Making More Money With Your Apps:

Top 5 Tips and Tricks

Jeremia KimelmanDeveloper Evangelist

@jeremiak

1. Who here has a live mobile app

in any store?

2. Who is making a living off of some

deployed apps?

3. Ok, well who is at least making some

beer

money from their mobile apps?

So who are you?

1. Think about revenue while building

your app

2. Marketing doesn't start on launch day,

it should start way before

3. Optimize marketing collateral (ASO)

4. Develop a paid user acquisition plan

5. Iterate with user feedback

So let’s build a mobile business

60% of iOS developers…

Problem

60% of iOS developers…

DON’T BREAK EVEN

Problem

“Without marketing your product is just a project”

- Rob Walling

Projections and realistic expectations are crucial for a well performing business

Only 4 ways to make money in mobile:1. Contracting2. Paid downloads3. In-app purchases4. Advertising

1. Revenue

You don’t know how much revenue you can expect before you launch an app

Problem

There are tools…

Gaming Specialty Community Utility

Contract Paid downloads In app Purchase Advertising

Each model has great applications

There are few misconceptions about advertising on mobile

1. User drop off2. Poor ads being shown3. Interfering with UX

Advertising

Calculating Lifetime Value (LTV)

App development lifecycle

• LaunchRock• Twitter account• Tumblr• App teaser trailer• Use promo codes wisely

2. Marketing - Generate early buzz

• Get feedback through beta testing– Great find for finding errors,

bugs and crashes– Not just errors, but also UX/UI feedback

• Beta testers will be your most loyal users, and you can leverage them as an unpaid army of evangelists

Beta Testing

• Idea validation• APIs that will help you acquire

and retain customers– Push notifications– Analytics– Performance advertising tracking for paid

user acquisition campaigns– Social ties to increase engagement and discovery

• Work flows that consider advertising(if that's part of your monetization model) as wellas getting your users to rate you in theApp Store

While you’re knee-deep in bytes…

Except not.

• With 700K+ apps, its going to behard to get noticed

• Leveraging your users throughthe social or interests graphs canbe a great idea

• Social will likely not carry your appto the top of the charts, you’re goingto need a good app

2. More buzz == more success

• Improve conversion rate of landingpage to download

• Improve rankings in search

3. Two Pillars of ASO

ASO: Visually appealing graphics

Case Study: Dwellable

Case Study: Dwellable

ASO: Description bulleted and updated

ASO: Cross promote your other apps

ASO: Ratings (and high ones at that!)

ASO: Ratings

ASO: Ratings

Users notice apps by….

Users notice apps by….

ASO: Optimize for Search

ASO: Optimize for Search

ASO: Optimize for Search

ASO: Optimize for Search

ASO: Optimize for Search

LTV > COA

4. Develop a paid user acquisition plan

• Ratings• Length on handset• Velocity of downloads

App Store rankings

Download velocity

• Analyze and iterate– Where are your users spending their time?– Where are they not?– How long does each user spend in

the app and what is the best way tomonetize that pattern?

• Errors and crashes will cost you dearly

Step 5: Feedback

@jeremiak

Thanks!