BEST Ways To Monetize An iOS/Android App? || Mobile App Monetization

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to the green developer channel if you don't know me i post videos on this channel about my process developing my first ever indie app if you're interested in seeing that check out the link that i post somewhere on the screen right now where you can see a whole playlist of vlogs about my development process now let's look at the subject we have at hand today and it's probably one of the most important things we can talk about when it comes to indie development and one other thing that i had to think about the most for my own project today we're talking about how to monetize an indie app and specifically what i plan to do for my own project going forward now before i answer that specific question let's try to paint a general picture of what's available and what i thought about using for my project now just a little side note here there's obviously more options than what i'm about to list these are just the ones that i've thought about and i've considered for my project but they should still be enough to cover most of the basic use cases for monetization okay so let's look at the first option and the most obvious one having a flat fee upfront cost for your app paying like one two five i don't know 10 bucks to pay for your app and unlock all the features with zero features being available for free at first it's the common use case you used to see a while back when the store first started but it's something that's less and less popular out there mainly because it doesn't even let the user try your app before actually buying it which obviously makes it extremely difficult for the developer to get traction on their app because it's hard to get that initial you know influx of people that are willing to buy your app before there's any feedback to it in my opinion this is something that applies the best to something like a game and even more so something like a single player game that has a more finite amount of content to it you know that way the user kind of knows what he's getting for that upfront fee and on the side of the developer it's easier to manage because you know finite games might have a couple patches here and there but most of the time won't require a huge amount of maintenance post launch and so the developer can kind of launch his app get some kind of first influx of users and purchases and then move on to another project down the line something like you can't necessarily do with more utility apps and things that people are gonna use daily because in a lot of cases they're gonna expect some kind of updates some kind of bug fixes you know some kind of improvements over the app i'm personally developing a utility app that aims to encourage people to use more reusable containers like you know reusable coffee cups and water bottles and stuff like that if you want to know more about this i made a whole video that explains what i've done so far and what's coming up next for that project you can just click the link right there and go check it out for yourself so i don't think a single time purchased upfront purchase works for my needs on top of that like i said before this isn't really much of a popular option anymore and a lot of people expect at least some free tier to their apps nowadays so second available option to us adding ads to your app there's a million ways that make it super easy for developers to incorporate ads in their apps in ways that make it so they don't have to manage you know finding people to purchase their ad spots and whatnot and you know you can easily add some kind of paid tier to your app that's gonna just for a flat fee remove all the ads from your app for that user but in my opinion that is extremely difficult to pull off one of the reasons i don't want to be using that for myself is because using those third-party services like admob that just choose the ads and manage everything for you is that it can really easily make your app look cheap let's just take the idea of adding a banner at the bottom that's managed by google you've spent all your time working on that fancy design making it look nice making the colors work together and look professional and you just add that banner that for some reason you know has something that's completely missing the mark and clashes completely with your app you're gonna end up with something that looks so much worse than if it was just left blank which is not to say it never works but in my opinion it's really hard to pull off one of the few ways that i've seen ads inside an application work well and feel nice is when they were completely done by the developer in a custom manner and none of it was left to something like a third party like admob the one i'm thinking about straight away is overcast from marco armand the podcast app which is a really specific use case because in the overcast app all the ads are you know custom made by the developer and they're not using ready-made banners or stuff like that the ad spots are sold directly by the developer too so he knows what he's putting on there and on top of all of that all that the ads do is promote other podcasts on that podcast platform and they link inside the app to another podcast but obviously at that point maybe link to the website and stuff like that but when you click the ad it doesn't redirect you outside it doesn't redirect you to something you're not expecting you don't have any weird pop-ups that ask you if you want to go to a sketchy site for the ad it's just all done within the app which is one of the few ways that it can actually work in my opinion but here's the catch doing all of this is a lot of work inside the app and a ton of work outside of it too and it's really hard to apply the kind of idea that you can keep everything inside the app if you don't have something that lends itself well to promoting similar stuff inside your app so it can obviously be done but it's going to be done at the cost of a lot of work and it obviously might be extremely rewarding if you pull it off right but if you don't pull it off right it might be more penalizing than anything so what else if not ads and not upfront payments um that's where we're getting into the things that are a little bit more trendy right now like i said earlier most people when using apps nowadays are expecting some kind of free tier where they can use some of the features at least the basic ones or at least the ones that most people use and then what you can do on top of that is just add layers of stuff that you can unlock through purchases i'm sure you've seen that type of content in a lot of the apps that you're using right now most of the basic features are gonna be available from the get go when you download the app and behind some kind of pro subscription you're gonna find all the other specific features that a small subset of the users actually want to use so for a small monthly or yearly fee the users that really need to push the app to the limit can actually pay for those features without having to make the people that use one or two simple features from the app i have to pay for it at this point in time this is probably one of the best ways to support yourself as an indie developer just because it's always going to take time to maintain an app to push updates to update it for new ios releases for example and so that way you're ensuring that you're going to be getting some kind of income from your apps that are going to be ongoing it's also probably the way that you're going to end up making more money over the long term it's really no surprises that you're seeing a lot of company use