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Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

242 pointsby alc90about 8 years ago
Hey guys - I&#x27;ve been an Android developer myself for over 4 year now. One of the biggest pain points has always been the monetisation part - which I&#x27;ve always felt is out of my control.<p>I&#x27;ve been focused mostly on free apps with ads - mostly Admob - but the little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc always seemed to bother me. That&#x27;s why I&#x27;ve started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.<p>I wanted to ask you what monetisation strategies to you have for your apps and if you&#x27;ve ever felt the same way when you added ads in your app.

29 comments

orasisabout 8 years ago
Unless your app is a viral, monetization can&#x27;t just be a strategy - it is the primary design criteria.<p>I have a 5 ⭐️ app, 7 Second Meditation, that has fantastic retention numbers, but I didn&#x27;t design it around monetization from day 1, so the LTV is too low to do paid user acquisition.<p>So the app is doomed to putter along on organic installs.<p>An app must nail both retention and monetization to succeed.<p>(shameless plug: I did boost the LTV by 45% using <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;improve.ai" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;improve.ai</a>)
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dfabulichabout 8 years ago
We publish games. Our free games all include ads, plus a one-time in-app purchase to turn off ads.<p>What we&#x27;ve found is that we can price that product relatively high ($5) because the kind of person who&#x27;s willing to put $1 in your tip jar to turn off ads is also willing to put $2.<p>But this strategy works for us because our games are &quot;consumable&quot; products. Our customers will play one of our games for a while, have a good time, and then they&#x27;ll be &quot;done&quot; with that game; hopefully, they&#x27;ll then go on to buy one of our other games.<p>If I were to launch a non-consumable long-term app today and wanted to monetize it, I&#x27;d do it as a subscription with a generous free trial. Once I had at least 100 paying subscribers, I&#x27;d start raising the price until the churn rate tells me it&#x27;s too high.
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w1ntermuteabout 8 years ago
Do contract work and let others deal with monetization. The problem with creating a mobile ad network is that you&#x27;re competing with Facebook and Google[0,1]:<p>&gt; • Facebook and Google have the most inventory and are still growing in terms of both users and ad-load; there is no temporal limitation that works to the benefit of other properties (and Facebook in particular is ramping up efforts to advertise using Facebook data on non-Facebook properties)<p>&gt; • It is cheaper to produce ads for only Facebook and Google instead of making something custom for every potential advertising platform<p>&gt; • Facebook and Google have the best tracking, extending not only to digital purchases but increasingly to off-line purchases as well<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;the-reality-of-missing-out&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;the-reality-of-missing-out&#x2F;</a><p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;how-facebook-squashed-twitter&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratechery.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;how-facebook-squashed-twitter&#x2F;</a>
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hashmalabout 8 years ago
- up-front payment: one of the most simplest and sane things you can do, which allow you to keep focused on your core product and customers (if you have ads, your customers are the advertisers)<p>- free download with unlock IAP: just a hack to provide a &quot;try it&quot; demo. really a derivative of up-front payment<p>- subscription based: most sustainable model, but difficult to push depending on the niche. it is, however, the most sustainable model. an app requires ongoing work, so at some point up-front single payment model caps your revenue unless you manage to grow your customer base forever<p>these are the only strategies I consider seriously. I regularly think about IAP (consumables for games, sounds for music apps, etc…) but it&#x27;s not clear yet how&#x2F;if I can do that effectively and without compromising my integrity.
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rogem002about 8 years ago
I&#x27;ve been attempting to monetise my Google Chrome Extension for the last few months ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12925467" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12925467</a> ). I felt I could never inject ads to my extension as I never had a sensible place to put them.<p>Instead I&#x27;ve been experimenting a lot with one off &amp; subscription approaches, here are two things I noticed:<p>1. When I had a subscription model, most users would sign up &amp; almost instantly cancel their subscription (though very few ever requested a refund).<p>2. Adjusting the one off price didn&#x27;t change the monthly revenue. For example when I changed the price from $7.99 to $10, the sales decreased a little but at the end of the month I ended up earning about the same.<p>(Shameless plug: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;livepage&#x2F;pilnojpmdoofaelbinaeodfpjheijkbh?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;livepage&#x2F;pilnojpmd...</a> )
avaerabout 8 years ago
&gt; That&#x27;s why I&#x27;ve started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.<p>I like the idea in concept, but as an advertiser this intuitively tastes like a strictly worse product.<p>Doesn&#x27;t this model mean I now have to vet the inventory (users) of the app -- another cost, as well as structure my campaign around the publisher&#x27;s willingness to serve my ads -- additional variance and risk? This is no doubt great for app publishers on paper, but why is this better for customers? That is, advertisers?
