You’ve finally finished your masterpiece mobile game app. It has done well with the beta testers and now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the cash to come rolling in. Right?
Not exactly.
The hard part is behind you for sure, but the road ahead is not exactly easy either. Now is the time to market the game and then find the best ways to monetize it. It isn’t as obvious as it seems.
How do you monetize your game? Once your marketing team is on board and you have a gameplan, it is time to start testing your options. In this article, I will go over several ways you can make money off of your mobile game app.
Paid apps
There are so many free games out there that it seems like a longshot to be able to get people to pay for a new game. Well, that is true, but luckily there are a few ways to make this work.
These days there are playable game ads that work to allow people to test a game before they play it. The way it works is that they can play a preview without having to actually open up the game itself.
Users are able to decide if the game is for them and are more likely to buy after having a chance to play it.
Freemium
Once again, people want to know if they are going to like the game before they pay for it. Offering a freemium version is one way to allow this to happen.
You can do this a couple of ways. One is to allow a game to be played for free for a set period of time. This is an effective way to go since it doesn’t limit how the game can be played for the user. This way they can see exactly how the game will play once they buy. This is very effective for strategy games that become addictive.
The other way to work it out is to offer a free version or the ability to upgrade for the premium version. They will get access to all the perks of the fully paid game. This is not quite as effective as the free for a period of time system as people still won’t know if they will enjoy the game with the full perks once they pay.
In-app ads
Everybody hates ads. Especially if they are in the middle of a game. The funny thing is that they still are the most effective way to monetize your game. Well targeted ads in the game do actually work and will make you money.
Pre game rolls or skippable ads are a good way to get a user’s attention without annoying them by showing an irrelevant ad while they are in the middle of a game. Even if the ad is skipped it is still counted as an engagement and you will get paid for it.