that kind of service nowadays but here's the thing i know there's a lot of developers out there that are kind of put off by the idea of adding recurring subscriptions to their apps just because of the fact that there's so many things we have to be subscribed for these days there's something for our netflix account for our music our editing software whatever other tool that we're using that we're paying you know monthly fees for and at some point i understand that there's some developers that think i don't want to be part of that thing because it's getting too much it's getting too ridiculous and too difficult to manage for users so if you don't want to jump on that boat and get recurring subscriptions you can obviously do kind of the same thing but with flat fees you're most likely going to make less money from doing this but you might feel better about the way you're treating your user from it that same set of features that might have been in a pro subscription or something like that can just be made available for a flat fee for the user whatever you think is reasonable for the user to pay as a one-time thing to access everything that's beyond the basic scope of the app and finally beyond just the features you can even use that idea of small purchases in a free app to do things like let the user unlock special appearances for the apps or app icons and things like that that thing works in video games with skins and things like that and there's no reason why it wouldn't work in an ios app if done correctly you know if people enjoy using your product they're going to be happy to support it in small ways and they're going to be happy to be able to customize the appearance of something they use probably every day or every week or whatnot so hopefully all of this gives you some kind of basic idea of what's available out there and what can be done to monetize your in the app easily obviously all these options are super dependent on the project you're doing and what kind of application you've been building and you know what your target audience is and a bunch of other things nothing's gonna work for everyone and there's obviously no bad way to go about this you just kind of have to put in the time and try to think about what's going to work for your project and what works with your values and how you want to treat your users so then what am i going to do with my own project what am i going to do for the app that i'm developing on this channel how am i gonna monetize this and that's kind of complicated to answer if you've been watching vlogs on this channel for a while you might have a bit of an idea of where i'm going with this because the answer is that i'm not gonna do any of it or almost any of it see the driving idea behind this youtube channel the one i've been working on has never been to make an app that's gonna be sold and make a bunch of money and let me retire in the bahamas it's always been about trying to show people that you can use the skills that you have and try to have a positive impact and do something that's you know lined up with your values it just happened to be that i know how to make ios apps and i like doing that so i can use that skill to try to reach my goals that's why i make those videos that's why i share them and so when i stop myself and try to think about how am i gonna make this app have the most impact on people and reach my goals the best and so i come to the conclusion that i want everybody to have access to all the features that way it reaches as many people as possible and the people it reaches can use it to its full potential and that obviously means locking no feature behind a paywall no feature behind a paid subscription and obviously making the app free in the first place now i could add ads to this um project but i personally just don't really like it i feel like we're bombarded with ads a lot of the time so if i cannot partake in that i'm be happy to do so so what's left then well i did say i am almost not going to do anything one of the things i'll allow myself to do is like i said earlier have the option for users to purchase special app icons that way they can support me if they really like the project and they can have a little extra benefit inside the app at the same time this is also to make sure i can open the door to having you know custom app icons with proceeds going to charities and non-profits at some point down the line but you know just customizable app icons is obviously not enough to support a whole project like the one i've been doing like i said the biggest driving factor behind this project is the idea that i can motivate people and show people that it's doable to make apps on your own develop something that you care about publish it and maybe have it be a little bit successful and i feel like the best way i can achieve that is through the videos that i make and that's why i want most of the effort about making this whole project sustainable to be put into those videos and this youtube channel that way it can stay the focal point of what i do and i can keep on publishing videos every week for you guys and so that's why today i'm announcing and sharing the patreon that i've just made so that you guys can help me achieve that idea when i first started that channel i thought to myself that i wasn't gonna you know try to monetize it before i'd reach some kind of milestone that would show me that people actually enjoyed my videos in the first place to be honest i never expected anybody to watch them at all in the first place but last week i finally reached the small but significant to me milestone of reaching 100 subscribers on top of that the channel even reached 100 subscribers without having a single disliked on any video that i posted which is mind-boggling to me thank you all for that so much and it might be a small milestone for most people out there but to me it's exceptionally huge on top of all the comments that i've had about people that tell me that you know they enjoy following the process because it motivates them and you know they feel refreshed to go back to work and do it for themselves after i really feel like i should keep going and there's something worth pushing for with those videos so if you like the idea of me continuing to publish videos and develop apps that i can publish for free after and make those vlogs about the development of those apps make sure to go check out the patreon page and see if you would like to support me that way i already added a couple tiers to the support that you can give on there that include a couple benefits like your name and the credits of every video that i make or a special thank you note or you know access to those special videos that i post throughout the week on top of the ones that i post on the channel every weekend so i hope that answered a couple questions if you are interested in you know monetizing your own in the app or about what i'm gonna be doing with my own project moving forward um i hope you enjoyed the video i'll see you next week and until then take care

Channel: The Green Developer

Views: 7,667

Keywords: ios, monetization, monetize, money, passive income, mobile app, mobile application, android, independent, developer, apple, mac, software, software engineer, engineer, in app purchases, IAP, make money online, ios developer, macos, computer, computer science, day in life, design, swift, iphone, app, application, app dev, dev, the green developer, productivity, desk setup, home office, environment, day in the life, software developer, programming, coder, coding, software engineering, digital nomad

Id: x8uJQGxZ-tI

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020