Ask IH: What is the best monetization for macOS wallpaper app?
Hello IH. I'm working on a native macOS menu bar wallpaper app with lots of features. It can:
- Show random wallpapers from different sources (unsplash, wikiart, national geographic daily, etc)
- Update the picture automatically, based on the time interval
- Have the ability to set desktop widgets (e.g. show year percentage, weather, system info, etc)
- Show a collection of handpicked screensavers and apply them
- Various filters for wallpapers (blur, amount of gray, etc)
I want to create all-in-one mac customization app with beautiful UI.
I have two questions: - Would you use it?
- What monetization strategy in your opinion is the best for this app?
You need to sell b2b. it will be a laptop background implementation of grow.com. Venture funded CEOs/companies are obsessed with metrics of all sorts. They'd pay for everyone to have that. A 150mil + funded org in Raleigh thats going public in next 2 years has 50" flatscreens all over their office to show the grow.com dashboard of the relevant metrics. I'd be shocked if putting it on at least the C level execs home screen isn't worth real $$$ to them.
I would use it. However, I've been using several in the past years, such as Irvue, Wallbot, Satellite Eyes, each with their own qualities and issues. The latest I'm using is Wallcat (https://beta.wall.cat/).
But they are all free. I would only pay for a wallpaper app if it offered something really unique, though. From your list of features, none of them seems to make it for me. It would be great to have something that played with the new Dynamic Wallpaper feature of Mojave, for example...
Yep, I was thinking about the dynamic wallpapers, maybe I even will include some dynamic wallpaper builder!
I use the Unsplash official app as my wallpaper app.
I like its simplicity and minimal configuration.
As you may already know it is free.
Your idea sounds great for people who are into this sort of things. I personally, wouldn't go beyond what the Unsplash app offers.
About your questions:
Yes I would use and I wouldn't pay for it, but this because I am a student, so probably I am not your target market. I think they are many people, especially on ProductHunt that may pay for it.
As far as I know for macOS apps tend to be one-time payment model for a lifetime license. And this seems to be work best for menubar apps.
I agree, if I ever paid for a wallpaper app, it would have to be a single purchase, not a subscription model.
I wouldn't use it personally, but I have a friend who is into this kind of stuff. He likes to customize his apps and environment, so he might be the target for this.
As far as monetization, I am not sure if he would pay for it, and he definitely would be disturbed by ads.
Maybe once it gets popular, stock websites would pay to get featured in your app? I don't have an abundance of great ideas for the topic sorry, but that's my two cents.
Thank you. Yes, ads can be the worst type of monetization in some cases.