Monetize

Below are some common ways to monetize voice apps. Don't limit yourself to just selling in your app.

Enhance your Existing Product

For some brands, there may not be a direct way to make money within a voice app. But it can often enhance your customer's overall experience, in the same way that many companies provide mobile apps that don't directly make money. For example, Sonos doesn't charge its customers to use their Alexa skill, but it makes their product more appealing by offering voice control. Same for WeMo and FitBit. And some customers may even pick one product over the other because of their voice app.
You can use account linking with voice assistants to connect users to their accounts, and then provide them personalized information based on their account.

Drive Traffic

For some brands, voice apps can be a successful way to drive traffic to their website, store, event, and more. For example, flash briefings can be used to tease stories and then drive a listener to read or watch a new story to learn more.
Voice assistants are yielding more web traffic In addition, Matt Jones, SEO executive at online tutor platform Tutorful, said Google Assistant will now tell users they can open the Google Home app to see more at the end of a verbal answer. “So not only are you raising brand awareness through the initial answer, Google is now directing users to head to the app and navigate to your website to read more,” he said. “As time goes on, this will become more and more common with more users navigating to websites – meaning you'll get more traffic coming through to your site from voice assistants. It's also worth noting that these users have fairly high intent.”

In-App Purchasing

Some of the voice assistant platforms support users making payments within an app. The following are a few ways to make money within the app:
Physical Goods Users can buy physical products within an app, such as buying clothes or concert tickets.
Digital Goods Users can also buy digital goods within an app. There are three common purchase types:
  • One-time purchases: Entitlements that unlock access to features or content within a skill.
  • Consumables: Content or features that can be purchased, depleted, and purchased again. For example, hints for a game, in-game currency or extra lives.
  • Subscriptions: Offers access to premium content or features for a period of time. Users are charged on a recurring basis until they cancel their subscription.

Donations

Amazon Pay for Nonprofits Giving is easy. With Amazon Pay, making the actual donation is, too. In just a few steps, you can enable 24/7 donations powered by voice. Due to demand, this program is by invitation only.
Google Assistant can now make charity donations on Android and Google Home “Hey Google, donate to charity” or “Ok Google, make a donation” begins the contribution process. Assistant will ask you to name the organization and then suggests donating the average amount of $10. Users can customize the amount, or specify all that information at the beginning of the command.

Advertising

Increase Audience Size Companies who already have advertising built in to their business model can extend their reach via voice apps, such as radio stations, tv stations and news agencies.
Anchor.fm Anchor Sponsorships makes it easy for podcasters to get sponsors, create custom ads, and make money. Currently available in the U.S.; expanding to more countries soon.
Instreamatic.ai Dialogue advertising creates a huge win for everyone: users get a better ad experience, advertisers can measure campaign performance and engagement, publishers benefit with higher ad and fill-rates. We stand for building an open voice ad ecosystem. Our AI solutions are open for everyone: app developers, media companies, ad agencies, DSPs, SSPs, ad networks.

Developer Rewards

Alexa Developer Rewards Every month, developers can earn money for eligible skills that drive some of the highest customer engagement. Developers can increase their level of skill engagement and potentially earn more by improving their skill, building more skills, and making their skills available in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, France, India, Italy, and Spain.
Not only can developers make money, they can save money too with AWS promotional credits. These credits can help you build and host your Alexa skills for free. There’s no better time to bring your ideas to life.
Google Assistant Developer Community Program We want to thank you for building great Actions for the Google Assistant! To support your efforts and celebrate your accomplishments, we put together an ever-improving program with benefits and incentives that are tied to specific milestones.