The Basics of Monetization Business Models What Monetization Model Should I Choose? When it comes to developing a successful app startup, figuring out an app monetization strategy is critical – but often overlooked. The quicker you can begin turning a revenue with your app, the more likely it is that you will be able to financially sustain the growth of your startup. Even with a great app, the lack of an app business model can limit your access to investor capital and your mobile app pitch deck will never be effective without a cohesive revenue driven strategy in place. The app startup industry is full of competition. The market has become so oversaturated that most apps fail to turn over any consistent revenue, if they generate any revenue at all. Without a clear and effective monetization strategy, app entrepreneurs quickly find their budgets dwindling as they promote the app to gain new users, but fail to turn them into customers. Many founding teams make the critical mistake of focusing all their attention on developing the app, and comparatively little attention on perfecting the business model behind it. Need Funding For Your App Idea? Download Our FREE eBook now! Learn the expert secrets behind building successful apps that attract invertors and get funded! DOWNLOAD MY FREE EBOOK The Basics of Monetization Business Models Establishing a mobile app revenue model is essential, and if implemented properly, can allow your startup to hit the ground running. Fortunately, there is no need to reinvent the wheel – there are a number of tried and tested models that app startups have used over and over to generate long-term revenue. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated and complex either. Most successful apps have super simple app business models that are familiar and easy to understand. Before we break down specific app monetization strategies, it’s important to look at the fundamentals of app monetization. One of the most important factors to understand when launching an app startup is that a large base of users alone won’t sustain your business in the long term; a strong app monetization strategy is vital to success. Building an app startup is expensive and you will never realize a return on investment if you can’t convert users into customers. Your business model should allow you begin earning a profit, even without a large user base. Build a financial model through Microsoft Excel to test different monetization strategies before you go live. Displaying how your chosen monetization strategy will convert into profit is key to establishing a business plan that stands up to scrutiny. By testing and planning thoroughly, you can optimize your model to ideal performance and ensure that it is ready to meet the demands of the open market. When you first launch your app, we recommend launching in a “testing state”. Until real users are interacting with your app, you don’t know how your app and services will be received or how much people will be willing to pay for…

What is the “Novel” Approach to Writing App Startup Business Plans? Why a Mobile App Startup Business Plan is Different than a Traditional Plan App Startup Business Plan: The “Novel” Mindset Writing the App Story Investors are Human During the seed funding stage, app entrepreneurs often turn to Google for information on writing effective app startup business plans for their mobile concepts. There is some really awesome information floating around the internet for how to write a business plan for an app, but this information doesn’t always translate into an effective and investor-ready plan. A great template will offer a general guide to organize information, but does not provide a successful approach to writing an engaging,informative and successful plan. Have you read through sample app startup business plan PDFs on Google? Read five of them in a row, and you will be bored to death by the sixth. The secret for connecting to investors through a mobile app business plan is very similar to how authors structure novels to connect with readers. In this article, we will introduce the components of a Mobile App Startup Business Plan, and teach you how to build an awesome plan using our “Novel” approach. Need Funding For Your App Idea? Download Our FREE eBook now! Learn the expert secrets behind building successful apps that attract invertors and get funded! DOWNLOAD MY FREE EBOOK What is the “Novel” Approach to Writing App Startup Business Plans? I’d guess that the average tech investor receives dozens of business plans for apps to their e-mail each month. I’d also guess that the average app startup entrepreneur believes that this investor routinely and excitedly reads the thousands of pages they receive. Truth is, investors are either excited about or disengaged with a plan from the moment they look at the cover page. Think about shopping in a bookstore. You’re looking randomly at a bookshelf for a great mystery novel. You see an awesome cover, and you grab the book off the shelf. Then, you flip the book over and read the summary. Sounds boring, you put it back. You repeat this process until you find one that is worth purchasing and reading. This is the same process that investors go through when reviewing mobile application business proposals If they see something that looks interesting, they read the executive summary, and then make a decision on whether it is worth reading or whether it fails to peak their interest. The ThinkLions “Novel” approach to writing a business plan adopts the same principles that make novels interesting to readers. What is it about a summary that makes a reader anticipate reading an entire novel? What is it about a novel that captivates readers to willingly engage with 200 pages of text? The “Novel” approach answers these questions and applies them to the business plan writing process to create plans that are better written, more captivating, and ultimately, more successful. Why a Mobile App Startup Business Plan is Different than a Traditional…

Do I Need A Mobile App Company Business Plan? The Main Components Winning Business Plans Aren’t Just Words And Numbers Getting Started With Your Strategy Want to jump directly to our mobile app business planinfographic? Click Here When it comes to launching an app startup, having a strong mobile app business plan is important. In the beginning, anapp startup business plan helps you plot out your ideas and view your business across several perspectives. During the funding stage, having a business plan becomes a key piece in showcasing the details of your app startup to investors. Writing a business plan can seem difficult – there are many factors to consider and it isn’t easy turning it all into one cohesive strategy. A Google search on business plans pulls up a million different opinions, and 5,000 different templates. Selecting which is the “right” template to use can prove tobe tricky, and taking the wrong advice can prove harmful to your funding efforts. Here at ThinkLions, we’ve written hundreds of mobile app business plans and have worked with entrepreneurs acrossthe world to develop strategies that have raised millions of dollars in seed funding. If it’s one thing we know, it’s business plans for apps – and we want to teach you everything there is to know! While it would take us years towrite up everything we have learned over our many years of business, in this post, we’ll give you some really awesome tips to help you draft the perfect mobile app business plan. Need Funding For Your App Idea? Download Our FREE eBook now! Learn the expert secrets behind building successful apps that attract invertors and get funded! DOWNLOAD MY FREE EBOOK Do I Need A Mobile App Company Business Plan? While opinions vary on whether app startups need business plans, in our experience, it’s always useful. In essence, a business plan will effectively present your app idea and tie together multiple operational elements to create the story of how your business will grow from an idea to success. Business plans come in handy across many situations when trying to present your app idea to another person. Here are a few examples of previous clients who were definitely happythat they went through the mobile app business planning process: James was a solo entrepreneur when he asked us to write his app idea business plan. When he hired us for business planning services, his goal was to submit his business plan to a local startup incubator thatwould help grow his business. The incubator rejected him because they only accepted teams with two or more founders. James was later introduced to an interested tech-entrepreneur who already had two mobile applications launched in the market. Chris, the entrepreneur, was interested in James’ idea and asked him for his business plan so he could understand it better. Luckily for him, James already had one handy. James never made it to the incubator; instead, Chris partnered with him 50/50 and funded the launch of his app idea! An app startup team approached us last year with the idea of launching an app in the financial space.Initially, they wanted…