Free mobile applications are an impactful way to reach an audience with your brand messaging — but what about actual revenue? Some brands are able to host free apps without any need for revenue for a variety of reasons, including brand recognition. For the rest of us, monetization of mobile apps is a way to bring in extra revenue for our brand while engaging a following. Unsure how to get your mobile app to a point where it’s making money? As a follow up to our post titled, The 411 on App Monetization, we’ve created a more extensive list of all the options you have for making money on your app. In-App Purchases Offer your audience a chance to buy something without leaving the app. If your app centers on gaming, you can offer a price for more credits or lives. If your app is connected to a more traditional business, look for ways to offer low-cost, one-time options inside the app that benefit the user. Amazon developer evangelist, Mike Hines, analyzed the top 50 grossing apps with in-app purchases and found these commonalities: Purchase options changed consistently, offering new and different things. Making a purchase was simple, only requiring a few clicks of a button. The benefits of a purchase were well-communicated upfront. Returning users were segmented and offered targeted purchase options. List Building Collect simple contact information from your app users, like phone numbers or email addresses, giving you the opportunity to reach out beyond the app through SMS or email. This is particularly helpful for brands that have a product (besides the app) or service they want to market. You can send out special app-member discounts and newsletters to get people engaged beyond the basic app activities. The more a customer interacts with your brand, the better the chance you’ll have of a sale down the road. Freemium Model Allow users to download your app for free but then offer upgrades for a price. For an accounting business app, for example, give broad financial advice for free but offer more personalized content for a premium cost. Think of your app on two levels: basic and advanced. Engage users enough on the basic level to make them want to pay for advanced. And when they pay for advanced, keep them engaged by offering obvious value. Sell Products Here’s another tip for brands looking to use an app to market another product or service. Create a call to action directly in your app that allows users to purchase your products or services right then and there. Take the Sephora to Go app for instance. The app’s Virtual Artist allows users to try on different shades of lipstick and different styles of fake eyelashes. It also offers eyeliner and eyeshadow tutorials for a variety of looks. While trying on products or learning about application, the app gives users the option to click on the actual product and make the purchase instantly — genius! Native Ads You never want to disrupt the app experience and frustrate users. By designing native ads that fit smoothly into what you’re already offering, you can earn some cash from the advertisers but not run your app users off. Make sure you work with an ad-tech firm that can create ads that look native to your app so they aren’t disrupting your app experience. Joining Forces Partner with another app or brand to make indirect money by building your visibility. You don’t need a huge app to agree to partner with you, either. Look for one that complements your business and has a similar size following. Together, you’ll be able to draw in more app users and then monetize that following using one of the other strategies on this list. Subscriptions A great way to automate payments from users on a consistent basis is through subscriptions. Allow access to the app when users pay a monthly fee. Making that fee affordable is important, of course, and you must have plenty of value for that cost since there are so many competing apps. The Sweat with Kayla app by Australian personal trainer Kayla Itsines is a great example of an effective subscription-based app. The subscription cost is reasonable in terms of the value you get. As a subscriber, users gain access to workouts, meal plans, progress tracking, fitness education, and more — in essence, this app acts as a replacement for personal trainers, nutritionists, and even gym memberships since a lot of the exercises can be done at home. Affiliate Marketing Make money from other businesses when you send a sale their way. You can add affiliate links to your app for products or services that complement what you offer or make sense for your audience. Those affiliate links then act as a virtual referral, and you can collect a fee based on the sales you help that company make. The way you choose to monetize your app will depend on the nature of your brand, goods, and/or services. One approach or a combination of a few should suffice, so take the time to research how you want to turn your app into a money-making machine for your business, or simply consult the experts.

by: Robert Wang Internet behemoth Google recently released an expansion to the Google toolbar, designed to give the online community the opportunity to submit unmoderated commentary in a collapsible side dock. Google calls its new creation the Sidewiki. It's going to rock your world. Probably. Users will be able to comment however they want, on whatever site they wish once they install the add-on. For example, a user wishing to leave his 2-cents on a CNN web article could simply type up his assessment, hit submit, and provided his comment met Google regulations, have his words immediately published. Similarly, comments can only be viewed if the add-on has been installed and the viewer is on a page where comments have been left. While statistics show that the toolbar has been downloaded at least 2 million times from CNET alone, it is difficult to estimate just how many individuals actually know about, and moreover utilize the Sidewiki service provided by Google. However, if it ever reaches the mainstream---and there is a good chance of that, given the successful history of Google's other product offerings---the potential for promotion, testimonials, and hidden goodies will probably prove too much for any good marketing business to ignore. Ideally, this new add-on would grant individuals another medium through which it could provide invaluable third-party insight on hitherto unregulated e-businesses. Whether to sound the alarm on an attack page, to trumpet accolades to a well designed site, or give forum to a particularly thought provoking concept, the direction of the entire process would be determined by the masses. And yet, therein lies the problem. The freedom it fosters will forever be its defining redemption, its potential for abuse will forever be it's Achilles' heel. It's far too early in the game to tell whether or not the service will function as it was designed or become, like so many of its predecessors, a cesspool of virtual graffiti. (However, if the early, tentative test runs of the Side Wiki are any indication, the tone will be civil, constructive, and uncharacteristically reserved.) Google claims that comments will be filtered and regulated in much the same way that search results are ranked for relevance. The more pertinent the topic, the higher it will be ranked by fellow users, thereby allowing it to float above the chaff, trash talk, and pointless spamming that tends to plague similar services. Irrespective, if you own a site, its probably a good idea to comment on your own page first so that you can set in motion a more positive precedent and block the potential hard-to-remove negativity spiral. Understandably, a good number of businesses have already begun to raise protest at the thought of having the gateway to a torrential downpour of virtual anarchy unleashed upon their websites without permission. Never before has the public realm been granted such immediacy in its ability to deliver feedback. Users no longer need to navigate away from the page to read reviews, rather any evaluation, good or bad, is now literally a click away. However, this isn't to say this is a bad thing. People prefer to reference like-minded individuals before making a big decision--so in some senses the SideWiki is poised to become a sort of proxy for quality control like the BBB or veriSign Security button. There's potential for something great. Whether that manifests as another layer of detritus or as an invaluable tool hinges on how Google chooses to develop its brainchild. Fingers crossed.

Barefoot Solutions was brought on by the team at Headfirst to build a custom web application capable of managing every aspect of a high school baseball players life as they make their way through the often confusing recruiting process. Named the College Admissions Planner (CAP), this application integrates Headfirst's extensive consulting experience into an automated system that interacts with each student to form a fully customized planner complete with reminders, insider tips, and even an application progress matrix to ensure that no detail of their athletics, academics, or applications is overlooked. From customized off-season fitness routines to parent email updates, CAP was designed to ease the minds of all those involved in a baseball athletes transition to college. Students log directly into their profiles to create, edit, and review their customized planner.  When they first log in (and at other specific intervals) the CAP application asks students a set of questions and uses their answers to build a multilayered college admissions and recruiting plan. Another important tool within the CAP application is one of Barefoot Solutions previous projects with Headfirst, the HCAT locker.  The HCAT locker is an online searchable database with articles that Headfirst's experienced team has compiled over the years to help students wade through the college admissions process. CAP was developed using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and offers full integration with a payment gateway as well as content management tools to make for easy updates moving forward.  Both teams at Barefoot Solutions and Headfirst are extremely excited about the potential of this application, and look forward to seeing the impact it has on the lives of aspiring athletes.