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Application monetization: a guide on how to do it

Monetizing an application is a series of actions that help to make an application profitable.

In order to define a business model that allows you to monetize an application, you need to get answers to many questions, namely:

• What question does this application find a solution to?
• What are the advantages of the application?
• What makes the app unique?
• How effective will the chosen monetization method work with this application?

The great idea is to utilize SDK for monetization – in this case, user data (non-personal data) is monetized. A significant advantage of this option is that it can be easily combined with other strategies.

So, let’s take a look at the most popular desktop software monetization methods.

Introduction of advertising into a free application

The way is to gather your audience, the more users, the better. Collect information about users and their behavior in the application, analyze the collected data. Then offer advertising placement in the application to advertisers.

Benefits:

• The method is effective when using targeted advertising.
• High popularity and offer in the placement of mobile advertising.
• Wide audience coverage.
• Fast payback.

Drawbacks:

• Negative user attitudes.
• The fame of the method.
• It doesn’t work for programs that perform a limited number of functions.

Verdict:

The developer earns income from ad placement in his application, configures it manually, or uses automatic optimization, but the user is not satisfied.

Paid applications

It is a common method that allows a developer to generate income from every sale of an application. The developer determines the cost of the application independently. It can start from $0.5 and ends, relatively speaking, $1000. When using this method, it is essential to answer the question: “What is unique, and what problem will it help solve?”. The app in the market needs to be presented from the best side and to convince the user that this is what he was looking for.

Benefits:

• The developer receives a profit from each new download.

Drawbacks:

• Paid apps are not easily sold as the market is highly competitive, and there are a large number of free alternatives.

Verdict:

It is better to use this method if the application is unique in its kind and solves a real problem.

Subscription

This method presupposes that paid content is created inside the application. You must subscribe to access the content. The subscription is made for a certain amount of time. Some of the content is provided free of charge, but if the user wants to get more information, then he needs to pay for it.

Benefits:

• Allows you to receive a stable income for a long period.
• The user is loyal, as he gets access to the content for free, and if he wants to expand the possibilities, he can do it for an additional fee.
• The subscription is renewed, often automatically.

Drawbacks:

• It may not be used in all kinds of applications.
• It can be quite difficult for a developer to independently determine the moment and place where it needs to be done in the application.

Verdict:

The method, if implemented correctly, will allow you to receive a stable income. And users have the opportunity to test the application before paying, which is also great.

Freemium

Freemium offers users the basic version of the application for free. Users are attracted to the application using a free set of basic functions, while they can purchase additional features on their own.

Benefits:

• This method allows you to gather your audience in a relatively short period of time.
• It can be used in a wide variety of applications in various formats.
• One can combine it with other methods.

Drawbacks:

• If there are too few free features in the basic set, users will leave without even taking a look.
• If there are too many paid features in the base set, users will start leaving.

Verdict:

It is a rather practical way to monetize, but without enough experience, it is difficult to determine the “golden mean” with a set of functions and which of them to make free.

Conclusion

These are not all ways of desktop software monetization: we have selected the most popular ones. So, choose what suits you more and enjoy your income.