Free Applications Make Money: Have we ever wondered about the applications that we download for free from an apple store or play store, how do the owners of those apps earn because we are downloading those apps for free, then how come the owners can earn from a mere application. Well, today we have found an answer to that. In this article, we are going to highlight those facts.
The basic ways for free applications to make money are:
- Subscriptions
- Advertisements
- In-app purchase
- Basic features/Freemium
- Sponsors and many more
Now let’s take a brief look at how the above factors help the free applications to make money.
Subscriptions:
Most of us must be familiar with this term, especially when it comes to Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon prime, etc. These applications are subscription-based, where the downloading of this application is free but if we want to enjoy even the basic features of the application we need to pay for the subscription. Not only on the above-mentioned application but several other applications require subscriptions before if the user wants to enjoy advanced features of the application. But those are categorized under a different category which is discussed below.
Basic Features/Freemium:
The word Freemium may be new to a few people, but it means that the basic features are provided for free to the users but if we want to enjoy more advanced features on a particular application we need to pay for that. We can take an example of music apps like Spotify. On Spotify, we can listen to music for free, but we can’t download them so that we can listen to music without any internet connection and we can’t enjoy our music without any advertisements. If we want to enjoy these advanced features we have to pay for the plans according to our likings.
Advertisements:
As in the previous paragraph we talked about enjoying our music without advertisements, there is a reason why these advertisements appear in our apps. If we observe or look at the stats, most of the people nowadays are hooked on the applications as compared to televisions, newspapers, or magazines. So the companies feel more convicted in attracting the audience towards their product through advertisement in applications. We might have come across so many advertisements on our Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and many other apps. These are the paid advertisements the company pays to the owner of the application to advertise their products in their apps.
Sponsorships:
You might be thinking about how someone can sponsor an application and provide funding to it. Well, it can be understood in a very easy way. Let’s take an example of Company A. This company has launched a brand new application and has reached a particular target. They also have a sponsor company, now this Company A will design that application according to the brand design of that sponsor company which can match to their ideology and working. In this way Company, A will be getting funding from different sponsors matching their expectations.
In-app purchase:
The in-app purchase can be observed in most of the gaming applications. The readers of these articles who are into playing games like PUBG, Call of Duty, etc must be aware of this fact. In most of the games, we need certain coins or diamonds to play further, and for the refill, there is a time limit in every game. But the players also have the option of buying the points within the game. That is called an in-app purchase.
Promoting other apps:
This method of monetizing apps is the most common way to generate money and most of us have come across this method. In this, an application that is more famous and loud among the audience promotes other applications. After knowing this the most appropriate example that crosses our mind can be Youtube. On Youtube whenever we watch a video, there’s an advertisement for different applications like Snapchat, Zomato, Swiggy, etc. Those are the paid advertisements for the other applications. Many new applications are promoted in this way, because after Facebook, Youtube is the second most viewed application among the audience.
Data Selling:
Well, this may sound an unethical way of generating money but some companies collect and sell data of their users to the researchers of the third party or may use it for themselves. There’s a reason why companies sell their data, is to understand their audience and provide them new features according to their preferences. But the problem arises when the apps which are not rated good or are not verified can also use users’ call history, search history, and much personal information.
Above were the ways that the existing companies use to earn money. But the question arises can the newbies who want to generate money from their application but are not much popular can use these methods to earn money. The answer is a straight YES.
Generating money from an application and promoting it, is somewhat the same to promote your Instagram page. What do we do to promote our Instagram page? We often link the page from Facebook which costs us some bucks but in return if our content is good or we can say our product is good we also get money in return.
Just like our Instagram page, we can promote our application through these basic steps in the preliminary stage, in the correct way. The newbies have to take care of the targeted audience, their behavior, and the clicking pattern.
All and all we can say that whether they are newbies or existing competitors to earn money from free applications proper planning, strategy, marketing strategy, funding, a strong personnel team is needed to carry out the whole process. There are some obstacles that everyone has to face. The main obstacle that many developers come across is to create awareness regarding their applications. This can be considered a hard obstacle to overcome because in the market there are already many established applications that have built trust among their audience. Because of the increasing rate of cybercrimes and unethical hacking people resist trusting any new application.
The newbies need to take care of some important steps which are compulsory to build trust among the audience. They need to run a trial among the employees to check all the faults and improvement areas in the app. Because once the app is launched you can’t deny the faults if found. The whole company is answerable to that negligence. This negligence can also affect the audience base of the company. Not only the new developers but also the existing developers face this kind of problem. Apps like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc. have to be alert about the kind of content being posted by the users. Some users might post harmful content that is not suitable for the posting, though these apps are taking actions against such posts. the newbies have to be extra careful if they are giving users more excess in the application they need to have an eye on what is being posted and need to take action against them. they need to provide users with the excess to report the content if it does match with the guidelines.
These were some basic app monetization techniques and some tips to the developers for their application to be a success.
