You can make money on Mobile apps through 3 major ways:

i Selling via your apps and making Profits:
For example, Banks have Mobile apps that customers uses to do day-to-day transactions like paying bills, sending money, purchase airtime, etc. Each time customers uses this app to perform a transaction, banks make profits from the transaction.

ii. Using your apps to make Money via Advertisement.
The second way is to use Mobile app to make money via Advertisement. This is the model that popular apps like game apps like Farm Frenzy, Flappy Birds, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc uses to make money. Advertisers pay to place ads on your apps and you get a share when users of your app sees or click on advertisement.

iii. Combination of both Adverts and In-App Purchases
There are apps that shows adverts and users also have options to purchase upgrade, updates, items inside the app.

What I will be dwelling on in this post is on how you can make money on mobile apps via advertisement. I will be using Google Admob as the Advertising partner. They handle all the behind the scene for you while you focus on developing and improving on your apps.

The below highlights 7 Strategy to make Money on Mobile Apps.

1. Choose a Niche
You have to choose a Niche/Area to develop app for. It could be in Health, Games, Finance, Cooking Recipe, Entertainment, News, Gossips etc.

2. Buy or Develop the App
You can purchase ready-made apps on various app selling platform like codecanyon.com, develop the apps yourself or pay for it to be developed for you.

3. Do App Store Optimization (ASO) and publish on Play Store
To make your apps visible, searchable, downloadable in Play Store or App Store, you have to do ASO which is App Store Optimization. In the Website World, it is usually called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You have to do keyword research, what are people searching about that is related to your apps, after you have discovered them, you have to include those keywords while Updating your App details on the App Store/Google Playstore.

4. Get Downloads
Without your app being downloaded and used, you can't make money through your apps. You can promote your app via paid promotions to increase downloads and usage, you can write about on websites, social media, so as to make it discoverable, or searchable. Google Admob also offers Cross-promotion for your apps. The key is to make sure, your app gain necessary visibility so as make it accessible to users all over the world. To increase downloads, you can also do language translation for your app, because it is not all users that understand English, but when your app is localized, it makes it easier for people to find it and use them.

5. Get Ratings and Reviews
As your apps get downloaded and used, you start getting Ratings and Reviews and More visibility on the PlayStore. To increase your Ratings and Reviews, you should implement Ratings mechanism inside your app, that will take users to the PlayStore so as to drop reviews and rate your Apps. It may be after a user reaches a stage on your app, or spent x-minutes, days on your app. It is up to you.

6. Push Notification Strategy
This strategy enables users to get notified about your app on their device. This days, the dumping rate of apps is very high, so, if your app is on users mobile device, one way to make them come back into your app is through Push Notification. One popular platform that are effective with this is Onesignal.com. You can implement from your own end when to notify users of your app about new feature, or updates or just reminder of your app. Without users coming into your app, you can't make money via your app.

7. Monetize
One means of Monetizing your app is through Google Admob. You simply create space on your app that adverts can be placed by Google, and when users engage on the ads via impression or clicks, you get a share of the advertisers money. You can implement Banner ads, or Interstitial ads. Banner ads takes a portion of the screen while Interstitial ads takes over the entire screen and users can either click or close the advert depending on their interest and choice.