Disclaimer: My results are not typical and most people won’t see these kinda numbers even after many years and yes, that’s live revenue screenshot of one of my top performing apps.
Okay, so apparently we are here. I feel I owe it to myself and tons of other people who are still looking for answers to explain step by step how the hell do people make money through apps.
To be honest, looking from outside, it all sounds magical and to good to be true. When I started app development, I was fortunate enough to get exposed to people who were killing it in App Market and making thousands of dollars. Even after that, I could never imagine myself doing the same thing and thought I am not ‘lucky’ (sic) enough to achieve that dream.
Since that time, I have become the guy who is making thousands of dollars with apps and damn it feels weird. I am still adjusting to the new reality. (to read, how I got into app business, read this)
Now coming to the meat of it. Yes, it is possible to make a sustainable and sizeable income through apps. Please see the screenshot below to find the revenue stats of one of my apps.
I know, you going to be sneaking a bit more after seeing the numbers, so to make it easy for you, this is one of my app portfolios – KShark Apps in Android. I have just started releasing apps for iOS too, you can find them here. Now, since we know it’s possible. How the hell can one make this kinda money through apps. Keep reading and you will find out.
Apps have multiple monetization methods but they can be broadly classified into App Sales and Ad Income.
Ad Income: Making money through Ads is nothing new and has been there for a long time. Websites since a long time, have been making this type of income by asking advertisers to pay some money for placing an Ad banner and directing their traffic to the Advertiser. For Apps, you can use offerings from multiple advertising partners such as Google (Admob), Facebook (FAN) so that you don’t manually have to hunt for advertisers and strike advertising deals. Both work pretty well but from experience, Admob has better payouts compared to FAN. If your app starts getting big numbers, you could always try to strike personal advertising deals with clients in the same niche.
App Sales: As the term itself suggest, you make this kinda income when somebody buys an upgrade or premium version of your app. We can classify this income into Paid apps and In-app purchases. Paid app income is generated when customers buy your premium-priced apps. In-app purchases happen when a customer buys an upgrade in your free or premium app. Both of these ways can create sizeable income for you. I suggest to try out both and see which one gives you better results. In-app purchases, in general, get fewer refunds from my experience.
Now above two methods are a major part of my income but there are other methods too through which you can make money through apps. Selling app usage or customer data is also pretty common in this industry and many of the big apps do that and make sizeable amounts of money.
As you can see, making money through apps is not a big mystery. If you put sufficient time and resources you can definitely make a small fortune or even a sustainable income source for yourself. I and many other developers are doing that, it’s just that most of us don’t share our stories as we much rather ‘cherish our victories in private’. I personally wrote this article to clear any confusion and doubts in the minds of people who might be in the same boat as I was, a year ago.
If you are really serious about the app business and want to get to an intermediate level fast without forever wasting your time going through useless information on the internet, you can check out this package and accelerate your learning process by 10 times. In this package, I have collected all the resources and methods I have found over a period of 3 years which helped me achieve the level I am at and put them in a nice orderly fashion for you guys. Either way, do leave your comments and let me know if you found this useful. I will continue writing informative posts like these if I feel I am providing some value to you guys, appreciate your time, until next time!
