Today, I'm going to break down five different monetization strategies for
your mobile and desktop applications and show you how to implement them,
why you might want to consider it.
And also the downsides.
So tune in.
Hi everyone.
I'm James.
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Now today, I'm going to be talking about app monetization.
How do you make that sweet, sweet money?
So you can keep developing your applications is something
that's super duper important.
I develop a lot of applications in my side over the holidays, and I
do it for fun because I love it.
And there are apps that I want, but also it'd be nice to kind of get rewarded for
the time I'm putting into it with a few dollars so I can go buy some tacos, um,
from not a FA not as sponsor at all.
But on seriousness monetize, monetizing, your application is super important and
there's five different ways to do it.
Um, beyond the things that you would think about, like putting in ads, we're
not going to talk about ads today.
We're going to instead talk about API APIs through iOS, Android, Mac,
and windows that you can use when you ship your app to the app store.
So let's go ahead and break down the first one, which is paid applications.
All right.
Paid applications are the easiest thing to implement because
there's nothing to implement.
That's right.
There's really no difference between a free app and a paid app.
Besides the setting that you start is that in the app store, when you set a
free app to be free, it is free people download it and they get access to it.
When it's a paid app is paid, they have to pay money to be able to download it.
It just like, you know, An apple, when you go to the grocery store or buying
some good, you know, or this hat, I bought this hat and now it's good forever.
And I own it.
And it's there unless I lose my phone or I lose my account.
I'm going to have that hat forever.
And that's a paid out.
It's really, really simple.
You can change the price of your application at any
time to be more, to be less.
Um, and the nice part there is that if you introduce the price at 4 99, Later
if someone already bought it, they're not going to really see the price again.
So it's not going to really be upset them at all.
Um, and you can of course, make it lower too.
You can run flash sales, you can schedule sales.
They're there.
I guess that there's nothing to implement in your application.
Some people may want to do receipt validation.
This isn't any of the processes, which validate it, which has a whole
bunch of work, which I'm not going to go into detail of, but you can
basically validate that someone actually bought this through the apps or APIs.
Now the downsides of paid applications.
They only buy it once and that's it it's paid.
And that's it.
You sorta in perpetuity always are giving them free support, free
updates and adding new features.
And that's totally up to you.
I'm a big fan of one-time paid application.
Some of my favorite applications from a buddy, Frank, like I circuit
and continuous are that way.
I get an awesome application that Franks.
I just have to give him some money up front.
That's how I buy a lot of my software.
That's out there, but that's not the only way that we can actually make money.
Because number two is non consumables.
Non-consumables the opposite of consumables.
So let's break these down.
Non-consumables are sort of when you don't want to have a paid.
But you do want to have a one-time upgrade in your application.
Uh, you can think of a non-consumable as something that you don't consume.
So you don't.
Use it up, basically.
It's good for forever.
It is a lifetime unlimited access to that thing.
Okay.
So for example, in my app and my cadence, I have a pro mode.
Non-consumable, it's a few dollars.
And when you purchase that, you.
Pro mode and all of its features for forever on any of
your devices on your account.
So as long as you're logged in, you can restore, you can unsubscribe
or delete the application.
Reinstall the application, use it this year, use it next year.
You've purchased it once.
It's good forever.
Now.
In the logic here for this is actually relatively simple with
the non-consumables because they bought it and then they own it.
It never goes away.
You don't have to check to see if they have any of them.
You don't have to check to see if it's expired.
It's a non-consumable, it's literally the easiest in-app
purchase that's available there.
The downside just like paid applications.
They only got to buy a once.
That's it?
That's it.
They can only buy it.
And that's it.
So once they've purchased it, it's good for them forever.
And you don't get to make any more money, which is good and
bad based on what you want to do.
Pro perks of course, is that they can install your application, gets some
level of access to the application and then upgrade if they so desire,
which is a nice approach to all right.
Number three, the opposite of non-consumables consumables.
Alright, consumables are, like I said, literally the opposite
of consumer non-consumables.
So consumables are things that you consume that run out that
you can buy multiple times.
This is very simple.
If you're building a game or play the game ever, you've seen.
