iPhone Revenue Models
Make Money from your iPhone application
1) Charge for the App.
If you are reading this you might have heard of the young guy who created some silly little iPhone app that makes funny sounds and has enjoyed over 500,000 downloads. At 99 cents each he’s a half million dollars and counting. so his stupid little app isn’t so stupid after all is it? 
His revenue model is very straight forward – he charged for his app through the App Store. Easy to use and easy to replicate. His success model is the hard part to replicate. His App went viral which means that it spread via word of mouth very rapidly and exceeded any and all expectations. This is a Developer’s dream come true. Every developers envisions his app being hugely popular and everyone wanting it. Some times dreams do come true and you can hit upon a really successful idea. Sometimes dreams need a little nudge or even a huge push to come true. That’s where we can come in. We can assist our customers in pushing the word of mouth along a little faster, and help them create a buzz for their application. Even if we didn’t build it we can help you drive it out to the user community.
Pricing your application is tricky as well – too high and no downloads, too low and you are leaving revenue on the table. We know of one case where downloads actually increased after a price hike. We can help you figure out what your price point should be.
2) Give it away for Free.
Interesting heading in the “how to make money section” isn’t it. as everyone knows in their heart of hearts, there is no Free. Not really. Somebody, somewhere, always pays. So giving the app away for free is really just a technique to drive adoption and usage of the app. So where’s the money? Good questions as there’s a few options. One option is to create your ‘free’ application and embed advertising into ti. you can do this via links, logos, but most commonly it’s through a banner that gets real time content from a server. There are many third party companies that act as a hub for these banners and can offer you one stop shopping for your advertising options.
Another option is to charge a fee elsewhere, such as a membership fee for a website or some related service and then offer the app for free and require a username/password login to get any real useful data through the application. Then the app is free but the content is sold and the app just supports increased content sales.
Another emerging option is to use the application to drive other revenue either via cross selling or through promotional campaign where the app is a small component of a larger campaign.
Another similar model allows for a free application that supports a corporate branding effort. The app is free, but the money is in the corporate promotional budget and eventually shows in consumer pricing.
What’s the best way?
There’s no one correct answer as each application and each company has different goals and the revenue model must fit both of those. We can help you figure it all out – that’s what we are here for.
contact us today and see how we can help you get your application working for you!