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benologistabout 8 years ago
I&#x27;ve found the Amazon Underground App Store to be pretty cool - you get paid by the minute by Amazon for the people using your apps so all you need to focus on is engagement and retention.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.amazon.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.amazon.com</a>
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ThomPeteabout 8 years ago
I am currently charging a one time price for my app <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghostnoteapp.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghostnoteapp.com</a> it&#x27;s doing pretty well but it&#x27;s also hard work. I am currently working on a subscription version of my product mostly used for team annotation of websites, something a lot of people have been asking me about. And I really want to move towards recurring revenue as there is much more to work with.<p>The best trick I can give you is start with a really low price then slowly raise it until downloads slow down but your revenue is intact from your start price.<p>I don&#x27;t believe you need to ever introduce ads unless your product provides no real value.
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vbstevenabout 8 years ago
A couple years ago I had a niche Android app that I could sell for 10EUR&#x2F;USD. It made around 1500&#x2F;month which was pretty decent for an app with no backend and almost no maintenance work.<p>After one year a competitor showed up at less than half the price and the party was over.<p>My strategy: find a niche app so you can charge a lot more
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simon_weberabout 8 years ago
I sell productivity tools - Chrome Extensions and a SaaS - that solve my own problems in a niche. I&#x27;ve avoided ads: they wouldn&#x27;t be worth it with such small install numbers.<p>For business-focused products I usually do a free time-limited full-access trial + paid subscription. For consumer-focused products I usually do freemium (limited version for indefinite use + paid subscription to remove limits).
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jliptzinabout 8 years ago
As an advertiser that sounds like a nightmare to me. We want to be able to push our creatives out to a huge mass of users instantly, track whatever performance is relevant to us, then iterate on that to try to improve. Having to vet individual placements on apps would be a gigantic waste of time and I would not do it. Maybe for some niche markets it makes sense but I can&#x27;t think of any.
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soulchild37about 8 years ago
My monetisation strategy is giving free app with basic feature and then require in-app purchase for premium feature. I hated ads so I will never put ads in my app, this makes me think hard on what value&#x2F;problem my app will solve or provide. ( Shameless plug: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;komuter.pro" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;komuter.pro</a> , dead simple app with only 1 view)
Outpoxabout 8 years ago
I&#x27;ve made a CS:GO online tool which gets ~40k visitors&#x2F;month. Since I use adblockers I decided not to put ads on my website, but I instead placed a Paypal donate button which didn&#x27;t worked even once.<p>So instead I placed my steam trading link which allows visitors to make trade offers with me. I couln&#x27;t say how much it does represent but I&#x27;ve got ~5 trade offers per week.<p>Most of the time the weapon skins aren&#x27;t worth much but I&#x27;m still glad because I&#x27;ve got to receive messages thanking me for the tool which is what I&#x27;ve always wanted.