All the time.
When you buy coins, you buy some coins to buy some pokey balls, and basically
you buy some stuff and you can buy it again and you get more of it.
So, consumables, like I said, are something that you can buy
over and over and over again.
You can think of it as a, um, it's not a subscription because you
buy it and you get it right away.
And once you use it, it's gone.
Um, and then you'd want to buy it again, for example, over and over again.
So non ER consumables themselves.
Uh, when you probably have a game of some sort or there's some currency
in your application that you want to use, this is a good freemium model.
Um, same with non-consumables that you may want to look at.
So even apple uses the analogy of gems or coins that you may want to
buy frequently over and over again.
Now the downside is.
Not really that many, to be honest with you, unless it doesn't fit
you're at model, which to be honest, unless you're a game, I don't really
think it does, to be honest with you.
All right.
Now let's get into the good stuff.
Auto renewing subscriptions.
Now subscriptions themselves are probably some of the most complicated
logic to put into your application.
In fact, there's an entire service called revenue cat that streamlines this
across iOS, Android, windows, and other platforms to really make it simple.
Now I don't use revenue cat I've put in subscriptions and I have an
entire podcast that I did with Frank emerge conflict, um, is an hour long.
Subscriptions and how I implemented in my app.
And I also have a blog post talking about implementation details that I'll put
right down there, uh, which is really.
But auto renewable subscriptions are basically ongoing access to
content or services or subscriptions or features in your application.
So for example, in the pro mode example of my cadence, my bicycle
application, instead of having a non-consumable where they just buy a pro.
I could say, Hey, you can subscribe to promote for a low monthly fee.
Let's say a dollar a month.
You can actually go all the way down about 49 cents and up to a whole bunch more
that they allow you to do inside the app.
The beautiful part here is that once someone subscribes, you get to set the
actual limit of how long it's for whether it's a week, whether it's a month,
two months, three months, six months a year is up to you now based on that.
It does make it quite easy for you to implement it into your application.
If it's a year, you don't even have to check it for a full year because it's
good for a full year and you unlock, unlock all that functionality in your app.
So I think in general, auto-renewing subscriptions are great.
The only time that they cancel is when they go in and they cancel them.
You can also use family sharing too.
So if they have multiple devices and some kids and things like that, they
can share that subscription, which is.
Now, of course, once they cancel, you're going to need to remove that
functionality, just like a consumable.
Once they run out of things, you're going to need to remove
that from your application and ask them to go ahead and renew that
subscription or do some perks there.
All right.
Last but not least non renewing subscriptions.
All right.
This is pretty much the opposite of.
Auto renewable subscriptions.
You may, may have guessed, but non renewing subscriptions are
things that sort of run out.
They don't renew automatically.
And this is when you want to have, um, sort of maybe like a season pass in a
game where you're purchasing this item.
Um, and then there might be a new season that becomes available that
they might subscribe to again.
So you have season one, season two and it's there.
So again, this doesn't order a new, they need to purchase a new subscription once
it concludes, and they can repurchase that subscription over and over again.
So really based on your use case, if you think of it's an ongoing
happening every month, they're going to continue to do this.
Um, then that's where auto renewables is going to come in, where nonrenewable
again, that's going to be something that ends at a specific date, or
you only want it to go for so long and then they have to buy it again.
Um, some developers may want to use non renewables, um, subscriptions as an option
to, to say, Hey, only give me this thing.
And then stop after 90 days.
That's all I really care about now.
I've never really used non-renewable subscriptions or seen them, but
this is probably the most similar to Fortnite where you have the
season pass that you're buying.
That makes the most logistical sense.
Downsize subscriptions, either it's auto, renewable, or non
renewing people hate subscriptions.
There's so many subscriptions in the world.
You gotta be reading.
You know, real specific and how you're offering subscriptions, the
pricing of the subscriptions and make sure they're with you longterm.
One of the big benefits of subscriptions, especially auto renewable subscriptions
is that if someone subscribes for more than a year, the apps are, will
actually give you a little bit more money back after one year of subscription.
So that's a really big perk.
If you can keep them and hook them.
