In-app purchases are the most direct way to make money online. They are a proven way to monetize apps that have worked throughout time.

The benefits of in-app purchases are countless. People love to shop with their phones – 44.6% of Black Friday shopping online is done through mobile devices.

What is more, when they make those purchases, they are 24% more likely to spend money on in-app purchases than they do on paid apps. Interestingly, a huge chunk of that profit goes directly to the app developer.

Nevertheless, there will be no change if nobody is using your in-app purchases. Fortunately, there are few strategies you can use to get those in-app purchases up and make your plan in 2019 to monetize your app, in order to start showing results in.

1. Get Your Users Hooked

In-app purchases can be very profitable – but none of these strategies to monetize your app are going to work if they are not already addicted to your program.

You develop your app to just flood people with in-app purchases as soon as they turn it on for the first time. Let them play around with it and have fun with the basic details for free until they feel like they cannot live without your services.

If they are obsessed with your app and they see value in making in-app purchases, your strategies to monetize will bring more app success.

2. Promote Your In-App Purchases

Promotion is completely necessary when you are trying to monetize an app. It’s just common sense – if people don’t know you have something to sell, they will not have the opportunity to buy it.

The iPhone App Store makes the process pretty easy. You can promote up to 20 in-app purchases directly on your App Store product page, letting people see how they can make the use of your app a better experience for a reasonable price.

Tie it all together in a bundle with a sale price and people will start seeing your in-app purchases as a real value. That is really going to help you monetize your app into something profitable.

3. Avoid Clickbait

When you’re promoting those in-app purchases, make sure you’re being honest about it. Clickbait – those dishonest little online ads that promise one thing and then deliver something else – erode the trust and relationship you have with your customers.

Obviously, they might bring in a few passive clicks, but they are not going to help convert those clicks into active online sales.

People who have good experiences with apps and trust the brand are more likely to make in-app purchases. If you are authentic and honest with your promotions, your customers will support your plan to monetize your app. They’ll only be too eager to help you out.

4. Use “Irrational” Pricing Strategies

When you start advertising in-app purchases to your customers, you can get a surprising increase in sales by using prices that, on the surface, seem completely irrational.

The Economist ran an experiment on setting price points for the digital and print versions of their paper. For $59, readers could get a web subscription; for $125, they could get a printed subscription; and for the exact same price of $125, they could get both.

Predictably, nobody paid $125 to get the print subscription alone – but surprisingly, adding that “irrational” choice drove up their sales.

This makes people who bought the web and printed subscription pat themselves on the back, thinking they’re smarter than everyone else for noticing the irrational price point. Therefore, this drove up a huge increase in sales.

5. Push Notifications

80% of mobile carts are abandoned. The overwhelming majority of online shoppers who start in-app purchases end up getting distracted, giving up on them, and forgetting they were ever going to buy anything in the first place.

Push notifications can go a long way in getting them for finalizing those sales. When a customer abandons their in-app purchases, you need to send them a push notification with specific details about what they were going to buy, in order to bring them back in.

On average, you can expect an increase of up to 14% on in-app sales when you use push notifications – and that’s going to make your plan to monetize your app, which results in gaining money.

In-app purchases can be a great way to monetize your online business – but you have to be careful about how you do it.

Breaking your users’ trust or trying to push the in-app purchases to the side isn’t going to help you monetize anything. But if you build up strong brand loyalty and take advantage of strategies like these, your online business is going to start facing real profits.