You’ve spent months(?) slaving away creating the next cool app. You drop it in iTunes and/or Google Play and sit and wait. And wait. And wait. Chances are you will make very little money. Research from Vision Mobile has shown that most developers are disappointed with revenues (Do check out their latest Developer Economics report! Well worth a read). A few years back, other research pegged the median revenue for an iTunes app at $700. Chances are that it is even lower now.
There have been cases reported of developers selling their apps on eBay. And now a whole new set of companies like Apptopia set themselves up to actually sell the app for you. So instead of slaving through your own distribution, is selling your app the answer? We encourage you to look at the interview with Apptopia CEO on Untether.tv (note 1 hour long!).
They brings up a key point: You DO need sales and marketing in order to make money.
At CodeNgo we certainly see this as a possibility. However, if you do not try and distribute your own app, you will never learn some of the key skills it takes to make a successful app: Listening to your customer, iterating, and improving. You may not want to learn marketing and distribution either, but at least companies like ours are here to ease the pain on that. And of course, there is 0 guarantee that selling your app is any easier than trying to get consumers to buy it. But we applaud companies like Apptopia that provide alternative channel. But as with anything in business, you need to weigh the pros and cons and understand what you are doing.
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