One fact about newspapers – Print newspaper circulation on an average day was on a constant decline of 7% in 2015. And this decline is mounting steadily to affect the sale of a daily as people least depend on them to get the news. As they find it far easier to reach and grab news online.
Talking of that, as per a recent survey by Pew Research Center, only 2% of the population that was being surveyed showed interest in going with the print source to consume information for the elections that recently happened.
Which clearly shows, how the game is turning towards the digital media and mobile apps. And these stats by Knight Foundation further prove how mobile news consumption is growing to replace the traditional sources of gaining access to news.
- People spend over 2 hours daily to read some kind of news on their mobile devices using various news apps.
- About 70% of people surveyed, tap to Facebook to reach the latest news.
And if you compare among websites and apps here is the graph depicting how the time for news reading is shared between the two:
So, that makes it pretty clear that people like to spend more time with apps compared to websites no matter which source it is. But, what does it mean to you as a publisher? Well, that will make more sense to your as an investor, if we talk about the ROI of building a newspaper app.
The Cost of Developing a Newspaper App
Before we unground the details of ROI for creating a newspaper application we must first find out what is the cost that it takes to get developed.
If you go for a simple all-barred app with minimal features for one platform (or let’s call it MVP) you will have to pay somewhere around $12000-$15000. In terms of presentation if you would like to get a richer UI and add depth in terms of features and categories (like live news, most popular, Bookmarked topics, starred categories, most followed etc.) you would be adding about $10,000 more to the total cost of developing your newspaper app.
If you further look to add advanced features and modules (craft your own feed, podcasts, high-end graphics) to it and expand it in terms of resources with self-curated user-feeds, contextual content, animations etc. the cost may shoot up to $40000-$45000.
ROI of Newspaper App Development
Whether you go for an investment of $10000 or $50000 your venture should be focusing on revenues and calculating the ROI beforehand. This means you should have everything in terms of ROI planned before you start to work towards your goal.
For this, you have to first put a complete feature list in place and should be knowing what selection of app properties and features earn you users and in what ways it will keep them engaged that keeps your app busy serving more number of audiences. This should be further allied with the monetization resources and get you going to attract value from it and in turn earn you profits.
For a newspaper app, you don’t get enough options to engage users and you cannot go overboard on features as it is meant to serve just the purpose of allowing users to get updated news on regular basis.
So, what actually you can do to begin with monetization part is make it available free for a certain period of time. And as you start getting enough response from users, you can even get into the paid zone by offering them an ability to access your news to some extent for free. And beyond that make them pay for the rest of the coverage/material/value. This can be some number of news feeds or a certain exclusive column or personalized subscription.
How to plan your revenues
Though there are different ways you can plan your revenue building strategies but there are only a few that are more immediate and effective for an app like this.
There’s a report related to revenue generation of iPhone apps that depicts that an average user spends around $35 every month on paid apps (or paid subscription part of apps). Which shows there is a great potential here if you plan your revenues well.
When you look to develop a newspaper app, you should be counting in paid subscription conversion rates, mobile advertising, promotional campaigns, digital reach and distribution in order to enhance the revenue earning potential.
These options are easily adoptable and can be carried off pretty effectively and there’s a proven response to such paid events.
There is a data from the year 2016 that says that the business advert outlay crossed the whopping figure of $100 billion counting globally. Which means there’s a huge potential for earning through digital ads and promotional campaigns.
Further, if you can combine it with intuitive engagement features and interesting readership programs or append it with community forums, you can increase your revenues to great extent.
Conclusion
So, that sounds quite lucrative. If you really have a passion for owning and running a newspaper app you can always find different ways to build an ROI plan that pays you off well. And who knows you can be as lucky and successful as newspaper apps like NYTimes, BuzzFeed, and Feedly. Only your time, choice and efforts with newspaper app development will decide how far and big it turns out for you!
If you would like to know more about newspaper app development, you can reach our experts at sales@konstantinfo.com.