’ll pay you a monthly fee for access to your app. In exchange, subscription apps must work to retain their customers by continuing to offer new and incentivizing features. Examples include The Kyle Jenner Official App, YouTube TV, Amazon Music etc.
In this revenue model, when users subscribe, they’ll pay you a monthly fee for access to your app. In exchange, subscription apps must work to retain their customers by continuing to offer new and incentivizing features. Examples include The Kyle Jenner Official App, YouTube TV, Amazon Music etc.
Freemium
Freenium is an application pricing strategy by which a product or service is provided free of charge, but money is charged for additional features, services, or online or offline goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the application. An example is Evernote App.
Email Marketing
An email marketing application is a program that allows you to create and send commercial
messages through email to targeted consumers. Email marketing can be
used to increase sales, improving brand loyalty, and delivering
important information. A good email marketing application will also track your emails and collect data that you can analyze and review so you can continue improving and tailoring your next email campaign. It is a kind of direct marketing.
Cost Per Install
Cost per install or CPI is a pricing model used in mobile user acquisition campaigns in which app advertisers pay each time a user installs their app from their ad. CPI is a very common pricing model, and is specific for mobile apps only
Cost Per Install is calculated by dividing the ad spend (over a specific time period) by the number of new installs from that same period.
