5 Apps That Are Making More Money Than Investment Funds

Mobile Application Development It's becoming a big business. It is estimated to have reached 70 billion dollars in 2017. In this context, it is clear that the market for Apps can be a significant source of revenue for those who are considering making an app their business.

Global marketplace revenue

Total revenue generated by the App Store and Google Play together increased by 401% in 2016, from $25 billion to $35 billion, according to a study by App Annie. The iOS store accounts for at least 701% of the total.

If revenue from alternative Android stores and mobile advertising were taken into account, Total app revenue last year was nearly $90 billionAnd this is despite the fact that these figures do not include offline sales motivated by retailers' apps or even apps with online-to-offline service such as Uber, since this payment method is not included in app stores.

Where does most of this revenue come from? Video games. This category accounts for 75% of the App Store and a whopping 90% of Google Play.

App monetization models

In the app industry, Almost 90% of all of them are freeYou may be wondering how they can possibly have this income if this is the case. There are other models besides pay per download, since most of us prefer free applications.

Surely The most common model for monetizing an app is the Freemium model, which consists of offering the download for free and offering an upgrade with more features as premium content. This form of monetization is so common that 69% of apps in the App Store and 75% in Google Play opt for this strategy. However, this technique only works when the apps get a large number of downloads.

Another way that is quite successful when it comes to achieving monetization is through embedded advertising, but this strategy is increasingly losing presence in the face of Freemium modelOne of the reasons for this change is that consumers increasingly find this type of advertising more intrusive.

In any case, If you are going to use advertising in your app, remember that the most common screen size today is around 5 inches, so make sure your advertising adapts correctly to this format. Also, if you want your ad to take up the entire screen, allow the user to close it or have it automatically disappear when the content of your app loads.

For paid apps, the average price is expected to have dropped by 8 cents in 2017. This clearly reflects that Users prefer not to pay to download apps.

Case studies

1. Clash of Clans

Finnish company Supercell launched Clash of Clans in the Apple Store in 2012 and within its first 4 months it had over 3 million people playing it. Children, teenagers and adults from over 130 countries compete against each other in this strategy game.

The game's revenue exceeds $1 million per day. It has been a Top Seller on iPad in 122 countries.

2. Spotify

Spotify is the music streaming leader with over 40 million users worldwide and a catalog of 30 million songs. According to the platform, Spotify achieved success thanks to having a large number of plugins that could be installed on Mac or Windows to view song lyrics or receive the latest recommendations from Last.fm. In 2015, its revenues were 2 billion dollars, with an increase of 80% compared to the previous year.

3. Game of War

If you want to learn about monetization strategies, you should check out Game of War, which generated over $11 million in one month worldwide.

Game of War spent $4 million on an advertising campaign. Even though only 31% of its users pay to play, the game generates $1 million a day, so it was well worth the money spent on advertising, right?

4. Mobile Strike

Another case study is Mobile Strike, a modern war game, which allows you to build a base and train troops to fight the enemy on the battlefield.

You start the game with 100 gold, which is sold in packs ranging from 600 for $5 to 20,000 for around 100$. It is no surprise that it has taken the 6th place on the list of top grossing games with a daily revenue of over 580,000$.

5. Tinder

Another successful example of a non-gaming app is Tinder, the popular dating app. They make around $800,000 in revenue per month. Only 5.8% of that comes from advertising, the rest is generated by premium users.

Tinder boosts users based on their geographic location. Within 30 minutes, a paying user will become the most popular in their area, which its creators say will increase profile views by 10 times.

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