The most popular revenue models appear to be those that are easiest to implement. The developers using them tend to have lower revenues. This may be due to greater competition or it might just be a result of less sophisticated app businesses producing less valuable apps. There are some interesting differences between platforms but subscriptions appear to be a relatively untapped gold mine everywhere, although maybe not for everyone.

Data from Apsalar’s Big Data Lab reveals the game categories with the highest propensity for in-app purchases. As it turns out, strategy games are more than 18x more effective at driving IAP than arcade games! In-app purchases are also strongly correlated with engagement (as measured by average daily session length). Yet another proof point that user engagement is a key ingredient in any app monetization strategy.

In December Amazon launched a new A/B testing service for Android apps on the Amazon Appstore. Integrating A/B testing, particularly for in-app purchase related events, in the store portal is a welcome addition. Slightly disappointing considering this comes from a store provider is that the A/B testing service does not support testing different copy or icons on the storefront itself, purely in-app A/B tests, for which there are already third-party alternatives.

App store analytics providers have been telling us that almost all of the growth in app revenues in the last year has been through in-app purchases. However is that just because the model has become more popular? Or because revenue has been concentrating at the top of the market, where the strategy is very popular (particularly in free-to-play games)? Probably…

Distimo recently published an interesting report (free, registration required) on how app price changes affect revenue for iPhone & iPad apps. They give a breakdown on the scale of price changes but only give the really interesting results – the download and revenue impacts – averaged across all price changes. The key result is…

Elliot Schmukler from LinkedIn spoke at a recent Growth Hacker conference about the strategies they’d used to grow the site since he joined in 2008. His advice was very helpfully summarised by Sandi MacPherson, Founder at Quibb and is general enough to be applied to mobile apps. Read our take on his main points.

App Annie Intelligence, which tracks more than 700,000 apps, reports that freemium apps – free apps that have in-app purchases – are experiencing impressive revenue growth worldwide, far outpacing premium apps in both iOS and Google Play stores. Over the last 24 months, worldwide revenues for freemium apps on iOS have more than quadrupled. In […]

This hackpad (a collaborative list composed by 150 people) has an impressive list of web and mobile revenue models, ranging from the classic ad-driven models and pay-per-download to intermediaries and commerce models. For Your Inspiration.