Great apps make an indie developer $61,321.59 in Windows Phone Marketplace

Do you remember our Christmas Lumiappaday #39? In case you forgot, that was a rather nostalgic Nokia snake like Nom Nom Worm, an excellent accelerometer based worm eating game.

http://mynokiablog.com/2011/12/25/lumiappaday-39-nom-nom-worm-demoed-on-the-nokia-lumia-800/

Last night, I read some news that kinda wowed me. Elbert Perez, the developer for that app (and Perez has made several others) made $61,321.59 dollars from his apps in 2011. Note, we don’t know what the scale is in terms of how much other developers are earning, this is just one example that has appeared.

Either way, that’s a spectacular number and not surprising since he does make quality apps. What is surprising though is that the price of his apps? ZERO. They’re all free. And the cheapskate student that I am loves this price 🙂 It makes it very easy for other folks I guess (e.g. Steve our smartphone noob) to go install their apps.

How do they make revenue? Through in game ads. That’s amazing! Our own ads here are just about covering hosting etc (though I have received mail that I should optimise it better) anyway. I think it’s good to know that at least for Windows Phone developers, you CAN EARN LOTS OF MONEY with free, advert supported applications. Now that’s not saying we shouldn’t have paid apps, especially not when I don’t have those numbers at hand.

My point is, that regardless of the relatively small user base of Windows Phone, if you make a good app, people will download/buy it. There is an audience for your apps. I can’t find the story, but I recall another instance of an actual paid app that was cross platform. It sold BETTER on Marketplace than App Store even though no marketing went to the WP store. Yes there’s higher competition in iOS and a lot more noise, BUT it shows again that great apps gets sales. Great APPS GET MONEY. If there wasn’t an audience there, then it wouldn’t make sales at all, no? We should all be familiar with this because similar stories were reported earlier in the year and last year about Nokia/Ovi Store. There aren’t that many apps, but good apps get sales because there are enough people wanting to download them. The same is not necessarily true for an app store like WebOS’ or BlackBerry where they both do not have that many quality apps (or webOS, no apps at all) and neither do they have a user base wanting to download. Quite a shift since I also remember last year, BB store was one of the more profitable ones.

2012 will be a very good year for new developers to come in to WP marketplace. There is an expected boom in users due to Nokia and as shown, with their entry shows a spike in growth of marketplace apps. More apps, something else to attract those users. More users, more people to download those apps. More people downloading apps, something to attract developers to that platform. (Of course that’s only one side of what WP and Nokia need to address).

Source: Occasional Gamer via WPcentral via WMPoweruser 

Category: Nokia