You have finally released your cool application and obviously don’t want to leave your brainchild ‘non-for-profit’. What’s to be done? How to make your app earn a bit of money and not to discourage consumers at the same time? The answer is in-app purchases, just for Android apps for now.
What are in-app purchases?
The in-app purchase or in-app billing in the Android apps development community is one of monetization strategies for free or partially free apps. In-app billing is right for selling digital goods (or in-app products) from your mobile application. In-app products can fall into four main categories:
- content;
- services;
- functionality;
- subscriptions.
So, as you see, you’ve got plenty of opportunities in how to monetize your app.
The first thing you need to do is to specify your in-app good type in the Google Play Developer Console — either managed in-app products (like in-app currency, ammunition, levels, potions, and other gaming stuff or extra functionality) or subscriptions. Let’s take a look at both.
Managed in-app products
This type of in-app products is called so as the products are tracked by Google Play. But what does it mean? Every time the user buys in-app item, Google Play saves the information about every single user. There are a few things you need to know about this type of in-app products.
- Google Play stores the info even in case the user has uninstalled an app or switched the device.
- If you want some goods to be purchased not once, you should implement consumption. The matter is that there is no possibility to purchase the same thing again without the consumption request until it’s consumed. In order to allow the user to do it, send the appropriate request to Google Play.
- In-app products are connected with one app. Consequently, you aren’t able to publish in-app products for two or more apps. The one-for-one rule in work.
- In-app goods can be consumable (in-app currency, pieces of clothing, spells, potions, etc.) and non-consumable (level packs, premium upgrades, and different tools, like filters, fonts, brushes, etc). Non-consumable in-app products are aimed to provide a long-time benefit to its owner. Consumable in-app products tend to go short or be completely used up.
Subscriptions
The hallmark of subscription is that content or functionality here is sold with automated, iterative annual, monthly or any other billing interval. Subscriptions can be sold to any kind of digital content and from any application type. Just remember that subscriptions cannot be consumable and have to be sold directly from the app, not from Google Play.
So, to handle users’ subscriptions, follow these simple steps:
- Specify subscription products
- Add them to the list
- Fix price and trial period
- Choose a billing interval
- Publish
How to integrate in-app billing
It doesn’t matter which kind of in-app products you’re going to sell, Google Play Store always keeps an eye on the details. Your app will not be able to process any financial transactions on its own. By the way, you should be careful and not confuse selling digital products with selling physical goods and services. To sell something tangible, you will have to use third-party services and integrate with payment gateways, while digital goods selling is Google Play Store’s responsibility.
The next thing to remember is that In-app billing only works for the applications distributed through Google Play Store and make sure have Google Play Developer Console and Google Wallet merchant accounts.
In general, an app gains access to Google Play server with the use of an API shown off by Google Play App installed on user’s device. It processes the billing details between an app and the server.
You can use Google Play’s APIs and SDKs to integrate the in-app billing feature with your app. Server-side API together with client side API will provide your user with extended access to content, such as subscription right from your app or website. Recently Google has enhanced the In-App Billing capabilities by switching to the Version 3. This guide of in-app billing integration disclosed more details.
Hopefully, this information will be useful for you. The answer to the question why in-app purchase in your Android app is the right choice is now obvious. There is no justified point in discouraging your potential users from the downloading by making your app paid. Instead, you can offer them some evident benefits in the form of in-app purchase.
Nataliia Kharchenko
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- ABC’s of In-app Purchase Integration in your Android app - August 31, 2016