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So one of the most obvious ways that everybody thinks of immediately is paying for apps up front. Now
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paid apps are really easy to implement.
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And essentially it's when you list your app onto either the Google Play store or the Apple App Store,
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you essentially just set a price tier.
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And those tiers are determined by the app stores themselves.
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So as a new developer it's very easy to assume that this is you know the way that you should go.
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And the reason for that is mostly guided by results on the apps that you see. For example this is an
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app called Fit Men cook that was developed by some friends of ours and essentially features a whole
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bunch of healthy recipes by a blogger called Kevin curry.
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So they basically launched on the App Store and within the first day they hit the number 2 spot in
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the top paid iPhone apps with a pricing model of $2.99.
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They were wedged between Monument Valley and Minecraft.
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So you can see that these people did really really well off this app essentially.
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And you can mistakenly think like, "Oh so you know that's how I should monetize.
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I should just price it at $2.99 and put my app onto the App Store and it will perform equally well."
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But the thing that you don't realize is that there's a number of behind the scenes factors that determined
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the success. Not only the fact that it was a great app but also a number of factors that related to how
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they went about promoting it.
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So the biggest factor in that is the the guy Kevin Curry who I think got 50 percent of the revenue of
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the app without really contribution to the development of it other than his recipes.
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But he has a huge following. He has a blog with tens of thousands of subscribers, a Twitter page with
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you know 20K followers and a Facebook page with again you know hundreds of thousands of people who
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like it.
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So what that means is that this guy is a serious influencer in this field and on the day of launch or
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even prior to launch, he can gear up his subscribers his followers his fans to download this app within
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the first 24 hours.
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The thing you have to realize is that on both the Google app store as well as the Apple App Store, the
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first 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days of your apps performance is crucial to getting it featured or
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getting it highlighted in some sort of ranking.
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So if you are able to achieve a massive amount of downloads on day 1 within the first 24 hours that
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sends a huge spike and a signal to the app stores.
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Potentially furthering your exposure by featuring it somewhere or getting it listed in the top paid
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apps.
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So that sort of stops a snowball effect that gets you more and more downloads and sustains you within
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the rankings.
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So this is one way in which paid apps can work really well.
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If you find that you can partner with a influencer in a particular niche that applies to your app and
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even if they don't do anything at all for the development of your app if they can bring the people from
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day 1, then it's well worth going down that route.
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Now another way in which paid apps can work is if you're developing something that the world has never
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seen before.
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So this is an app developed by a guy called Peter Bentley who's a friend of mine and he created an app called 
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iStethoscope Pro.
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Now what he realized was that the iPhone had superior acoustic hardware than it needed to for a telephone.
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And this was because it inherited a lot of that hardware that audio hardware from the iPod which as
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we all know the iPhone is built upon. So upon realizing that, he decided to tap into the microphone
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of the iPhone and he built an app that allows you to point the phone at your heart or at your lungs
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and put on some headphones to listen to your heartbeat or your lung sounds.
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And he didn't actually do very much advertising at all but he got a massive amount of media attention
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just because of how innovative this was.
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This was a way of turning your phone into potentially a medical device.
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And in fact having used it for a while I can say that using iStethoscope Pro app with the iPhone is almost
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as good as some of the £300 £400 pound electronic stethoscopes that are out there on the market.
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And in addition to that you can also record your heart sounds or your lung sounds and send it to your doctor by email
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for example, which is a huge boon.
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And I think they are currently building some sort of research project where they are collecting a lot
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of people's heart and lung sounds for research purposes which is really cool as well.
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But essentially when this app came out, it was priced at I think 99 cents which at the time was the lowest
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priced tier.
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He got a massive amount of traction and a massive amount of revenue from this.
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And I think just from the revenue from this one app alone he bought a five bedroom house somewhere in
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London which is incredible.
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So if you're building something that's really unique and I mean it really unique it's not just you know
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some variation of something that already exists that has a huge amount of value for people something
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like this,
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then you are well within your rights to make it a paid app and you will see revenue from it.
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Now a third example is where you have the rights to some sort of intellectual property.
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So for example, if you own a question bank for a Bar prep course or medical exams, then you are certainly
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expected to charge for that information.
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And a lot of people do and they actually charge quite a lot.
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So a lot of these Bar prep courses or question banks or quizzes actually average something like around
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£20  to £30.
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So if you have domain knowledge in something such as law or medicine and you create a question bank
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then this is a really easy way of creating a niche and relatively lucrative app that can be paid upfront.
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Now one of the things that we always get asked about were relating to paid apps is how you should price
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it. And what we've noticed through the years is that pricing apps on the App Store is a very delicate
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matter.
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People's psychology is very funny about pricing. What you find is that if you have an app that is you
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know maybe a single use app or maybe entertains people for 30 minutes, then you can charge anywhere less
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than $1.99 and people will be fine with that.
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People are okay with the idea of spending you know the equivalent of a cup of coffee on an app and even
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if its not the most amazing app in the world, they're happy with paying that amount just for a bit of
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novelty a bit of discovery.
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But once you hit the $1.99 threshold and you go above it, people get really angry
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in the review section if your app is not something spectacular. And there's actually a website that
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collects a bunch of apps that are priced relatively ridiculously say for example the Professional Chef
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app that's $50 or the Water Globe that's $220.
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So what we tend to recommend is you know start off low and see how people are responding to your app
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if they're liking it.
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And then as you add more features and as you have more positive reviews if you feel like the app is
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under valued then you can raise it by a dollar at a time and see how people respond to it. And you eventually
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reach an equilibrium where people feel like they're getting enough value for what they're paying and
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you feel like your app is being bought at the right price.
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So play around with pricing is what we're trying to sing.