Facebook Developers Are Not Making Any Money

Developer Are Great At Making Cool Apps, But Horrible At Monetizing Them

The love-hate relationship between developers and marketers has always amazed me. Developers can make the product or service. Marketers can market and sell the product or service. It makes sense that they would get along and look to partner. For the most part, however, they do not.

When you look at the sheer number of Facebook applications that are now live and then compare that with the number that are making money, one has to ask themselves why are Facebook developers looking to part with savvy marketer who know how to monetize their creations? John Chow points out that at a recent Facebook garage event of the nine Facebook applications that were presented, only one was making money. The one that was making money, was only making $5 per day.

Not every application is built with making money in mind, but it is unfortunate that developers do not value their time and effort more. As a marketer (who has little programming ability), I would probably give an eyeball to be able to develop applications. Everyday I see applications come out that have so much money making potential that it sometimes drives me crazy.

As I look out at the Facebook application economy, I truly believe that developers who do not know how to monetize their applications or do not partner with a savvy marketer to generate revenues, will eventually end up selling their work for pennies on the dollar to some savvy marketer, or worse yet, see their application duplicated by someone else who know how to better market and monetize an application.

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