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Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#51

Post by no_wizard »

codr4life wrote: post #37
no_wizard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you what happened: The industry matured. In the 80s, 90s, hell even the mid 2000s, if you had a great product you could likely get business because simply, you had a great product! Tons of industries were being transformed, disrupted, and shaped by new firms all the time. Famously, Adobe was profitable within its first year of operation thanks to a nice deal with Apple to use postscript (bit of history here…

The way you're framing it sounds like we don't have any alternatives to continuing down this road; from my perspective; this is the future we are creating by not considering options. We didn't come up with these backward ideas, bullshit wears suits. We're the ones we've been waiting for; it's up to us to change this into something better, and that starts with considering options.

What options? The idea of just 'selling great software' is old as hat. The new in-app purchases and subscription models, in terms of how software is sold and maintained, is certainly much newer.

So called 'donation' or 'tip jar' type is pretty old too.

Shareware was the original free trial. Then we just started calling it a free trial!

Advertising is old as hat, been funding not just software, but many things, for a long time.

I'm having a hard time thinking of the different ways you can actually sell your software to someone, and in an app store dominated economy, where its idea of how software is paid for really has a cascading (and I would argue detrimental) affect on how all software is sold/distributed/licensed/modeled.

Am I missing something? I'm all for high ideas. I just don't see anything short of revolting against platforms that even come close to difference.

I'm all about options. In fact, i'd love to hear some.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#52

Post by orasis »

alc90 wrote: post #29
hashmal wrote: post #23

- 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) - free download with unlock IAP: just a hack to provide a "try it" demo. really a derivative of up-front payment - subscription based: most sustainable model, but difficult to push depending on the niche. it is, however, the m…

I agree also - and I would point out also that the ads approach or having a freemium app are the only two viable solutions for mobile apps. The subscription based model is definitely the Holy Grail of app monetisation but it's also the hardest to achieve especially for mobile apps.

In app subscriptions are pretty simple on iOS now, though Apple is forcing you to clutter up the UI with a bunch of extra terms and conditions info.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#53

Post by orasis »

codr4life wrote: post #6

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't have the same issues, I too am trying hard to find a way to survive in this mess of a world; but I'm convinced it all starts with doing the right thing, which rules out advertisement bullshit for me.

Building great software includes great monetization. Otherwise have fun making $10/month on something you poured hundreds of hours into.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#54

Post by vbsteven »

aman-pro wrote: post #30
vbsteven wrote: post #11

A couple years ago I had a niche Android app that I could sell for 10EUR/USD. It made around 1500/month which was pretty decent for an app with no backend and almost no maintenance work. After one year a competitor showed up at less than half the price and the party was over. My strategy: find a niche app so you can charge a lot more

What was your app?

It was Quantus Tasks. At that time the only Android app that was compatible with OmniFocus

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#55

Post by CJefferson »

alc90 wrote: post #41
jliptzin wrote: post #36

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't think of any.

I'm not an advertiser and I understand your point - but I think it can be the same amount of work pushing the ad in a black hole of ad impressions - not knowing where your add is being displayed - just some numbers - then trying to guess - because it's a great amount of guessing involved - what should you do to increase the relevance of your ad. Vetting the apps you want to advertise can also mean time spent - but kn…

The problem, if it is a big advert spend, it could be hundred of apps. Am i going to vet "bubble pop", "bubble pop 2", "puzzle bubble", and 200 other games, or just say i want my ad to be shown in puzzle games?

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#56

Post by flaque »

You could charge money for the app. If your app doesn'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's really enthusiastic about what you have.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#57

Post by rogem002 »

I've been attempting to monetise my Google Chrome Extension for the last few months ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12925467 ). I felt I could never inject ads to my extension as I never had a sensible place to put them.

Instead I've been experimenting a lot with one off & subscription approaches, here are two things I noticed:

1. When I had a subscription model, most users would sign up & almost instantly cancel their subscription (though very few ever requested a refund).

2. Adjusting the one off price didn'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.

(Shameless plug: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/livepage/pilnojpmd... )

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#58

Post by Spooky23 »

alc90 wrote: post #34
jt2190 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [D]o you think that having this... more human approach... when selling/buying ads is obsolete? My understanding is that larger companies with bigger ad spend don't have time to hand-pick each app or web page. (Using human labor to pick apps and pages can significantly raise the cost I presume.) Perhaps there is a marketplace for smaller advertisers here.

Big companies have big marketing budgets and are interested in big numbers (eg. huge number of impressions). I was thinking in terms of a more human approach where advertisers are actually looking to connect with their potential users. App publishers don't sell impressions - they sell influence by allowing the advertiser to get a spot from their app real-estate.

Overcast just did this. If you remember Tweetie (ancient Twitter app on iOS) they built a little bespoke network as well.

It's certainly possible, but not scalable. If your goal is to support your own work and you have the hustle and editorial eye, you can make money.

Keep in mind that the big players can wipe you out in a second. Overcast exists because Apple's benign neglect of podcasts. They can wake up at anytime and wipe the app and ad market out.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#59

Post by ThomPete »

I am currently charging a one time price for my app https://www.ghostnoteapp.com it's doing pretty well but it'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.

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.

I don't believe you need to ever introduce ads unless your product provides no real value.

Re: Ask HN: What are your app monetisation strategies?

#60

Post by Ologn »

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's your best choice.

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.

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'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/or takes longer.

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.

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/weeks, but which has some roulette wheel chance of reaching your monetization goal. An example for me would be this Stopwatch app ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unwrappeda... ), 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's the response to it? Not that much in the way of free downloads? You're giving it away for free. Think how much higher the bar will be if people have to ante up to use the app, even if it's 99 cents. People will also have higher expectations - it's not some free thing they tried - they're customers who paid for it.

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