Why micropayments are a great way to monetize an app.

For years, micropayments have been almost the ideal solution for publishers. It was micropayments that allowed to receive a certain income, and sometimes very solid. This method of monetization began to be used especially actively after ad blockers appeared. Nevertheless, micropayments are far from the most effective way to profit from digital content.

Over the years, publishers have tried many hundreds of different strategies and methods to make micropayments a popular monetization method for publishers. But almost all of these methods have been ineffective. But 15 years ago, Clay Shirky (Clay Shirky) called micropayments ineffective, because, in his opinion, "users hate them."

One of the reasons is that the user must make a decision before using this opportunity. “Users want predictable and simple pricing. At the same time, micropayments complicate the user's life, because he has to deal with a bunch of small, unpredictable transactions, ”wrote Clay.
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In general, the heyday of micropayments has passed, especially if you don’t remember about retail purchases in Chinese online stores and talk about content publishing houses. But there is one direction where micropayments not only did not disappear, but even began to flourish. This area is mobile apps, namely, in-app purchases. Most often these are in-game purchases (in-game currency, additional weapons, abilities, etc.). People want to improve their performance in any game, and IAP (in-app purchases) is the perfect way to do it.

According to research, now the volume of the IAP market is $ 14 billion , and by 2017 it will increase to $ 36 billion. Plus, most of the applications that use the IAP also contain advertising as an additional monetization mechanism. By the way, the company Appodeal successfully working in this market, and can help the developer to receive additional funds. As for the IAP, the transactions here take place almost instantly, and the user immediately gets what he wants. IAP, by the way, is a much more effective way to monetize an application than the “pay and not see the ads” method. This is largely due to the fact that the person paying for the in-game product (or some additional function of the application) is well aware of what he pays for.

At first glance, traditional advertising and IAP are similar. People who click on ads, or those who buy something inside the app, pay for certain content. The application developer is interested in ensuring that users are as loyal as possible and pay for additional features. And here IAP has a number of strengths:

• The user knows what he pays for;
• He does not have to think about buying for too long;
• To conduct a transaction is quite simple.

The combination of the usual advertising and in-game purchases, provided that both methods are used correctly, can bring (and brings) an excellent profit to the developer. Judging by experts' forecasts, the micropayment model will flourish for a very long time, at least until some new, even more effective way to monetize the application appears.