Making Money with Voice Assistants: 6 Practical Business Models With Alexa and Google Home

Voice assistants have steadily incorporating themselves into our daily lives. They can be found in our phones, cars, houses, wearables, and just about any device considered to be “smart.” The rapid improvements that voice assistants have made over the last ten years are truly impressive especially considering that ten years ago they were practically non-existent with the exception of some niche consumer apps.

In 2011, however, Apple introduced Siri as a native personal assistant to the iPhone, kicking off the modern day voice assistant race. A year later, in 2012, Google launched Google Now which then led to Google Assistant and, two years later, Amazon made Alexa and Amazon Echo available to Prime members. With the future of voice assistants clear, entrepreneurs have been looking for and have found ways to make money using voice assistants. 

We are going to introduce you to six ways you can make money with voice assistants today.

Develop Voice Applications

Perhaps the most straightforward way to make money from voice assistants is to develop them for a company or individual. This means you can just develop a voice applications, as Amazon Alexa Skills or Actions fo Google Assistant. 

Companies large and small will increasingly need voice applications as an extension to their website or as a way to enhance customer experience. This is an opportunity that is growing because more people and businesses are recognizing the positive impact voice assistants can have on their business and want to make use of them.

Voice-controlled Gaming

The voice recognition market is expected to grow from $10.7 billion in 2019 to $27.16 billion by 2025 while the video game industry is expected to reach revenues of $180.1 billion in 2021. These two industries are very large and still growing very quickly but can you merge these two industries? Of course and many companies have already done so. 

By creating a game that can be controlled by using voice, you can tap into two very innovative industries where lots of money is being spent and made.

A major benefit is that Amazon makes it easier for you to benefit from both these industries not only through Alexa Skills but also through in-skill purchasing. Your customers won’t have to leave the game to purchase a premium feature, they can do it right there in the game making their experience in your game even better. Making use of this will not only increase your revenues but will also improve customer experiences which will be beneficial in the long run.

Voice Assistants for Appointments and Reservations

If you run a business, such as a hair salon, restaurant, a doctor’s office, or any business that requires individuals to make an appointment or reservation, enabling your customers to make appointments via their virtual assistant is more convenient and improves the customer experience. 

You can make it easier for your existing customers to make appointments by using their Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant powered devices. This will not only make it easier and quicker for your existing customers to make appointments but also give you the edge over competitors because you now have an easy way for customers to make appointments or reservations. 

Having customers make appointments through their voice assistants is a sure way to build customer loyalty, trust, and provide a better experience for your business.

Voice Commerce

With the advent of the Coronavirus in 2020, many businesses and institutions were asked to close their doors to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. This requirement pushed everything online making E-commerce incredibly valuable. With this, businesses that had a market in the online space saw their business boom while brick and mortar companies were hit hard and scrambling to enable an online presence. 

We all experienced this and very few expected it. Many individuals are now asking “What’s the next big thing for commerce?” The answer is voice commerce.

In 2021, voice shopping accounts for an estimated $2 billion in consumer spending. The number of digital voice assistants that are expected to be in use by 2024 is 8.4 billion units, this number is higher than the current world population. It is also estimated that 51% of these users will be using them for online shopping making the total potential market for voice commerce well over $150 billion. These stats tell you one thing, voice commerce is on the rise and will be the next big thing. If your online store does not allow for voice commerce, your business could share the same fate of brick and mortar stores in 2020.

Making use of voice commerce will make online shopping easier and if it is easier people will do it more frequently. Walmart is already leading the way in implementing voice commerce technology, but a large part of the e-commerce industry has ignored this opportunity. Ensuring that your online business makes use of and encourages voice commerce is going to secure your business as one of the front runners of the industry in the future. 

A benefit of voice commerce for customers is that with Amazon Pay customers can shop using the same payment methods on their Amazon account to pay for goods and services. This makes voice commerce easy for customers to switch to as they don’t have to set up an entirely new payment method.

Selling Digital Goods

Developers can sell content within their skill whether it be on Google Home or Amazon Alexa. These digital goods can be accessed through either one-time purchases, subscriptions, or consumables giving customers access to what might be considered premium content. 

An example of this is a customer asking for the weather report in their area and then asking for it in another area in which Alexa might reply, “You requested a premium feature. Would you like to pay for it?” Giving the customer the ability to pay for this feature right then and there using Alexa’s In Skill Purchasing, for example, increases the revenue opportunity while reducing consumer friction.

Selling exclusive content access can be enabled via Paid Skills, where users pay for access to your voice application, or via in-skill purchasing, allowing for a more freemium model via voice assistants.

Professional Coaching

Voice assistants are proving to play a valuable role in mental health and professional development, especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. In itself, the value of a voice assistant to the average user already mimics that of personal coaching and it’s already been shown that real-world personal applications are helping us make better-informed decisions.

With the combination of Paid Skills, In-skill purchasing, and Amazon Pay, Amazon specifically, has created an environment where Professional Coaching services can thrive via voice assistants.

“There's No Future That Doesn't Have Ambient Computing or Voice Activation”

- Mark Cuban, Entrepreneur

Tools like True Reply, that make creating and managing voice applications accessible to anyone, will help spur the next generation of entrepreneurs and citizen developers. These examples of practical businesses are just scratching the surface of the kinds of businesses that can benefit from voice and grow via voice assistants.