How to Monetize Mobile Content within Apps

Ensure Your Mobile App Earns Money with These Digital Monetization Strategies

It’s taken months of hard work, but you’re finally there. You have a great mobile app that you know your customers are going to love. You get it out on the App Store and Google Play, but you soon find out the crushing truth.

It’s really hard to make money off your mobile app.

Your app’s content is the key. With the right digital monetization strategies, you can ensure your app earns money through the power of its content alone.

We’re here to help you.

Here are some digital monetization strategies that you should employ on your mobile app today.

Strategy #1 – Capture User Emails

Capturing email addresses is a tried and tested method of generating leads. That’s no surprise, as emails have a lifespan of about 12 days. Proper management of your leads results in conversions, which means more money for your business.

You may not think of email as an ideal tie-in for your mobile app, but you’d be wrong. In fact, your mobile app is a great way to capture those email addresses you need for your content marketing strategy.

It’s simple to implement as well. All you need to do is create a subscription form in your app. Ask users to enter their email addresses before they can access the app’s content, then enjoy the stream of data you can use to capture more leads.

Strategy #2 – Use In-App Purchases

In-app purchases account for a third of the money that mobile apps earn, so you have to find a way to incorporate them into your apps.

This is easy if you’re selling a product directly through the app. The product itself is the in-app purchase, so you don’t need to worry about anything there. Game developers can also use in-app purchases to get people to buy add-ons and exclusive items for their games.

But how can you use them to monetize your content? A paywall may be the answer.

We’re not suggesting that you lock all your content behind a paywall. That may turn off too many users. Instead, consider creating a premium content channel. Users can then pay to access the content they want. Of course, you have to make sure the content that premium channel contains is up to the standard your users expect. If it is, you can turn your content into an in-app purchase.

Strategy #3 – Use SMS Marketing

When it comes to your content marketing strategy, you must remember that even the smallest messages can have a big effect.

That’s where SMS marketing might help you. Think about it. You can use the same capture technique that you used to get somebody’s email address to capture cell phone numbers. If your app is good enough, users will be happy to hand over their cell number. Alternatively, you could use the app to run competitions and promotions that require the user’s phone number for entry.

Once you have that phone number, you can start sending SMS messages. Target them properly and avoid sending irrelevant messages. Instead, make your messages part of your content campaign. You’ll keep your app’s users engaged, which offers you more opportunities to make money from them.

Strategy #4 – The Subscription Model

Subscription models bear more than a slight resemblance to the in-app purchases strategy. The key difference is that user’s don’t choose to pay for a single piece of content. Instead, they pay the subscription fee and have access to all the content behind your paywall.

You can combine the subscription model with in-app purchases. Allow users to buy individual pieces of content as they want them, or offer a discounted subscription rate that gives them access to everything for a monthly fee.

That way, you can monetize your content, and you benefit from a regular income stream. However, you also need to stay on top of things. If you don’t provide enough fresh content, your subscribers will drift away. As a result, this model works best if you have a lot of great content updated on your app on a regular basis.

Conclusion

So there you have it, four great digital monetization strategies that will help you to earn more money from your mobile app.

Which of these strategies you use will depend on your audience. You may find that your app users don’t want to pay for your content directly, but are willing to provide an email address to access it. Others may not want to offer personal details, but will happily pay a fee if your content is good enough.

Experiment with different models and analyze the results. You’ll eventually find a strategy that suits your app.