Mobile App Monetization Guide – Dmytro Kizema
Hello! My name is Dmytro Kizema, and I am the owner of a business that develops mobile applications and their following monetization. Today, I am going to talk about 3 main strategies of app monetization:
– In-app purchase system;
– In-app subscriptions;
– And, of course, ads monetization.
Since mobile development is a rapidly expanding market with growing competition, I will give some practical recommendations to help you avoid many missteps and make decent profits.
I suggest splitting the process into several steps:
1. Preparatory stage;
2. Correct papers on your website;
3. Integration of SDK ads networks;
4. Testing;
5. Initial launch and collection of analytics.
Stage 1 – Preparation
By the preparatory stage, I mean the proper funnel for placing ads and offering screenshots of purchases.
About purchases and subscriptions
If we talk about one-time purchases and subscriptions for a particular time – use a simple paradigm:
The user only pays when he has benefited from the app!
This is a very rational and correct phrase. If you want to sell — let people benefit. Otherwise, you may run into several troubles that will be very difficult to overcome in the future. I mean a low app rating and a high number of refund requests.
If you hope to keep your application from quickly losing trust or falling out of Google Play or App Store indexing — take care of the quality of your application and the logical chain of selling internal subscriptions or one-time purchases. After all, those offer screens that are displayed to the user at the moment of receiving the benefit receive the highest conversion.
About in-app advertising
In this case, preparation is the correct placement of advertising and the right number of impressions per user. This point must be considered from the beginning so that you won’t get banned in the monetization cabinets in the future, since neither AdMob nor Facebook likes it when a user receives more advertising than he should.
Stage 2 – Documentation on websites
This is a challenging stage for a simple developer to understand since only a good lawyer can help with this. But based on my experience, I can name a few main aspects:
1. You must create the correct private policy and terms of use on your application’s website. That must specify all the rules for the purchase and return of funds.
2. Describe what user data you collect and why you need it.
3. Describe user rights in detail.
Stage 3 – Integration of advertising networks
Everything is easy with purchases — it is enough to integrate the purchase logic into the application provided by Google Play App Store, but advertising monetization is a little more complicated.
First, you need to choose an advertising network you will use to monetize your application. I recommend several networks for young applications:
– AdMob
– Facebook Monetization
– Applovin Max
At the initial stage, all these ad networks have approximately the same performance. However, after the application grows to 15,000 – 20,000 DAU daily, it will be possible to connect third-party mediation. I will describe them in more detail in other articles since this is a rather large topic for discussion.
For the correct integration of these networks, use the documentation offered on the websites of these companies.
In addition, you should also study the advertising placements that will benefit your application in detail.
– Advertising banner during the application launch
– Interstitial Ads
– Native and static banners
– Custom advertising placements.
Using these placements, think about the best places to show ads to get the most income without ad spamming.
Stage 4 – Performance Testing
A step that many people skip. It is necessary to test everything to avoid troubles arising after the application’s release. Our team is testing the correct integration of advertising SDKs and purchases from markets over several days using various test devices.
It is better to spend extra time than to worry about the performance of your application after its release.
Stage 5 – Launch and Analytics
If you have successfully gone through all these stages of hell and launched monetization in your application, it’s time to accomplish analytics.
I will tell you more about analytics in other articles, since this topic is pervasive, and many things depend on analytics.
It is enough to view the main indicators to assess the quality and profitability of each method, which will help you make the right optimization decisions.
If we mention purchases, you need to know the percentage of conversion to a paying user. This value includes many parameters that we won't describe in this article.
When it comes to ad monetization of applications, you need to analyze the average cost per 1000 impressions, the number of impressions per user, analytics by country, and other metrics.
By adding the revenue from advertising and purchases and dividing it by the number of application users, you can understand the payback for attracting one user.
Let’s sum up the ad monetization of apps
I have described the topic of monetization rather superficially, but at the same time, I have given a suitable direction in which you can develop your application and receive a decent income.
I hope my recommendations will help you.
The article’s author is Dmytro Kizema.
