The way we use computers, tablets, and phones has opened up numerous fresh opportunities for helpful, efficient, brilliant, and often straight distracting apps. The business of app development is blooming. The total revenue collections from the app is projected to hike from US$45, 37 billion in 2015 to US$76.52 billion in 2017.

Apps are making tons of money, especially the iPhone apps, but a majority of Android apps are free. Sure, few app developers male money, but surprisingly it’s just from few of their applications not all. App pricing is a race to the bottom. The approach which tablet and smartphone users access applications make the basic marketing rules redundant. Making money from mobile apps is not easy.

So how do you expect to earn money from free apps? For this you need learn how to monetize your app. This article will help you in getting the basic idea of how you can initiate the strategy.

In-App Advertising

The straightforward approach to monetize a free application is to add advertisements. Use mobile ad networks like AdMob, InMobi, or Google’s ad-server to place ads in your app. These networks will offer easy and straightforward integration with application, which will help you to start earning your revenue immediately.

Sponsorship

Bagging sponsors for your app means a great deal for a free app. It’s one of the major ways to monetize an app. If your app targets a specific factor, say entertainment, sports, etc., it’s easier for you to get sponsors. All you need is right contacts to strike the deal, however, a sponsorship is way more valuable as compared to run-of-site ads. A decent sponsor must be willing to invest more than the total cost of single ad slots. Choose your sponsors wisely.

Upgrades

A simpler way to monetize your app is to offer your app’s lite version for free to all users. But, you should also offer an expensive version with more enhancements. For instance, you must have noticed that Facebook offers Facebook Lite to the users. You can combine the logic by simple approaches. A free app often carries more ads and offering upgrade in such apps allows users to update their app to an ad-free version at a small annual cost. If you take a brief look, technically, this is the best option. All you need to do is create two applications. One should be free and the other one should be a paid version. Following this, promote the expensive app from the free version. You can generate fascination among audience using free app.

This is technically easy to do – you create an app and give it away for free. You then sell the service accessed from the app. It’s clearly not appropriate for a game or casual app, but if your app provides a service accessible via the web or another means, the addition of a ‘free’ app could add value for which you could even charge. You just don’t have to charge for the app download itself.