How to Make Money on Your dApp: An Ultimate Guide

Blockchain powered mobile apps – dApps have started a trend of their own.

The technology that was brought into existence for revolutionizing the finance domain has not just found a place in multiple industries but has also now started giving a plethora of use cases on the mobile landscape.

The dApp market has grown to such an extent that entrepreneurs from across the globe and from across a range of different industries have started crowding the space, looking to hire blockchain app developers  and finding answers to how much does Blockchain app development cost. 

While you can find the answer on how to create a dApp in our Guide to Blockchain development, a relevant question to ask here is how do decentralized apps make money?

How Did I Come Up With the Idea of This Blog?

I was recently working on an app – Empire – a hotel booking app powered on Blockchain. At the time of the ideation of the application, I got this question thrown at me – How would my dApp make money?

Although, at the back of my understanding of the idea, I helped them with a few monetization models like – Subscription and Transaction fees, etc., I realized that there are not many people who know how to make money with Blockchain-powered top dApps. So, I decided to write a blog on the same topic. 

But, before we get to that part, you can first read how non-decentralized applications make money for a better understanding.

Only after looking at how the traditional apps make money, you would fully be able to understand the impact of the different grounds that both app types stand on. 

Now, let us look at some of the ways your Blockchain focused application can make money in the market.

How Do Decentralized Apps Make Money?

The answer to how to monetize a dApp take entrepreneurs through many routes, let us look at what those most traveled on roads are:

1. Crowdsale and Token Launch

The foremost dApp business and revenue model to consider is to bootstrap a project through crowdsale and back it with a token.

If you plan on taking the route, you will have to keep following things into consideration –

• The main functionality of your decentralized app
• Provide access to the network
• Distribute profit to the token holders

2. Transaction Fees

Another model that is present in almost all the guides on monetization of dApps is charging transaction fees. Charging users for availing your service can be one of the most profitable ways to make money by developing dapps.

This is how one of the most popular ways to monetize your Ethereum dApps work –

A purchases something from B on your platform

X% of the amount goes to you – the service provider

100 – X% then goes to B

The caveat here is to know what percent of transaction fees to set. If you allot a high amount, someone will eventually copy your smart contract and offer their own version with a less to zero transaction fees.

3. Premium

Taking cues from the traditional, non-decentralized gaming apps, you can too add the monetization functionality in your app to answer the investors’ persistent question on how to make money with dapps.

If yours is a gaming app too, you can add the model and offer players a chance to up their game without working on the levels by buying the premium functionality using digital currency.

4. Subscription

You can easily add a membership or subscription element in the contract to ensure that the function has only been called upon by subscribers or the premium members.

The time frame of this subscription can be:

Usage-based – The users would only be allowed to call function X times

Time-based – Users would be allowed to call in a function till X time passes

5. Advertisements

While still a very new/ less used blockchain business and monetization model, advertisements do in fact find a place in the answer to how decentralized app development makes money.

So, you should think about adding it to your list of dApp monetization strategies.

6. Donations

If your dApp project is out to solve some world issue or to function around some social cause, you can put a donate button on your application or website or can even pass its link around to social entrepreneurs to donate.

7. Create Digital Goods

One of the biggest examples of how Ethereum apps make money using this monetization model can be seen in CryptoKitties.  

What CryptoKitties did is that they developed generation 0 kitties and gave them to the platform users to keep as a collectible. By making the kitties functional and unique and viral trending, they were able to attract users to put their money in the digital good.

8. Referral Marketing

Referral marketing that has proven to be behind e-commerce app success can also be taken into consideration to make money with Ethereum based decentralized applications. In fact, there are a number of Blockchain powered platforms on the internet today that give you a link to their website to promote. And depending on the clicks or traffic you are able to send their way, you get paid by them.

So, here are the eight best decentralized apps business models and strategies you can look ahead to enjoy maximum outcomes from dApp development.

If you are also planning to create a dApp or want to know how decentralized apps make money, it can be a good start to consult the best Blockchain app development company in USA.