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How do Free Apps Make Money?

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Anahit Ghazaryan
How do Free Apps Make Money?

There are eight top monetization strategies that companies are using to generate money with free apps. If you are looking for an answer to the question ‘how do free apps make money?’ this part will explain the topic in all the details necessary for making the right choice.

Currently, there are 5 main types of free app advertising strategies that you can use to make money with your application:

  • Banners
  • Videos
  • Native Ad
  • Interstitial advertising
  • Incentivized Ad

An average user in 2020 has 40 apps installed on their smartphone. When it comes to free vs. paid app downloads, users are hesitant about paying for an app. In fact, free apps take a whopping 96.4% of all app downloads on Google Play. If you release a free application, it automatically increases the chances that users will notice it. When we look at app stores, we can clearly see that users are more likely to spend more money on mobile games.
Over 25% of iOS developers and 16% of Android developers earn over $5,000 per month with their apps. This number should be considered as a benchmark in the app industry.
Almost 24% of apps generate up to $500,000 in revenue per month, and only 1.5% of apps can bring their owners over $500,000 every month.
You have a lot of options, even if you decide to release a free application.
Statista states that in 2019, there were three leading monetization strategies among developers:


Subscription model - This is a very popular monetization strategy among SaaS, cloud services, audio, and video content streaming services. The subscription model entails getting payment for a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual use of your solutions.


Freemium model - The Freemium model is a very popular approach to the monetization of free apps these days. You grant access to the basic features of your application for free and can provide some additional functionality or bonuses for a payment.


Advertising model - In-app ads are very popular among developers of free apps. Depending on the app type, in app ads revenue can be accounted in thousands of dollars.

Regardless of the model you choose, first of all, make sure that your application provides value to users and helps to solve their problems.

Today, you can get a lot of answers to this question. Users are more likely to install a free app rather than a paid application.
You can combine a few monetization strategies to make even more money with your free application.

app monetization | free apps

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Anahit Ghazaryan
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