MOBILE APP MONETIZATION STRATEGY AND WORTH
How much is an app worth? How much is a user worth? Those answers are not at all black and white. It depends on the type of app, the strategies used to market, and more. We hope we can help answer the questions a little bit though with some of the resources we have pulled together for you.
Users Worth
People have questions about how much are users worth. This is a pretty big question after we have seen super massive app buys in the last few years. Such buys as Facebook buying Whatsapp for 19 billion dollars. Yes, that is a billion. This sounds insane considering Comcast bought out the rest of GE's stake in NBC for 16.7 billion dollars. How can an app be worth more than a huge chunk of NBC, which is a large national broadcasting company that was founded way back on November 15, 1926 when NBC officially launched as NBC or as some others know it as, National Broadcast Company.
So how much is a user worth vaguely? If you want a solid answer, it is the cost of the sales you get minus the cost to sell it through the app store and the fees associated with selling an app. So about 4 cents. That would make you a lot of money if your app is popular and gets a lot of downloads. That is the immediate look at it though. There is much more to it. The cost of acquisition, if you are monetizing in the app, if the app is driving value that leads to sales off the app such as merchandise (e.g. Angry Bird), or any other ways you find to leverage your app to make more money.
Facebook buying Whatsapp has a lot of value tied to itself and will spread its reach and ingrain their brand even more into peoples lives. On home computers and mobile devices for people on the go, Facebook will be making a lot of money. Plus it gets to leverage everything that Whatsapp has such as their customer base, technology, and brand recognition in general. It is a numbers game.
NBC reaches a lot of people but Facebook and Whatsapp will be reaching far more people than NBC could ever hope to reach through their TV broadcasting networks.
You can read more about how much a user is worth over on TheAppEntrepreneur. Worth of Active Users
Value of an App
This is bit of a tough subject. We are going to refer you to some articles that we think may answer your questions better than we can summarize quickly.
- Price Wars: What app prices really work? via Trey Smiths blog - He talks about app price wars and setting a price for your app.
- What is your mobile app worth? The challenges of valuation via FierceDeveloper
- Facebook's WhatsApp Buy: 10 Staggering Stats via InformationWeek
[SellanApp]
SellanApp is a very cleanly designed crowdfunding site, marketplace, marketing solution, and more. It is setup to facilitate the development process start to finish. When your app makes money so do you and all your backers.
Not only is this useful for funding your project, but being paid by it as well.
SellanApp Website | How it Works Page
[Apptopia]
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Apptopia is a marketplace where you buy or sell entire app businesses.
[RevMob]
This is a monetization and advertising solution. You can either put ads in your app using it and make money or pay for other people to put an ad for marketing your app in their app.
It must be good because both Trey Smith from Game Academy and Carter Thomas from bluecloud solutions are talking about it. They are both talking about how they are making loads of money off it. Of course you have to make your app popular enough to make that kind of money, you have to have a great app and a solid marketing strategy.
RevMob Website (monetization page)
[massiveImpact]
MassiveImpact has a unique monetization strategy it seems compared to other models. They say it is "the World’s First Freemium Exchange for Publishers".
massiveImpact Website (monetization page)
[LeadBolt]
LeadBolt is impressive in that it uses some interesting ways to advertise. They are kind enough to have a full page of videos showing each of the different methods of advertising you can use with their system.
LeadBolt Website | Monetization Videos
[Monetization Strategy Articles]
- How to Monetize Your Mobile Apps via IM GRIND - This article is an in depth article talking about how to work with your app to monetize it. It is very detailed and has a lot of methods that will help you monetize your app. It will help you understand what your app actually is all about and how to monetize it well.
- Best Ways to Monetize Your App via Pluralsight - This isn't a huge article but does give some solid advice for monetizing your apps.
- 7 Mistakes App Developers Make When Monetizing Their Apps (part 1) - (part 2) - via GameHouse Partners - This should help you avoid some mistakes and put some good monetization strategies into place.
- Mobile App Monetization - How I'm Pulling In $125 eCPM - via bluecloudsolutions - This is a pretty in depth look at how to monetize and if you want more from them, they have an ebook on right side you can sign up to get.
- How to Monetize Free Mobile Apps - via massiveImpact
- Startups: How to Monetize Mobile - via Forbes - Only a few points but they are solid and from Forbes.
- Monetization and Business Models (Microsoft apps) - via Microsoft
How To Make Mobile Apps
1) COST OF DEVELOPMENT
2) FUNDING DEVELOPMENT OF MOBILE APPS
3) GAME APPS
4) DO I NEED AN APP?
5) BEFORE DEVELOPING YOUR OWN APP
6) HOW TO MOCKUP AN APP
7) HOW TO MAKE A MOBILE APP WITHOUT CODING USING APP BUILDERS
8) LEARN TO CODE FOR MOBILE APPS EASIER THAN YOU THOUGHT
9) GET APP DEVELOPMENT HELP
10) HOW TO FIND AN APP DEVELOPER
11) TOOLS, RESOURCES, AND STRATEGY FOR APP DEVELOPERS
12) MARKETING MOBILE APPS
13) PAID ADVERTISING AND AD NETWORKS FOR MOBILE APPS
14) MOBILE APPS MONETIZATION STRATEGY AND WORTH