{"id":211,"date":"2019-01-13T09:56:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T09:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/?p=211"},"modified":"2019-01-13T09:57:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T09:57:10","slug":"ideas-on-monetisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/ideas-on-monetisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ideas on monetisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As I start a new year and trying to make a bit more revenue from my app, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about monetisation lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My current &#8220;strategy&#8221; for monetisation is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Free app with a banner ad neatly placed out of the way.  This is my main source of revenue.<\/li><li>Paid for app with the banner ads removed.  I earn more on a bad day of advertising, than I do in a good month of sales.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Killing off the paid for version<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My paid-for version is a bit of a thorn in the side.  People have paid for it, and I am guessing it is mostly people who wanted to support me.  I have fewer than 100 active installs, but they are active installs nonetheless.  I have several issues with having this as a standalone app:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>There are overheads in maintenance.  It&#8217;s not massive, as my PC does most of the work, but it generates a separate APK, I have separate space in the app store, analytics and crash reporting apps have to be aware of this separate app.  Just because it is easy to create a separate app without ads, doesn&#8217;t mean you should always do it.<\/li><li>As a standalone app, if I wanted my users to have the ability to easily port their data to the paid version, I would have to specifically write something to handle this and then support it.<\/li><li>As a separate app on the app store, I am competing with myself.  I think there are some benefits to this, but I never look at the rankings for my paid for app, because it will always be lower than a free one with the same functionality.  All those lovely 5 star reviews on my paid app don&#8217;t really matter, because my free app will always rank higher.<\/li><li>I consider users who have paid for my app as loyal supporters &#8211; and I want to return that loyalty.  However, at what point does that loyalty run out?  Do I have to indefinitely support a user who paid \u00a30.79 back in 2015?  (It sounds like I resent those users, I really don&#8217;t!).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Other ways to monetise<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>AdMob is constantly suggesting to me that I should move to more aggressive forms of advertising in my app (like interstitials and rewarded ads).  I think that putting a 30 second ad in between a user and the information in my app is a really bad idea.  My app is all about instant information and I have to be aware that no amount of short-term revenue will fix a really poor user experience.  By looking at it this way, I think I may be able to find opportunities in my app where a user doesn&#8217;t want instant information and may have some opportunity for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tip jars<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I read somewhere about the idea of a tip jar in an app.  I haven&#8217;t really seen any implementation like that, but I like it.  I don&#8217;t really want to see how others have done it, because I think I can take my own spin on it.  Basically, I want to allow users to contribute whatever they can afford in return for something.  The way I want to implement it, moves more towards a subscription model, rather than a tip jar model, but I think from a user&#8217;s point of view, it might look the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Giving them something<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s talk about the &#8220;something&#8221; that they would get in return.  I don&#8217;t want to put any of my core functionality behind a pay wall.  Why would someone pay for it in my app, if they can get it for free plus a few annoying ads in another?  So the general idea is that the something they would get, is probably the removal of ads and maybe some functionality which doesn&#8217;t form part of the core of my app or functionality which differentiates me from my competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Subscriptions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In terms of the subscription model I was talking about, rather than making &#8220;premium&#8221; features available forever, it would be for a limited (but long) time period.  I am thinking between 6 and 12 months at the moment, possibly dependent on the amount you tipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Rewarded ads?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe I can credit a user with some &#8220;subscription credits&#8221; when they decide to watch a rewarded ad instead of paying.  I would imagine that these credits should run out a lot sooner than it would for paying users, but you could get a &#8220;try before you buy&#8221; experience by watching a rewarded ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Putting it together<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So my offering would change to look something like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Only a single free app with in-app purchases <ul><li>If you use the free app, you get all of the core functionality and some neat little banner ads which try and grab your attention<\/li><li>You can pay me to remove ads and gain access to premium features (prices and time periods are for illustration only &#8211; it probably still needs some balancing): <ul><li>Buy me a coffee for \u00a31.95 &#8211; gets you 4 months premium access<\/li><li>Buy me a pint for \u00a33.95 &#8211; gets you 9 months premium access<\/li><li>Buy me a something which costs \u00a34.95 &#8211; gets you 12 months premium access <\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>You can watch a rewarded ad which allows you to gain access to premium features for a number of days (somewhere between 3 and 7). <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not just about money<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst the idea is to try and increase my revenue and make more money, I also want to protect the user experience as much as possible.  I could just slap ads in the middle of everything and I could try and be sneaky by making ads appear in different spots on every page to really confuse my users, but this doesn&#8217;t work for me in the long-run.  I need to protect the user experience as far as possible and for me, this way of monetisation feels like it could be a win-win for all.  Obviously this is still an idea and still need implementation, but time will tell as with everything related to revenue in the app market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I start a new year and trying to make a bit more revenue from my app, I&#8217;ve been thinking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-london-bus-pal"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}