Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Monetization methods of mobile applications


1. Freemium strategy.
A good option for a free application, but with the possibility of built-in purchases or additional fees for the use of certain features.
Buying tips, replenishing energy, buying a shield are examples of built-in purchases in games. The user determines to spend on passing the level a few days or buy a hint. The life cycle of freemium-games is within one year. Therefore, developers have to constantly look for ways to keep users in the game. In addition, built-in purchases in games today reduce the developer's profit, and this is a worrying sign.
Access for a fee to additional application features. Skype is the best example of a freemium model in instant messengers. The user receives a free high-quality product, but only 8% of users are willing to buy and use another service and save on phone calls. On a similar principle running Evernote and Dropbox. One application and two services. The question is, will the user prefer a second product?
2. Trial.
A successful strategy that allows to use the application for free for a limited amount of time. The trial time is set by the developer, usually from 7 to 60 days. After the application will be available only for payment.
A great marketing technique is to give the user the opportunity to use the application, show what it is great, and then announce the price for further use. Some developers abandon the freemium model in favor of the trial version of the application.
3. Advertising.
Advertising in mobile applications is actively gaining momentum. Users are sometimes not ready to pay for a complete lack of advertising, so they have to deal with it even in the applications of their smartphone or tablet.
This fact allows developers to receive tangible profits from advertising in mobile applications. The condition for the success of this strategy is a mass audience and a huge market.
4. Subscription (Subscribe, SaaS).
Regular payment for the use of the service and access for the time of subscription to the resources of the application: music services, movies, e-books, news resources and other content. If the content is interesting, subscription can work, the main thing is to choose the optimal and satisfying subscriber cost of the service.
5. Premium paid application
User pay for the installation of the application a certain amount in the hope of solving all their problems. They expect to receive a very high-quality product, which in a few clicks will bring clarity and simplicity. According to statistics, 10% of profit falls on paid installations. Examples are paid games, Pro versions of some free applications (calendars, watches) or e-books (fairy tales by Disney).

Which monetization strategy to choose
Most mobile applications do not bring profit to their developers, according to forecasts in 2018 only 0.01% of mobile applications will be profitable. Many applications simply are not created for earnings. According to Juniper Research, revenue from applications in 2019 will be $ 100 billion. It is believed that the revenue from games in 2017 should be 40.8 billion dollars. According to the research company Swrve to buy game content in games, only 1.5% of users are ready.
There are not so many users who want to pay for application. Most of them are concentrated in certain countries and are owners of specific devices. Also much depends on the type of mobile application being developed: game, tracker, messenger, book or application for business. If the book is better to sell, then mass play will be in a free game.
The most payable population are citizens of the United States, Japan and Britain. A large number of users in the world are not willing to pay for using the mobile application, for example, the statistics of downloads for India or Brazil is great, but the profit from users from these countries is small. The paying audience is so small that developers will have to segment the user of their application clearly.
For freemium products, users do not make any special demands, but from the products they pay for, they expect to get a good design, beautiful picture, user-friendly interface and decent functionality.
Games and entertainment, perhaps the most popular category of mobile applications. For applications in the category "Business" users are ready to pay if the application has a high quality and helps to conduct business.
The trial-time model is well suited for business applications or for applications that require a subscription. Subscription can be offered only targeting a payable population. Experts strongly recommend to think and look for the "golden" ratio of the free and paid part of the application and not to anger the user with the requirements to pay for each action.
It is possible to get revenue with the freemium strategy if the application is designed for a mass audience. Monetizing an application using advertising will also bring results when the audience of the application is a million: the Latin American market, Russia or the Asia-Pacific market.
The user and the application are the main criteria for the developer to choose the monetization strategy. Brainstorming, discussion of case studies, analysis of recent research results and testing by users are also very helpful.

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4 comments:

  1. Data Monetization is a way of process of actively generating value from a company’s data inventory.

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  2. I think that Freemium strategy is a very powerful one.

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  3. Interesting blog i like the way you address the different models of monetization. I like the freemium strategy as well

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  4. Trail model can be implemented just for start-ups

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