Apps are taking over the world. Some people hate this, some people love it, but most of us are pretty indifferent to this fact. But, your tune would change if you realized how much money you can make via an app. If you play your cards right, then you can see annual profits in the thousands of dollars. That’s pretty impressive for such a small thing!
Of course, I won’t just dangle that carrot in front of you and leave it there. If you’re interested in learning how to make money via an app, then here’s a breakdown of everything you need to do:
Create a profitable idea
The best way to be successful with an app is to treat it like a business. In this respect, you have to come up with a profitable idea for your app. Here are some questions you should ask yourself when you’re coming to your decision:
- What will it do? – Is it a gaming app, does it provide information to people, is it a subscription service?
- Who is your app targeted at?
- How will it make money?
All of these questions are crucial, but the third one deserves so much thought. Apps can make money in multiple ways. For one, you have the classic ad revenue idea. This works the same as making money from a blog. You have banners on your app for ads, and companies bid to place their content in your application. For every impression, you earn money.
It works perfectly, but you rely on impressions to make money, which means you need lots of people to download your app. However, it does allow you to create an application and release it to the market for free. Free apps attract attention, which can lead to lots of downloads.
Secondly, you can make money by offering paid content through one. An example of this is a subscription to the app. For a small monthly fee, people can gain access to exclusive content. Or, you could have in-app purchases – this works best for games. People can pay money whenever they way to unlock new features in the game.
The trick with paid content is to give people incentives to pay for it. One genius way of doing this is by removing adverts. If people are sick of your in-app ads, then they can get rid of them by paying a fee. The best thing is, you still lure people into downloading your app by offering it for free. Then, as they become acquainted with it, they may choose to upgrade to a premium version and pay some money to gain access to new features and no adverts!
What apps are the most profitable?
Staying on the topic of coming up with an app idea, it’s worth knowing what apps are the most profitable. Well, games are very popular as people love passing the time playing a mobile game. It should be something simple, something that won’t cost an arm and a leg to develop. With that in mind, puzzle games are perfect. They’re not overly complex, and they allow people to pass the time on their morning commute.
Moving away from games, news ones are top-rated. You could create an app that’s basically a blog for mobile devices. Pick a particular news topic – like sports – and create an app that brings all the latest news to the user’s smartphone.
Food apps are also very profitable – create one that’s packed full of recipes for people to follow. Vegan or vegetarian food ones are very popular, so there’s an idea for you right there. They also perfectly suit the subscription service idea as well.
Social apps are another type to consider. Think about things like TikTok, Tinder, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Now, you’re not likely to create the next big social media applications but think about something that allows people to interact with one another.
Lastly, consider creating an app that provides a particular area of expertise. For example, you have business apps that help people calculate their income tax for the year. There are stock trading apps with advice for investors, and so on. If you have an area that you’re an expert in, then this type works well for you.
Create & test your app
Coming up with the idea is probably the hardest thing you’ll personally do in this process. Next, you have to actually create the app itself. The best option is to look for custom software development services that can build a mobile application for you. Leave it to the experts, and you ensure that it gets developed with hardly any issues.
Of course, make sure you stay in contact with the development team to ensure they follow your vision. Also, test it as much as possible. Get people to trial it, gain their feedback, and keep making adjustments. Before you release your app to the public, you must be certain that there are no bugs, the user feedback is excellent, and it ticks all the right boxes.
Market your app for release
When you’re happy that it works and will appeal to the masses, you need to make the masses download it. So, release it on app markets. It’s worth noting that you have to decide what type of application you want to create before the development team gets ahold of it. Are you making one for Apple devices, or do you want it to be compatible with Android phones? You can make it exclusive to either, but the best route is to develop an app that can work on both platforms as this is where the majority of smartphone and tablet users will be.
Then, take to social media, create a website for your app, and market it like crazy. There are plenty of app marketing campaigns out there to take inspiration from, so check them out if you can.
After all of this, you’ll have a mobile app that people can download. You can set a fee for people to pay to download it, but free ones work best these days. If something is free, there’s more chance of users downloading it. Then, you can hit them with the option to pay for extra content or features. Even if they don’t, you still make money through ad revenue!