Monetizing PWAs:
Strategies for Earning with Progressive Web Apps
How to make money with PWAs? Is that even possible?
If you think about classic mobile apps, the possibilities are obvious. You can charge money for your app directly in the App Store. Or you can have additional functions activated later for a fee. Each of us will have also seen advertising in apps. But how is this supposed to work with PWAs?
Basically, a PWA is a web application that runs in the browser. Even if you can offer a PWA in stores using PWABuilder, it can always be accessed directly via its URL. Therefore, the aspect of charging money for an app directly in the App Store is actually ruled out.
Advertising is definitely an option. Even though I’m not a fan of advertising in apps at all. But certainly a common possibility.
An application that works completely locally and ideally offline is a very big challenge. Especially since in principle such an application can be downloaded completely from the server in order to run it yourself. In such scenario there is no back-end that performs relevant tasks.
The best way to make money is with additional services. No matter if you have a shop and sell some goods. Offering synching or storage for your PWA. Or do data aggregation on some servers.
Are you worried about data protection in this case? Then you probably run a server yourself and could operate the necessary back-end there. Check out ONCE by 37signals. The old concept of purchasing software relaunched. For sure a way to make money with your PWA (indirectly).
Making money with a PWA is possible. But in my opinion it works differently than with native apps. In order to make money with a PWA, the application serves more as a “shop window” for paid services (or at least needs to consume remote data). No matter whether you pay once or have a subscription. As SaaS or on-premise.