4 Trending Revenue Models to Build a Business, Not Just an App

It’s simply a greater number of existing businesses starting to use apps as a channel to reach potential customers. Examining which strategies carry the most risk and which have the greatest chances of success- here are the few successful models for your next app.

4 Trending Models to Build a Business, Not Just an App

App store payments and advertisers

One of the popular revenue models is relying on directly monetising an app: in-app advertising, paid download, in-app purchases and freemium. Although easy to implement, together they are the four most risky models with the lowest chances of profit. Even on iOS, the paid download market appears to be contracting fairly rapidly in the face of free app alternatives with in-app purchases.

Online Shopping

Ecommerce is the most successful app development model in terms of making comfortable profits and have by far the lowest risk of making a loss. There are some startups with mobile first commerce apps though and more than 50% of developers charge more to building apps when compared to others.

Online services

The next most popular and also relatively low risk and successful model is Subscriptions. However, implementing subscription based services is more complex than selling apps or virtual goods. Another interesting possibility is to resell generic cloud services by adding value on top as in like re-selling storage by adding document collaboration or photo management features on top.

Royalties or licensing

This strategy though doesn’t have much lower risk than relying on the app stores or ads, it is inherently a higher risk strategy with bigger rewards for success. One BIG downside is that the number of direct customers in the target market is less and requires a great connections/ a lot of funding/ both.

Before you start-off, create a business plan to have a path set beyond the launch of the app. Think about your 30, 60, 90 day plan after the app has launched.

The Crucial Decision: Pros and Cons of Cross App Development

When businesses were advised to develop a mobile strategy, developing apps for Android or iPhone, or Windows or BlackBerry had become the priority. With course of time, the competition has taken another level. It’s no longer enough to have on a single platform but for a myriad of target platforms. The problem is however comes in terms of development cost, time and resources.

This is when cross mobile application development frameworks like Appcelerator’s Titanium, Rhodes and PhoneGap came in to picture. The basic idea behind this is to help developers build mobile apps in dynamic programming languages and then compile them to multiple platforms. But then, there are pros and cons to taking a cross-platform approach to mobile application design and development. Let’s see what they are.

Pros of Using a Cross-Platform Framework:

1.       Reusablity: Instead of writing code for specific action or sequence for each platform- the tools let you write the code once and then reuse those bits in later projects or on other platforms.

2.       Plugins: Appcelerator and PhoneGap offer easy access to plugins and modules that can easily plug into other services or tools.

3.       Developer’s Desire: As most frameworks are dynamic or scripting languages, developers find it easy to work with. Also, these support HTML5 and CSS3 alongside the calls to more native functions.

4.       Reduced Development Costs: One of the biggest aspects is that it allows companies or brands to get an app onto other platforms without having to invest in a team or developer specific to that ecosystem.

5.       Supports Cloud Services: Beside plugins and modules they have the option to directly integrate with cloud services, including Salesforce.com, AWS, Box.net and others.

Cons of Cross-Platform Frameworks:

1.       Slower Code and Render Time: When compared to the native tools, these can sometimes be slower and any cross-compilation process has the chance to be slower.

2.       Limited High-End Graphics and 3D Support: Yes, this feature is limited but fortunately, game-centric development platforms, like Unity are here to help fill in those gaps.

3.       Less Supportive to Features of an Operating System: The framework you are using need not support the additional features to Google, Apple or Microsoft.

A good cross-platform application looks at home, doesn’t matter on what platform it is used on. How do you approach cross-platform design and development for mobile devices?