Olognabout 8 years ago
I do Android apps, and tried lots of different advertising approaches. Admob has always been a central ad network to consider, then everything else. So first you want to decide if you want Admob to be your ad mediator or not. If a third-party one works acceptably with Admob, that&#x27;s your best choice.<p>Then you want to do the split. Admob has high fill rates and good numbers for most countries. The top competitors usually only have high fill rates for countries like the USA. Usually their numbers (click through rate, payment per click etc.) is less for those countries as well. I usually send most traffic to Admob and let a little dribble over to an Inmobi or AOL One (Millennial Media) or whatnot.<p>Aside from spending $150 on a few things initially (A few months of a VPS, $25 for a Google Play developer account etc.), all the money I have spent on my apps - advertising, translating, icon art, VPS charges etc. - have come out of revenue. That was easier up until 2014, when people were getting their first Android phones, and their weren&#x27;t a lot of apps and Android programmers out there. Now there are a lot of good apps, Android programmers etc., so getting traction on an app costs more and&#x2F;or takes longer.<p>I get e-mails all the time for some new ad network and ignore almost all of them. Admob towers over most of the other ad networks for people building standard Android apps with Android Studio. I use the major second tier ad networks just for redundancy purposes.<p>Some people here are recommending you charge for your app right off the bat. Here is some advice which I think might save you a lot of time and headaches. Think of an app which you can write in a few days&#x2F;weeks, but which has some roulette wheel chance of reaching your monetization goal. An example for me would be this Stopwatch app ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.unwrappedapps.android.stopwatch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.unwrappeda...</a> ), which I worked on for two weeks, after which I released version 1 of it. Then - promote it however you would have promoted your paid app. Then sit back and see. What&#x27;s the response to it? Not that much in the way of free downloads? You&#x27;re <i>giving it away</i> for <i>free</i>. Think how much higher the bar will be if people have to ante up to use the app, even if it&#x27;s 99 cents. People will also have higher expectations - it&#x27;s not some free thing they tried - they&#x27;re customers who paid for it.
ductionistabout 8 years ago
We publish Windows apps.<p>Our free apps make money by promoting paid &#x27;pro&#x27; versions of themselves, by offering an IAP to remove ads, and by promoting other Windows apps, either through the Microsoft affiliate network or private arrangements.<p>We manage these ads with in-house tech to get around the &quot;little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc.&quot; you mention - we had the exact same problem. (Lots of really scummy ads on the bigger networks.)<p>Enabling direct deals between app developers would be super cool, it&#x27;s basically what we find ourselves having to do anyway. Curious what you&#x27;ll do with your unsold inventory, especially when you&#x27;re starting off? (Maybe fall back to the platform&#x27;s affiliate program, like the iTunes affiliate program on iOS?)
thijserabout 8 years ago
We started the monetization part of AppBrain for very similar reasons about 5 years ago. We chose to have a very predictable set of ads (only non-incentivized app install ads) that have a better user experience than regular interstitials. Especially at that time, there were quite some scammy ads out there and our business grew quickly. Now that Google Play has cleaned out most of the bad acting ad networks it is a challenge to attract new developers who recognize the benefit of a good user experience over the slightly lower eCPMs that may go with it. I wish you best of luck!
IgorPartolaabout 8 years ago
I made a budget app with some unique features (multiple users with synced budgets, no bullshit UI). I use AdMob and it brings me $10&#x2F;month. That is not much at all. Not even enough to cover hosting and Apple publishing fees. I feel that it&#x27;s too niche to be a subscription model, though I do sell the ad-free version for $10 one time. So my answer is &quot;meh, make games with IAP is probably the only way to make non-coffee money&quot;.<p>Edit: not promoting, but I like it when people show links to what they monetize in these discussions so I am going to follow my own advice: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;family-fortune.ridgebit.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;family-fortune.ridgebit.com</a>
ericlamb89about 8 years ago
I&#x27;m not too familiar with Admob or other mobile ad platforms, but don&#x27;t they let you sell inventory directly already? I think the reason this is less desirable for both publishers and advertisers is the amount of work involved in direct sales efforts. As an app publisher, you may not have time to go out and sell direct spots on your network (which will be necessary if you don&#x27;t already have the kind of data about your users that facebook &#x2F; google provide). Advertisers have a similar problem on the other side, in that using facebook&#x2F;google services allows them to easily target their audience based on data about them. How will your adnetwork address that need?
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DoodleBuggyabout 8 years ago
Find a niche and charge a premium. Or, make something addictive and use in-app purchases. I am not sure there is another way.<p>I&#x27;d love to be wrong but I tend to think any semblance of an app store gold rush passed by 5+ years ago.
yupyupabout 8 years ago
Ads. Mainly developing chat apps for Google Play and it&#x27;s the simplest way to make money for these type of sw.<p>It worked well until Google removed our main app from search results and it all went downhill from there.
