Depending on your target audience you should leverage different methods with different ratios. Some of the ways a free app can make money include in-app purchases, earning commissions by recommending a product or service, subscriptions, sponsorships and advertising. Some of the commonly used apps are Adobe Experience Design, Sketch, and Buildfire. Usually developers use different apps to design mobile apps. Once you have measurable, provable, product market fit you will likely be able to raise additional investment to grow the business more rapidly.
From there, you will want to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to see if you can find product market fit. The both The Lean Startup is an excellent guide to help you avoid costly mistakes in the process of starting a mobile app business. Before taking the time and money to develop a mobile app, you should confirm that there is customer demand for your particular mobile app.
