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When will the free ride in free apps end?

GoodEnough

GoodEnough

Golden Member
Billions have been spent in creating free apps with no business model beyond, "Maybe Facebook will buy us for $500 million". Now that that fantasy is winding down, what is going to happen with hundreds of free apps for each thing you need to ever do? Or did this already happen?
 
Um, free ride, yet billions have been spent?

They'll be vectors for malware and security issues via advertising and poor coding like they've always been?
 
Majority of the "free" apps are limited in functionality and ads pop up once a while. You'll have to pay for get the real deal, ads free. :\
 
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What percentage of apps actually recouped their development opportunity costs via silly little ads?

1%? .00001%? Power curve at its finest, winner take all.

It's like saying music artists are paid by Spotify. Yea, like $12.
 
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GoodEnough said:
What percentage of apps actually recouped their development opportunity costs via silly little ads?

1%? .00001%? Power curve at its finest, winner take all.

It's like saying music artists are paid by Spotify. Yea, like $12.
Click to expand...

The free apps that are popular and don't make enough alone on ads are the type that are likely offering in-app purchases.

But a lot of free apps are not developed with the intent of buyout, nor do they cost a shit ton in developer salaries.

The free apps like games make money hand over fist because people buy the stupid things offered in the app. That's why the free to play games are so insanely popular right now, because they entice more people than paid apps, but comically enough, I bet those same people who wouldn't buy up front end up getting sucked in and pay far more in the long run.
 
GoodEnough said:
What percentage of apps actually recouped their development opportunity costs via silly little ads?

1%? .00001%? Power curve at its finest, winner take all.

It's like saying music artists are paid by Spotify. Yea, like $12.
Click to expand...

Quite a bit. Apps really don't take much to develop. There are tons and tons of apps that developers knocked out in maybe a weekend, which even if they're well compensated (say $100K salary), that'd be like a couple of grand. And for a lot of people the apps are just a learning experience, kinda like how you'd make simple websites or programs learning HTML or VisualBasic, only now you can get money from doing that. They're not making gangbusters by any means, but they are getting money. Sure few (really probably none) of them make enough to sustain a career as an independent software developer, but there's obvious reasons why that is.

The startup apps which you seem to be taking real issue with are done quite a bit differently, but considering despite the various bubbles that have burst, a lot of investment gets thrown at companies like those because there's the potential to get in on the ground floor of a juggernaut. Risk reward, same as it ever was.

Not to mention, look at how many companies somehow continue despite not selling a product. Lots of open source development has continued thanks to that. You take the good along with the bad. If the market adjusted the "free ride" people out we'd lose a ton of valuable resources and would absolutely be worse off.

That's a horrible analogy. Sure if you're working for a large corporation and developing apps you're probably getting paid about that level of compensation compared to what it brings in, but that was your decision. Artists complaining about Spotify tend to not understand that situation happened for a lot of reasons. There's also a reason most of the really outspoken ones about that tend to be ones that have only ever done business with labels (and as such are being fed BS by the labels so that the artist will speak out, since the labels know people won't shed a tear for them since they're the ones that have been screwing artists over for decades).
 
Why would it have to cost that much to make an app? Not all apps are made by huge companies with tons of overhead. Some are made by people for fun. When I was a kid I used to release little windows utilities on cnet download.com because it was fun. It's not always about the money.

I need to learn mobile development some time actually. I'd probably do Android as I don't think it costs anything to get into and that's the kind of phone I have so I'd be able to test them.
 
What I have seen from free software is one of two schools, the open source school, where people write applications that they want to use
or the 'garbage school',with advertisement garbage or microtransaction garbage.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Why would it have to cost that much to make an app? Not all apps are made by huge companies with tons of overhead. Some are made by people for fun. When I was a kid I used to release little windows utilities on cnet download.com because it was fun. It's not always about the money.

I need to learn mobile development some time actually. I'd probably do Android as I don't think it costs anything to get into and that's the kind of phone I have so I'd be able to test them.
Click to expand...

It doesn't cost anything to get started (nor does Apple, IIRC) but both require subscriptions to their developer network before you can publish apps on their store. Apple is $99/yr, and Google is $25 one-time. In addition, Apple is a bit of a PITA because all releases and updates require the apps to be "approved" by a human which can take a few days to over a week, while Android is more in the "it's approved until people complain" camp so app releases hit the public in just a few hours.
 
i'm working on a free app right now that is a mobile dating game/app that will allow users to purchase coins to use on premium features. however in the game/app there are ways that the users can earn a certain amount of coins for free with bonuses that we have in place.

while we have that as well as another revenue model in place, the end goal is yes to be bought out by something like tinder or one of the other big players because we have something that could potentially threaten their userbase.

and in the end if we get absolutely nothing out of this, then it will be something i can put on my resume and i'm still the VP of engineering at a company (although with a failed first product lol).
 
GoodEnough said:
What percentage of apps actually recouped their development opportunity costs via silly little ads?

1%? .00001%? Power curve at its finest, winner take all.

It's like saying music artists are paid by Spotify. Yea, like $12.
Click to expand...

i have made well over $20k since 2010 doing my own hobby apps in my spare time. my most recent one (and first one i've tried with this) is a free app with ads and you can disable the ads, as well as get more features, for 99 cents. right now i'm earning about $3-5 a day in ad revenue and more than that in premium features.

but the amount of work i put into it is very trivial as well. i have a suite of apps that i've built that all use the same framework, and with minimal code changes, all i have to do is make some new graphics and a new data sheet, and my app is ready.

so the "development costs" are fairly low for this app. doing these apps the past years has also put me in the position i am in to work on a more serious side project that could potentially have a huge payout. without my experience in mobile i would not have hooked up with the guys i am working with now.
 
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