On May 22, 12:53 am, JP <[email protected]> wrote: > On May 21, 10:47 am, Shane Isbell <[email protected]> wrote: > > > One company I worked for had a mantra: "Provide the best quality you can to > > every profitable customer." You've got a free app, so if this guy doesn't > > use your app, it doesn't cost you anything. > > By the standard of profitability, my guess is there would be about a > couple dozen apps and a fistful of games. > Not sure how this is going to get sorted out in the future. It takes a > good effort by anyone to develop and maintain meaningful apps that > never see the play to cover the cost, at least measured at > professional rates. In particular niche apps like public > transportation trackers have hardly any commercial potential. I > suspect that even prominent apps like Layar (just pulling one out of > the hat) don't play in much; they basically burn through venture > capital and hope they can get profitable somehow before they run out > of funds. > Add "customers" like the above, and it doesn't seem to make sense to > set up shop in the mobile space, at least in indie app development, or > am I missing something? >
I'm approaching this from the real earnings potential. With the public transportation tracker, I would develop it as open source in case I get hit by a beer truck. The answer to the negative user would be modify the code to remove the ads if they don't like it. Then, say it's a subway app -- I would visit or call businesses near each subway stop, show them the app and explain your ad can be here and here's how: Show them sites.google.com and have them establish a web presence (if they don't have one already that's mobile enabled) and suggest establishing an AdWords account. They can easily maintain the site themselves (think daily specials for a cafe) and you can add them to your portfolio to demonstrate to the next business. In exchange, I would request free ad space for my services on their site. Or, barter for anything -- free food! Google's latest offerings are only limited by the imagination. Dave http://thesmithden.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
