1. Making Money
in Mobile
by Mark Murphy, CommonsWare
Sunday, March 7, 2010

2. The Slashdot Way
• Write an app
• Publish the app on the dominant market
• ????
• PROFIT!
Sunday, March 7, 2010

3. Catalog Conundrum
• Catalogs
• Lots of products
• Small listings
• Single place to order
• Android Market, iPhone App Store are
catalogs
Sunday, March 7, 2010

4. Brownian Motion
• Role of catalogs
• Get your product out to many eyeballs
• Minimize barriers to purchase
• Result?
• Random people finding random products
Sunday, March 7, 2010

5. Segments, in 2D!
• Horizontal = all Android users
• Difficult to reach, differentiate, serve
• Vertical = all cyclists
• Serve a segment, not a platform
Sunday, March 7, 2010

6. How the World Works
• What you really need
• Identifiable segment
• Reachable segment
• Unique selling proposition
• Something worth buying
Sunday, March 7, 2010

7. Values, Great and Small
• Horizontal
• Comparing you to everything else
• Net: price driven down
• Vertical
• Comparing you to targeted competition
• Net: greater odds of value-based pricing
Sunday, March 7, 2010

8. Slashdot Guide, Redux
• Identify a reachable segment
• Write a quality app with a unique selling
proposition
• Publish the app wherever segment might
find it
• Communicate with that segment
• PROFIT!!! (we hope)
Sunday, March 7, 2010

9. Applying Drake
Same concept applies
in marketing: segment
gets progressively
filtered by exposure,
interest, price issues,
etc.
Sunday, March 7, 2010

10. Ends and Means
• App as end
• 1:1 sales to individual users
• Always a tough market, anywhere
• App as means
• Making money beyond, or instead of, 1:1
sales to individual users
Sunday, March 7, 2010

11. Let’s Make a Deal
• Bulk licensing of app
• Enterprises
• Mobile carriers and device manufacturers
• Universities
• Content and Service Providers
• Etc.
Sunday, March 7, 2010

12. Free! Not Just for Beer!
• Freemium Strategies = Make the App...
• ...sell the ad space, analytics, ...
• ...sell the plugins, remixes, map editors, ...
• ...sell the online account
• ...sell the content
• ...sell the firm
Sunday, March 7, 2010

13. Developers ^ 3
• Developer tools
• Help, support frameworks
• Cross-platform development kits
• Services: translations, testing, porting, UX,
marketing
• Agency for foreign developers
Sunday, March 7, 2010

14. Box? There’s a Box?
• Bug hunter
• Enterprise customizer
• Guru: mobileetc. native code translation,
accessibility,
JS,
• Talent agent
• App generator
• Augmented reality layer builder
Sunday, March 7, 2010

15. Common Themes
• Role of apps
• Proof of ability
• “Force multiplier”
• Salable asset (to people, firms, acquirers)
• Finding and serving niche markets
• More opportunities with OEM-able OSes
Sunday, March 7, 2010

16. Required Reading
• Blog posts
• Android Business Models
http://bit.ly/andbizmodels2
• FREE (Chris Anderson)
• Seth Godin, Tara Hunt, et. al.
Sunday, March 7, 2010

17. Summary
• 1:1 App Sales
• Don’t “post and pray” -- have a strategy
• Find, know, talk to your segment
• Pick platform(s) to serve the segment
• Think beyond selling apps to individuals
Sunday, March 7, 2010