Programming Social Applications

The Unmonetized Application

One of the saddest things in the application world is seeing a great idea poorly executed. Time and time again, developers build highly successful applications without ever giving any thought as to how they will make money from the user experience. Unless you’re banking on selling your application to one of the top application development companies in the space, you need to be able to pay for the expenses that the server traffic will incur.

Even if you don’t implement all of the monetization techniques you’d like in an application, plan to upgrade from the beginning. It’s important to understand the key areas of your application that can produce some sort of return on investment. Setting clear goals about when and how you’ll integrate the monetization effort is part of a good long-term strategy for the application. For instance, you might plan to develop an in-app marketplace when you hit a certain number of users or daily active users.

As important as monetizing is, how you go about it is just as important. Essentially, you want the act of requesting additional money to convince users that the application will get much better if they purchase something, whether that’s upgrades or new content. You still want the application to be functional for those users who don’t put down much or any money, but you want to make it known that their experience can be much improved with additional features—with a premium account, if you would.

There are numerous methods ...