Developers: Even this app will sell, why are you missing out?

February 11, 2010 | By Surur

Joel Ivory Johnson, a pretty active mobile developer, has written about his experience in submitting a simple application to marketplace. The very simple demo application, Speedtracker, which simply measures speed using GPS measurements, was coded specifically to test the ease of the submission process.

Joel initially planned to release the app for free, but was convinced to try and charge for it, and released it for the lowest cost, $0.99. The app became available about a month after submission.

He reports sales of nearly $100 in the first week, and now seems to have developed a taste for the money, as he plans to release an update with better utility and a more attractive user interface.

The lesson developers should take away from this however is that Joel will likely make a few hundred dollars from possibly a 2 hours of work, and that the submission process to the Windows Mobile Marketplace is not onerous.

In essence, if you have a simple application and are not porting it to marketplace, you may as well be flushing your money down the toilet.

Read Joel’s blogpost here.

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About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged marketplace, software

http://intensedebate.com/people/l3v5y l3v5y

I would be on the marketplace, but Microsoft have said they will be letting DreamSpark developers get into Marketplace for free, and I can't really afford the $99 fee.

That's my reason anyway!
http://intensedebate.com/people/Strangerx Strangerx

$99 is just too much if you plan to release your apps for free, thats why marketplace won't see a high number of free apps which is sad

That gave me an idea, I'll start a business offering developers to release their free apps for $0.99 over my account. So I pay the $99 and the devs only pay $0.99 per app/per year. Would I get rich with this? Not really. Would it cover my costs? Definetely. Would Microsoft allow this? Nope.
http://www.philippewechsler.ch Phippu

So should I realy sell my "psycho app"(http://www.philippewechsler.ch/TigreSoft.php)? I think no, I'd prefer finishing my first 3d game and sell it for 4.'99:-)

http://intensedebate.com/people/wmpoweruser wmpoweruser

Given that its done already, and is pretty simple and therefore easily pass certification, why not sell it on marketplace?

And btw, it looks great, and is certainly more interesting that a random fart app.

http://intensedebate.com/people/simbadogg simbadogg

this is exactly why marketplace really needs to tighten up its submission criteria. they should really have a category in their submission checklist that says something about the UI of the app, because even if an app works well, it sucks when it works well but it looks like utter crap

http://intensedebate.com/people/j2inet j2inet

I've actually given lots of though to that. And unfortunatly there's no clean cut way to codify the properties of a good UI. The application was meant to be a "hello world" type app just so that I could write about the certification process. But as mentioned in what I wrote Edward of MSMobiles.com told me to charge for it. So I put a price on it to prove that some of his assertions were wrong and that it wouldn't sale. I stand corrected.

My actions here aren't motivated by money. Improving the UI to the application isn't for improving sales. rather I still plan to follow through with my original plan and make the code free just to illustrate how I adhered to some of the Marketplace guidelines. The only way I know to do this without *punishing* those that paid for it is to make an update in the marketplace to those that have purchased it. Having paid money I think they should have something exclusivly different from what is available for free.

admin

I really do not think they would mind that much. iPhone applications go free all the time for example, and its not like they paid $100 for it.

http://intensedebate.com/people/j2inet j2inet

Good point. Either way I'm working on a new UI for the program tonight.Not sure when I will be submitting the update though, I plan to get it translated into one or two more languages before submitting the update.

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