How to make money from your Android apps

Money talks, fun apps walk
Russell Berry is Director of AppCreatives, a growing SME that offers mobile application solutions that help organisations communicate with their customers through custom mobile devices. Berry cautions that to develop an Android application that has the potential to make you money, there are many issues to consider. Before you start the development of your application you need to ask yourself the most important question of all – will people pay money for it? If your application is just something that you’re building for fun, then it doesn’t need to be financially viable. If it turns into something valuable in the future, then that’s great and the social bookmarking web service Delicious is probably one of the best examples of this.
“The decision to offer a free version seems to be determined by how well known the brand is. For example, EA Mobile, which boasts The Sims 3, Tetris and Scrabble tends to release more paid-only versions. By contrast, companies with more original, less-recognisable titles frequently go to market with free trials of their games to entice consumers to try-and-buy,” says AppCreatives’ Berry. Whilst there has been a lot of research done into paid vs free applications, it seems both can be successful at generating revenue through basic execution: a great concept, a good user experience, tight marketing and a smart distribution plan.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch
AppCreatives says if you are convinced that you initially want to go to market with a free Android-based application then there are still a couple of ways to make money from free apps. “Freemium content is a great way of offering a demo or freeware version of your application which then ‘upsells’ to a fully paid version. This has the advantage of encouraging consumers to download the application with a full understanding of the costs involved,” says Berry

Berry goes on to explain the benefits of ‘in-application’ advertising – tried and tested by people like Greystripe, Hovr and others. “Feature ads run either in a wrapped manner (at the loading and exit screens of the application) or integrated within the application. The money is split between the technology provider, the content owner and the carrier (if they are distributing),” explains Berry.

In a nutshell, just because it’s free doesn’t mean you can’t make money from it. As most consumers only keep applications on average 3-4 weeks on their phones and aren’t willing to shell out money for applications, AppCreatives believes free Android applications are the way to go. Then again, the company does stress that premium paid-for apps will have a role to play if the content is branded and of exceptional quality.

Essentially, making money from your Android application need not be rocket science and you should approach your own development project in much the same way you would if you were selling cheese and biscuits. What we mean by this is keep it real, look at demand and supply, look at consumer behaviour, ask your friends and colleagues what they think of your ‘next big thing’ and perhaps above all, ask yourself if you would buy it. If you do that and take some of the advice we have covered here on board then there is every likelihood that you could be sitting on the next Android must-have. If you do all that, you’ll be able to relax, sit back and watch your own success happen. After all, there’s no need to be paranoid with Android – is there?

This article originally appeared in issue 83 of Linux User & Developer. Click here to find more features from the magazine.