How Free Apps (Like OneLaunch) Make Money 
How Free Apps (Like OneLaunch) Make Money 
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24 March 2023

How Does OneLaunch Make Money? 

If you’ve browsed the App Store or Play Store on your phone, you may have noticed that very few companies require payment to download and start using their app. A lot of apps and services on the web are like this — available to you entirely free. So, how do these apps make money? 

Your first thought may be advertising, and you’d be correct in many cases. Sites like YouTube and apps like Instagram earn revenue through companies paying to show users short videos about their products. Others may allow more intrusive advertising such as a pop-up or mandatory short video that you periodically have to watch in order to keep using the app. 

Other apps may have “in-app purchases” listed. This means the app may be initially free but offer transactions you within the app. An example would be a food delivery app, which is initially free but requires you to pay money once you make an order. Another example is a game, such as Words With Friends, which allows you to purchase tokens that you can exchange for features within the game. 

OneLaunch, a free-to-use Windows desktop dashboard, doesn’t have in-app purchases or intrusive ads. It upgrades your current Windows experience with a sleek, modern design. So how does OneLaunch achieve this while still making money? 

Search Ads

OneLaunch earns revenue from search ads. When searching for something on a search engine like Google, you may notice that some results will have Sponsored or Ad next to them. For example, if you Google search for hotels, you may see this:

These websites have Search ads. This is where they pay Google a certain amount of money to display their sites in the search results. However, these websites are still relevant to what you originally searched. This is because most search engines want to maintain the integrity and usefulness of their service. 

Google will still scan websites that have search ads for keywords, such as “hotel” that are relevant to your original search. The only difference is that they may display a search ad higher up in your search results than a non-search ad. 

You may be thinking: OneLaunch isn’t a search engine — how does it make money through search ads?

OneLaunch’s Neil Henderson explains: “Most revenue comes through the Yahoo! search engine that OneLaunch uses. This built-in search bar lets you search the web without having to open a web browser. Advertisers are paying for their websites to show up in these searches that OneLaunch users make.”

Watch Neil’s 5-minute video, where he shows you where the OneLaunch app generates revenue:

As we mentioned before, these ads are still relevant to your searches and come at no additional cost to you. 

Affiliate Partnerships 

While using OneLaunch, you may see a number of powerful apps that we’ve specifically built for you, such as Wallpaper. However, OneLaunch is also host to a number of apps that have services from companies you may recognize. An Amazon shopping app, for example, is available to OneLaunch users. 

This is because Amazon is an affiliate partner with OneLaunch. This means that when you click on and use the Amazon app link in the OneLaunch doc, Amazon pays us a bit of money for sending you their way. There are many different affiliate partners in our apps library, and you can always customize which ones are displayed in your OneLaunch Dock and which are stored away. OneLaunch made sure that our affiliate partners provide excellent services so that making money this way is mutually beneficial to all parties. 

How OneLaunch Doesn’t Make Money

Pop-ups, data reselling, monthly subscriptions, etc. — OneLaunch does not use any intrusive revenue-generating methods that you may find in other apps and websites. OneLaunch aims to seamlessly integrate with your computer and feel like a real upgrade to the Windows experience. 

Bloating your desktop with ads, invading your privacy, and charging you for services wouldn’t be an upgrade — it would be a downgrade. 

If you’d like to try out OneLaunch to see if it’s right for you, consider downloading it for free today. Our dock is highly customizable and built with the features you’ve always wanted.