Now one of the things that people tend to think about too late is how are you monetizing your app. 1
And this is something that you should be thinking about before you even start coding before you even 2
start designing your app because the method or the strategy that you choose to monetize your app will 3
determine how will determine a number of factors later on. 4
So we're going to talk about some of the most common ways of monetizing apps some of the pros and cons 5
and in which cases you should be using which. 6
So the first thing to mention is that monetization on the Android platform is slightly different from 7
monetization on the iOS platform. 8
The most important thing that you notice on the Android platform is that nobody is willing to pay for 9
apps. 10
Generally you find as an app developer that people on the iOS platform tend to have more cash lying 11
around and they're more willing to pay you know $1 or $2 for a once use app for example. 12
Whereas on Android people are far more reluctant 13
and so you see the free apps doing a lot better on Android. 14
Now of course app developers still need to pay their mortgage and feed their children. 15
So people have simply developed different monetization strategies when they're developing for Android 16
and iOS. 17
So for example most people who are creating Android apps will make it free to download and will probably 18
get their revenue back from advertising. 19
So we're going to talk a little bit more about mobile advertising in a little bit. 20
But essentially you have to realize that as a user, if you're not paying for something to use it you're 21
still paying somehow. 22
And the somehow for Android is either through ads which is relatively whitehat, it's relatively accepted 23
by people because it's visible you know we know that we just have to be bombarded with ads if we don't 24
want to pay up front. 25
But the other sort of more hidden way that we've seen various developers monetizing on Android is actually 26
through data. 27
So through selling user data. And sometimes you can see some really terrible apps 28
for example a calculator app that requests permissions for your contact, for your location. 29
I mean why the hell does a calculator need your location to work? 30
And that's because the developer is actually selling your data. 31
It's a relatively gray area with unclear guidance from both app stores as to how legal it is 32
and one of the things you have to be careful as a user is to really look at those permissions that the 33
apps are requesting and and try to minimize your risk 34
if privacy is something that you're concerned about. 35
So with so, that's mostly about Android and with Apple you see a lot more users who are willing to pay 36
upfront for the app. 37
And although there is a slight trend towards free apps with ads which is driven mostly by some of the 38
bigger players like Facebook or like Google their apps which are all free to use and look beautiful 39
and work really well. 40
Well, most of the time. But there is a slight trend towards advertising. So without further ado let's discuss 41
some of the ways in which you can monetize your apps.