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mattbgatesabout 8 years ago
Ads are hard to get a decent return unless you have hundreds of thousands of visitors. I, myself, hardly like to pay for anything, and love free products, however, I&#x27;ve recently tried to figure out a pricing plan that <i>I</i> personally would pay for.. and use that mentality to price my products, which are often far cheaper than the average, but still enough to profit.<p>My pricing is based on two audiences: individual and small business.<p>I assume if I were to ever get a big business, they could always register for multiple accounts.<p>So this is how I normally create and price:<p>I offer a &quot;free version&quot; of all my products that have X amount of whatever I am offering, usually around 5 or 10 for the month.<p>Each time the product is used, X amount drops until it hits 0, at which point, the user cannot use the product any more. If they need more X, however, they may purchase more X.<p>For a few products I wrote (still in beta), it is subscription-based where they hop on a plan that gives them X a month. There are variations of the plan that offer a certain amount of X depending on how much they need. If they use more than that, they can either upgrade their plan OR purchase more of X outright.<p>On their renew date (each month from which they subscribed to the plan), the number of X restores back to that amount.<p>On my non-subscription based products, I offer X amount and they can use it all up and purchase more whenever they need more, or just wait until the renew date from which they registered, which restores their account balance to whatever X amount is the default.<p>That has been my pricing method. I can&#x27;t give you numbers yet on whether it works, as I&#x27;ve just begun my journey into charging for the things I create, but I just think: <i>How much I pay for this?</i><p>Things that cost $50 a month? As an individual person, unless they were really useful, probably not.<p>Things that cost $1.99, $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, $5.99 or $9.99 a month? Probably more reasonable for an individual.<p>As for being a startup or small business? $49.99 or $99.99 is certainly a reasonable price.<p>Curious about .95 or .99 pricing? Basic psychology: You are technically getting the extra dollar, but in the mind of your consumer: they are not giving you that extra dollar.
prettyroseabout 8 years ago
At RadBots we basically built an ad network for bots as well. We do automatic targeting via insights and models built to match the audience to make it easier on both sides. I like the idea of picking available ads, but haven&#x27;t had any users ask for this feature yet. There is also another issue of fulfillment. All ads aren&#x27;t available all the time, how do you handle that?
flaqueabout 8 years ago
You could charge money for the app. If your app doesn&#x27;t require lots of people to be on it, then selling it might be the best bet. Then your app is only used by people who really want it. This gives you less support time and a user base that&#x27;s really enthusiastic about what you have.
david90about 8 years ago
We&#x27;ve built a free web tool <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;makeappicon.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;makeappicon.com</a> , somewhat we tried out if users would love a desktop version. So the Desktop version could buy our team coffee at the end of the day.
wiradikusumaabout 8 years ago
while we&#x27;re in this topic, does anyone know any ad(?) network that provides &quot;pay per errands&quot; (install app, watch video, fill out survey, anything that can be done on mobile)? i want to give my 30k users a way to earn a bit of extra money.
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chvidabout 8 years ago
Do good work as showcases to do consulting ...
Pica_soOabout 8 years ago
I make a game, the idea to monetize at the moment of victory, aka the highscores at the end of a match. Players buy Confetti for 2 Cents and throw it when the camera rotates around each player detailing his archievments. The Targetplayer gets 1 Cent, we get the other one. There are various &quot;Throwables&quot; (roses, fireworks, glasses, tomatos, eggs, fish).
LeicaLatteabout 8 years ago
Wrong question.
codr4lifeabout 8 years ago
What happened to building great software, providing great service and letting the rest flow from there? Monetization strategy; what is that, really? How is that ever going to lead anywhere that matters? Not that I don&#x27;t have the same issues, I too am trying hard to find a way to survive in this mess of a world; but I&#x27;m convinced it all starts with doing the right thing, which rules out advertisement bullshit for me.
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