App monetization is not simple. There are so many ways in which app developers can generate revenue from their apps apart from advertisements, in-app purchases and paid installs. Even with the above ways included, there are plenty of other creative ways to monetize your app(s).
Paid Downloads
This is the most obvious app-monetization strategy. But to go this way, your app has to be really good, with a reasonable price tag. People will pay as they download.
In-App Advertising
Developers who want a less reliable but a more scalable method of monetization can employ the in-app monetization strategy. In-app advertising will basically entail running ads on your app.
In-App Purchases
This is a fairly broad method of monetizing apps. It’s applicable to different types of apps. For instance, mobile commerce has previously been used by publications to sell subscriptions. Reading apps have too been used to sell books while gaming ups have banked on selling upgrades and all.
Affiliate Sales
This is another effective monetization approach – tried tested and trusted. It involves an affiliate sales relationship whereby a third party will pay the developer each time they take a user to that particular third party’s product or service. Take for instance an app that helps people find the nearest restaurants around a given location. Restaurant owners will pay you a certain amount for each customer who was referred to them through your app.
Going Where the Money is
You may call this internationalization. All users of your app will not be equal and thus you might want to expand to other countries. With most gadgets almost globally running on similar operating systems, globalizing your app will not be hard.
Going the Freemium Way
With this, basically what you do is offer a free version of your app. However app users who need a bit more or need to experience the real usefulness of your app will have to cough out a few bucks. This way, you’ll attract more users. It’s more like giving your users a test or a trial version but they will have to pay for high-quality results.
Licensing and Merchandizing
Not many developers have what it takes to pull this one off as an app marketing strategy. But to those developers who have a substantial user base, a significant traction and a highly marketable brand, this is quite an option.
Going Enterprise
Box is a good example of this method of app monetization. What Box did was that it saw the untapped market in the cloud storage market. Therefore instead of competing head on with Dropbox, Box opted to not charge the users and rather focus on the enterprise aspect of their app.