All right.
Now, those have been the five different ways of monetizing your application, but
let's talk about some tips and tricks and combining these things together.
All right.
Now, one thing that I just talked about was that people sorta hate subscriptions
because we have too many of them.
Right.
I have Netflix, Hulu, Disney, plus all these things, not sponsors, but, but how
many things do I need to subscribe to?
I feel like everyone's trying to take a dollar from me.
Well, the opposite.
Obviously as subscriptions is to not have a subscription and have
just a non-consumable upgrade purchase or better yet offer
both options in your application.
This is one thing that I'm a big fan out, which is called a buyout.
I'm a fan of this because I was introduced to this concept by Plex TV,
which is like a TV media hub, where they had a lifetime subscription and
the lifetime subscription was $50.
Or you could pay them 50.
I did the math.
And I said, I think I'm going to use this for more than a year.
I'll just give them the 50 bucks.
Now.
Now they can change those prices over time.
And the idea really is how long do they think people are going to stay
subscribed for versus a full buyout?
So the ideal scenario is that at some point.
You may subscribe for six months, say, oh, I'm really going to use this.
And then by the update, but you've given someone the ability to try
your pro or your subscription, um, in pro features of your application
for reduced fees instead of having to make that big purchase upfront.
So I see this a lot in my applications is, Hey, let me try.
For, um, a month or two months and then I'll make a purchase.
So having that non-consumable and auto renewing subscription
side-by-side or a great option.
Additionally, you may want to offer up some different subscription tiers.
For example, have a one month, have a six month and have a one year.
And the great part here is that you can offer discounts at every single tier.
So at one month, maybe it's, um, you know, $5.
At six months, instead of it being $30, maybe it's $20.
And at a year, instead of being 60, maybe it's 40, something like that.
You can sort of sweeten the deal to have them subscribe longer.
So that is a great option.
All right.
Last thing I want to talk about here, besides combining these different
things together is introductory offers.
Introductory offers are probably one of my favorite features of subscriptions.
Uh, this is something that both, uh, uh, apple and Google
do and other stores as well.
And it enables you to sweeten the deal to get your users into a subscription.
Now, the first thing you probably want to do is have a free trial and
sure enough, you can give your users a free trial of just a few days
or a full month, if you want to.
And then the auto renewable subscription will kick in after that.
Now, sometimes that is a little bit tricky because you know, you, you're on the
hook on that auto renewable subscription.
You don't want to full your users.
So you want to be very transparent there, but there are two other things that
you can do for the first time users.
These introductory offers can only be a free trial.
It can also be a reduced rate.
You can say, Hey, right now you can get one month, um, instead of 99 cents.
Get it for 49.
Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
And in fact, what I'll do is I'll give you 49 cents for the next
three months, if you sign up today.
So the first time that they sign up, you can also group it together and
say, Hey, instead of subscribing for one month, I'll sweeten the deal.
And I'll give you 50% off.
If you buy all six months upfront, the best part about introductory
offers is that they're all handled directly in the app store through
a very, very simple user interface.
And it really helps you sweeten the deal to get more people
subscribing to your application.
All right there.
You have it.
That is five ways of monetizing your application, but also mixing and matching
those monetization methods together.
What have you used in your applications?
Let me know in the show notes and comments below, I'd really, really
love to hear what's worked well.
What hasn't have you tried out different pricing structures?
Uh, for me, I've just been getting further into the world
of exploring in app purchases.
I have an open source library called the inept billing plugin for dotnet developers
that help streamline this process.
And up until now, even though I published that thing for five years,
I had never done subscriptions.
And now that I'm in the world of subscriptions,
they're so unbelievably cool.
And they give you a lot of unique opportunities to
monetize your application.
That's going to do it for this video.
If you liked any bit of this at all, please give it a thumbs
up and super appreciate that.
And don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell.
Like I said, I also did a full podcast merge conflict.fm, uh, with my buddy
Frank, you can go to merge conflict.fm, listen to merge conflict, search merge
conflict on your podcast application and listen to the subscription episode.
Yeah.
Hundreds of back episodes as well.
Thank you so much for watching and have a good.