Seeing what is working and what is not: Maybe we can turn this into a thread.... About 4 strategies plus 1 - One time Payment - Freemium - a “lite” version with in-app purchasing of premium version - Supported by ads - Subscription ** - Added here - Selling apps to business At times a little frustrated with the direction the market is moving towards. Ads don't pay like they used to, users want apps for free. I have many apps in the market both iOS and Play (I still like to call it Google app Store). Using all methods except for "Subscription" What a roller coaster! In order to get in the chartsit comes down to downloads - We can come together as a buzztouch community and help drive downloads to users apps (Have not thought through all the details, Maybe we can sub a app to be voted on.. The winner gets some have support from the community ) Get some of the buzztouch built apps up in the charts!

Great idea...I'd be interested in hearing what others think on this too. I've been thinking a lot about these different strategies and experimenting with them myself. An area of featured buzztouch built apps on buzztouch.com would be very cool!

Very interested in this thread too

Don't forget about the other major way of making money from apps - getting someone else to pay you to create it! That's where almost all of my business comes from.

Chris, how do you prospect for and sell apps? Do you cold call, email, mail letters, word of mouth? I suck at sales, but I see this is a very good way to make money from building apps

This is great! We have some non-buzztouch apps that have had sporadic downloads with a few of the strategies listed above, but were looking forward to creating buzztouch apps especially with the support and help of this community. Sounds like a win-win for everybody if we were to help market one another's apps.

Well I have a very targeted market:churches. It's always easier to market to specific niches. I don't do a ton of marketing, and my income from custom Buzztouch plugins/mods is certainly greater than my apps, but here's some of my approaches: 1) Facebook - I have a lot of clergy contacts on Facebook 2) Email signature - has a link to my website, very non-obtrusive 3). Bumper magnet for my car - don't laugh, it's scored one or two clients! 4) pro-bono work. This is probably my most successful strategy. I asked a popular website resourcing pastors if I could create a free app for them. They were thrilled. I added a little advert to my website on the splash screen.

Chris, I am going to PM you if you don't mind. I am in Birmingham Alabama, and I have started some threads on apps for churches. I would live to talk to you, but don't want to compete against you.

Sure thing

I have tried paid, ads, and freemium, and I can definitely say that ads have been the best form of monetization for me. Really I think the best combo is to have ads and to have in-app-purchases in the same app. I have completely left paid apps behind - it's gotten to the point that if you release an app in the store that is paid and successful, somebody else will release a similar app for free and it will totally crush you in the charts. Like Zoid66 said, ads don't pay as much as they used to...that's why I have more of a "quantity over quality" approach to developing apps. The more apps I get out there, the more my revenue increases. Not to say that I'm releasing awful apps - most of my apps have 4-5 star ratings. Basically, if I have an idea for an app but it's going to take more than a week to develop, then I move on. Since developing apps is my only source of income, I can't afford to spend weeks on an app only to have it fail miserably. Some of my most successful apps have been created in 2 days. As far as getting noticed goes, I think keywords play the biggest role for me. If your app name doesn't contain some kind of word that people are constantly typing into the apps store search bar then your app will just fall into obscurity..nobody will ever find it unless you market it

@Absentia, great insight!! Which ad networks do you prefer? Do you use one exclusively? Do you use one for Apple and one for Android?

I only develop for iOS - I use RevMob, Applovin, and I'm about to try out Kiip

I like this thread, marked and thanks :).

Guys, if you are thinking on Monetization strategy, check www.amonetize.com I read a great article on them, that they are one of the best networks in the PPI market, with the best rates for bundle distribution and a wide range of countries, software developers can make big money with these guys.

I sense a disturbance in the force..... as if a great can of SPAM was just opened....

Hey guys, I haven't posted in a while, completely forgot about this site :( Some one asked earlier where you can find clients, the best source is either odesk or elance, I've used elance on multiple occasions, and have had no problems. As per monetization, I've only devd free android apps with ads, it's all about experimentation, finding new ad networks, seeing what your competition is doing and bonus whoring. Bonus whoring is where you find new ad networks offering money to sign up to their network, it usually between 50-250 dollars. The money is released once you reach their payment threshold. Startapp, <a href="http://startapp.com/rfve4al" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://startapp.com/rfve4al</a>, is having a promotion where you get 25 bucks for the first hundred downloads, and you only need 50 bucks to cashout. Its super easy to cashout, plus they are a good network, I've had a 2.93 cpm for intersatials over a 25k impression sample, plus they pay you roughly 1.5 c/download. Here are a couple of ad networks to stay away from and the reasons why; moblix: horrible cpms, they've owed me around $300 for the past 8 months, and always make empty promises to pay me, but never come through, also they only have banners airpush: they lure you in with high cpms, then pull the rug out from underneath you. They advertise a 4$ cpm across their network, I started off with a 2.5 cpm for the first month, now 4 months later I'm happy if I break a 60c cpm, they are fishy network. Also, they constanty lower your dashboard stats, so you think you're getting 500/month, and then 4 days before you're supposed to get paid, they drop it down to 300/month. The only plus is they always pay on time or early.

I'd like to introduce you to Pingjam, which a new way to monetize your Android apps without spamming your users - plus we've just released full support for Buzztouch with our latest SDK! Our system adds a Caller ID feature to your apps, which shows the users who is calling them. We also show relevant offers on business calls (for example, call for Pizza, and get a coupon for 1+1 Pizza). We will pay you, the developer, a fixed monthly fee per active user, so you don't need to rely on fluctuating CPMs like people mentioned here. You can sign up for Pingjam on http://www.pingjam.com, and see the Buzztouch integration instructions at: http://pingjam.com/docs/adding-pingjam-sdk-to-your-buzztouch-project/

I love this concept, @ran_pingjam. As a developer we put so much time and effort into making these apps, and it's not too much to ask to be compensated. However, our choices are often to have a paid app and get less downloads, or make the app free and ad supported yet be intrusive to the user and often get negative reviews. I will definitely check out your system and let you know how it goes.

Hey pingjam, that sounds like a great way to further monetize existing users, do you serve only us customers or do you have ads targted toward international audience as well

@sukera, from what I read on their website, it is global, not US only. The integration into an Android app looks really easy, and they have documentation specifically for Buzztouch on their website. This is a great thing, and I hope more and more advertising platforms both recognize the importance of Buzztouch users, and evolve in the way ads are served and revenue is achieved. I really do applaud Pingjam for all they're doing. Do you have a live sample app that we could see as a demo of how it works? If not, I will be implementing this today and will post mine here.

thanks daniel, I love buzztouch, but don't use the plugins here, I just write java :) Anyway, I will also implemented the sdk into a few of my apps and tell you how it goes.

We've just released a sample standalone app available here: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pingjam.calleridapp" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pingjam.calleridapp</a> There are over 500 different apps which use our SDK on the market, I will check with the developers if I can post some of them here.

thanks daniel, I love buzztouch, but don't use the plugins here, I just write java :) Anyway, I will also implemented the sdk into a few of my apps and tell you how it goes.