Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Mobile App Monetization Strategy

Mobile App Development

Mobile app monetization is a vital and integral process in an app development. It begins before app development, and remains continue even after launch. Moreover, a single monetization strategy never proves enough to hit the revenue targets. We always need to work on different monetization strategies and tricks to make the best combinations of tactics in our contexts and capacities. After years of experiments, we have drawn some conclusions on app monetization and like to give some advice on avoiding the ten most common mistakes while thinking of monetization of an app. No doubt, we cannot say all are applicable in your contexts, but most are useful you as an app owner or an app developer.

1. Treat All Mobile OS Platforms with Identical Set of Mobile App Monetization Strategy

We know platform differences between various mobile OS platforms, regarding nature, users, devices, policies, etc. If we take iOS and Android as chief contenders in this regard, they show sharp differences in monetization policies too. Apple is a proprietary platform with tons of restrictions and benefits in monetization too. Therefore, a universal concept is prevailing in the market that an iOS app can earn more money than Android or others can. If you have studied a handful of successful app entrepreneurs in the app marketplaces, it is their thorough understanding of each platform, operating systems, best development practices, and marketing policies, which lead them to success. Therefore, you must develop different sets of monetization strategies for various platforms, even different for app categories too. For instance, affluent users of iOS apps can rewards more in some cases while a vast audience on Android platform proves better in certain circumstances.

2. Not Consulting Agency or Mentor for Mobile App Monetization Strategy Development

Your technical superiority alone cannot reward your app in the market, but it is proven, and tested monetization strategy and right implementations can work in astounding ways. Many successful app entrepreneurs run mentoring or IT consultancy with affordable fees. They have not only experiences with own products but also have finely granulated data or tools to help you. They can show you the most suitable monetization strategies for your apps and give access to their tools to leverage it all. If you are lucky enough and can get free mentorship from an experienced and devoted mentor around you or within your reach, don’t ignore it and grab the opportunity.

3. Underestimating Analytics

Going to create mobile app monetization strategies based on emotions or bias is insane and useless for success so always rely on data or numbers to actualize the things. If you think that mobile app developers know everything regarding monetization, users, app usages, and such monetization parameters, you are making a terrible mistake. You must have marketing team with expertise in analytics tools and techniques to churn data to understand

• Technology limitations
• User behavior
• App adaptation rate
• User demographics
• Ad format performance
• Revenues over time

Therefore, learn how to use in-app and other marketing as well as monetization tools and services available in the market. If you have a budget, hire such agency or services to do all on behalf of you.

4. Avoiding Optimization of Mobile App Monetization Campaign

For effective optimization, developers have to install several SDKs to use valuable engineering resources. Moreover, find out platforms that can give access to tools and controls to optimize placements, ad formats, and redistribute traffic with the desired level of data transparency. Once you accumulate enough data over the time, run the comparative analysis, tests, optimize ad formats, test ads, landing pages, different markets, and different app platforms.

5. Not Scaling or Leveraging Different Channels

Instead of depending solely on traditional monetization, you must think out-of-box and implement various channels to extend your reach and leverage multiple channels for the same.

• Today you have options to partner with affiliate marketing networks
• You can use CPA networks
• Affiliate with mobile app monetization network to drive more traffic to your app
• Participate in burst campaign
• Build partner networks to give more push to your app in the market

6. Lack of Creativity in App Ads

If you use CPI model, you have room for customization of Ads placements. If publishers create banners, buttons, and menu items according to app style, they can provide users a friendly and soothing mobile app monetization environment. It can lead to higher CTR and conversion rates and higher eCPM for publishers in question.

7. Not Selecting Right Ad Format

Many publishers cannot choose the right metrics for app monetization and unable to create the right combination of different ad formats. For instance, many place much emphasis on eCPM, which helps us to measure how efficiently monetize app users. There are other metrics like overall impressions, interstitial ads, fill rate, and so on to gauge mobile app monetization efficiencies.

8. Lack of Obvious Growth Strategy

Most of the developers take a chance without any clear growth strategy. If you are suffering from budgetary constraints, it doesn’t mean you cannot hit top ranking in app stores. If you have targeted buying of quality users and daily app retention rate is over 40%, you can reach top ranking easily even without spending much on app monetization campaigns.

9. Missing App Performance Improvement

App retention and app engagement are leaving direct impacts on app monetization, and their enhancement is only possible with improvement in overall app performance. Think of better UI and excellent UX before drawing any monetization strategy so you can grab quality user base with the least spending on marketing and monetization campaigns.

10. Not Embracing Technology

Initially, it was searching ads options, which was rewarding app users a lot, so placing search ads was a trend. Today, we have various social channels with different ads and marketing technologies to exploit. Therefore, app users must look at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram-like social channels for app monetization. Moreover, we have several automation tools to use such channels efficiently so should leverage the technology most in monetization.

Conclusion:

We have seen many common mistakes that can spoil our mobile app monetization efforts quickly. Therefore, app developers, as well as app owners/publishers, must look at the described mistakes and try to avoid them during the entire app development and marketing process. Of course, there are some particular and app category based pitfalls, which can prove obstacles in your monetization run. Therefore, you must look at the app development team with desired expertise and experiences.