How to Make Money from Your Apps

Congratulations! So, you’ve built your no code mobile app and you are now looking to make money via your app. You might be asking yourself how apps like CandyCrush or TikTok make money when those apps and others like them are free to use. Today, we'll walk you through all you need to know about monetizing your app, different revenue generation strategies, and how to best optimize them for your app.

The State of Mobile App Monetization

The mobile app industry is growing at a rapid pace and having a mobile app for your brand is just as important as having a company website. Why? Well, let’s look at the data. In Data.AI’s recent State of Mobile 2023 report, they indicated that “while web is important for your marketing & user acquisition funnel, apps command attention and meaningful engagement.” Additionally, Statista found “consumers downloaded 255 billion mobile apps to their connected devices...mobile apps are projected to generate more than 613 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2025.” The average consumer tends to make purchases on their mobile device rather than on any other digital device. 

Having a mobile presence is important but so is capturing the attention of your app users. In our Marketing Tips series, we explored how to create an app marketing strategy and implement tactics to capture the attention of users to increase your app’s downloads and build your audience. In this blog, we will walk you through how to capture the attention you have earned through your hard-earned marketing tactics, and convert it into revenue.

What is App Monetization?

App monetization is the active process of converting app users to generate a revenue stream. There are several different methods to generating revenue that we will go into detail shortly. The main thing you need to know is that there isn’t just one way to monetize your app. Depending on what type of app you have and what your goal is, this will determine what method you end up utilizing to generate revenue. Think about the different apps you use, for example, the social media app TikTok. On TikTok users have the option to purchase coins or gift coins to show appreciation to creators on TikTok. Through this exchange, users are adding their credit cards and making purchases within the app. Another app we can take a look at that has a free-to-play model but generates over “four billion U.S. dollars in lifetime [in-app purchases] revenue” is Pokémon Go. Players can purchase additional Pokéballs or exclusive features to advance in the game.

Depending on your situation and your user’s interests you can find the best monetization strategy for your app and target audience. 

Before Moving Forward…

We highly recommend creating your entire app, end to end. If you start with the goal of putting in as many ads as possible, you’ll inevitably create a poor user experience. The best way to monetize your app is to create a great app. If you build it right, your users will come. And stay. Follow the full design, development, debugging, and deployment process for an MVP with our drag and drop app builder before focusing on exact monetization points. Once you get a better idea of how your users are moving through your app then you will be able to add in monetization strategies.

Once you have your app ready to go, then go back through the user flow and look for natural points to insert ads, payment options, and gated materials. Then comes audience building and user acquisition. 

If you need help building an audience for your app take a look at some of our blogs where we dive into using social media marketing to promote your app, using low cost but affordable ways to gain reach for your app, and even ways to boost your app appearing in app store search engines.

What Can App Monetization Do For You?

Ok so you’ve built your app with a no code native app builder, you’ve published it to the marketplace, and you are building a decent-sized audience base. Fantastic! Your work, however, is not done. Now is the time to focus on turning those audience views into revenue. As we mentioned before, you will have to choose the best strategy for you based on your audience. We suggest diversifying your revenue streams to support your app. Having multiple monetization strategies within your app can benefit you in two ways: it allows your audience to choose if they want to engage with your monetization methods, and it will help guarantee at least some revenue generation. A common issue many creators face is that even if you have a large audience base using your app, only a small fraction of those users will contribute to your app monetarily. 

To best set up your app for success, let’s look at the different ways to monetize your app. 

1. In-App Ads: utilizing Google’s AdMob, you can insert different types of ads to passively collect revenue from your viewers who are presented these ads. 
2. In-App Purchases: Users can pay you for access to some or all of your app. Offering premium content, additional lives in games, or access to account creation are all various ways to charge an end user for your app’s capabilities. 
3. Pay to Download: Users are asked to pay for your app before they are able to download the app. 

There are many other different ways to monetize your no code mobile app, and more depth to each of these strategies depends on the type of app you’re looking to build. We will discuss these three options, and more, in more depth in our next blog. 

Next Steps in Your Monetization Journey

We have gone through the state of mobile and looked at how app monetization can benefit you. To go further into the types of monetization strategies you can implement in your no code mobile app development process check out our next blog which will dive into which strategy is best for you, the best practices for implementation, and how to measure the success of each monetization strategy. 

Need something more custom for your needs? Book a 15-minute assessment with our team of experts to receive a free assessment of your mobile app to get you on the right path in your mobile app development journey with our no code app builder.