So, you’ve developed a great app, and you’re
convinced that your new idea can be the next big thing. Congratulations! But
will it earn you any money? And if so, how can it make big bucks for you?
The old saying goes, “the road to Hell is
paved with good intentions.” In the app development world, the road to failure
is littered with great ideas that don’t make it. Consider this: just 2% of app developers claim about 54% of all app revenues.
Furthermore, last year, analysts Gartner predicted that 94.5% of downloads will be
free apps by 2017.
In addition, if you factor in that your app
will be up against 1.3 million others in the Apple App Store and
over 1.5 million Android apps on Google Play, just for starters, then you’ve got to be clever to make yours a
winner.
Nevertheless, there is money to be made.
After all, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that there were 75 billion app
downloads to date, and there are 300 million visits to the App Store per week.
Those enormous figures mean that even though such a small percentage of
developers are taking most of the money, there’ll still be a hell of a lot of
dough for you if you can join them. So what’s the secret?
Don’t
be so obvious. Be savvy instead.
Yes, it helps to have a killer app, although last
summer’s multi-million Dollar phenomenon, the “Yo” app, could hardly be praised
for providing genius content. Yes, you could charge for your app, but it needs
to be head and shoulders better than a multitude of free competitors. And yes,
if your user numbers are already good, you could sell your valuable code,
content or data, if you don’t mind risking your reputation tumbling, and
watching your user numbers follow, as they leave your app to protect their
personal information.
No. That’s all too obvious and as I said,
you’ve got to be clever. This means being savvy with your outreach and your
marketing. However great your app is, without good marketing, it ‘ll fall flat,
so here are your top three tips to help you get it right:
1. Be
analytical. Use precision targeting.
To monetise, you need audiences that will use
your app. So you need to laser-target who your audiences are, and then advertise
and tell them about it. Again, don’t be obvious. You could advertise in
mass-market arenas such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook. After all, their
user numbers are huge, they can offer multiple advertising solutions and
cross-platform solutions, but they’re far less specialised and their ability to
target your key markets is limited.
Think about it. Let’s take an example from
the offline world. If you were in the business of selling precision optical
components to microscope manufacturers, would you be better appearing in USA Today, or in Laser Focus World? Sure, way more people read USA Today, but they’re not guaranteed to be the right people. Those reading Laser Focus World are far fewer, but they’re much more likely to
have an interest in your product and to talk about it among their industry
peers. It’s a far more targeted and nuanced approach.
So instead of reaching for the default
mass-market solution, look for specialised markets to spread the word about
your app. Use analytics to target your campaigns. Tools like Flurry
Analytics and Yahoo App
Marketing on the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite will help you identify the platforms that
your target audiences use, and will enable you to measure how effective your
marketing and advertising is. This approach and a host of other tools will
enable you to reach specific crowds. For instance, ad-powered recommendation
engines deliver relevant ads to users looking for something specific and InMobi, is a platform used specifically by gaming
apps as a monetisation solution. Furthermore, specialised and niche networks
may be nimbler than the mass-market giants, so they may be quicker, more
creative and responsive to new techniques or avenues for outreach.
2. Remember:
content is king. Encourage users to buy more of what they love
Build your app with your audiences’
preferences in mind, but with opportunities for you to capitalise on them. So,
if Gartner’s prediction is right, then don’t charge for your app. Let users
download it for free. Obviously, more people are likely to investigate what you
have to offer if it costs them nothing. Make your content really good, and make
it what your audience loves so that they’re crying out for more. Then, once
you’ve got their attention, encourage them to become a paying customer in order
to get extra. Three key ways to achieve this are:
i) Live
data feed.
Popular with the online and mobile versions
of magazines, newspapers and stock ticker data, subscribers receive up to the
minute, live content and extra content not available to free users.
ii) Pay
per data use.
This is a recurring fee that is dependent on
how much somebody uses your app.
iii)
Software as a Service (SaaS).
A “pay-as-you-go” model for use of the
software. You can see this even offline with cable TV offerings. Either you pay
a subscription for a package of channels, or you can use pay per view to watch
certain movies or channels for certain periods of time or on certain occasions,
such as specific sporting events
3.
Use in-app marketing devices. Unlock the profit potential of your app
Of course, it stands to reason that the best
audience for monetisation is your existing users. They know your app. They like
it, and they return to it. So give them with incentives to interact and spend money
inside your app.
Incentivisation for recommendations to new
users is also a good way of increasing your potential customer base. Another
way to increase your moneymaking potential is to enable existing users to do
more inside your app and receive more from it by paying and increasing their
use. Good customers can receive additional content and services in return for
payments or deposits of real or virtual currency, and they can unlock premium
features and ‘member-only’ promotions as rewards.
And don’t forget merchandising. This won’t
work for everyone of course, but when it does it could make your app go
stratospheric. Just think about the merchandising and the ecommerce
opportunities exploited by the Angry
Birds phenomenon. Plush toys and
T-shirts are now available, as the original product has created opportunities
that were unimaginable at the outset. They have even embraced affiliate and
brand partnerships with their Star Wars and Transformer toys, and they work
alongside Amazon and ToysRUs for e-tail and distribution.
It just goes to show that with flair,
imagination and precision, there’s real money to be made in your app.
