Code Justin

Posts Tagged ‘can you make a career off shareware’

I have been pondering this for a little while now and from my research I have found that there are very little market places in which you can sell your applications.  In a nutshell I’m a solo indie developer that can not produce commercial quality graphics.  Looking around Google I found some app stores but really the only places that seemed to allow indie developers are iPhone’s app store, Flash game license sites and Facebook.  The other applications stores/portals required a higher standard such as being a company or denying app submissions due to the quality of graphics.  All three of the places I had mentioned are pretty much flooded right now with apps so it would be fairly hard to really break in and make some money.

The reason I’m trying to find an established virtual market vs selling my own shareware is the fact that I do not have that kind of fan base to really even sell my own products.  Plan and simple I crunched the numbers and found that I would have a higher chance at selling more units if I had my product in a store that already has a large customer base.  Plus even if I do have an application in a store that doesn’t mean I can’t market it outside of the store too.

Basically what I’m asking today is what you guys think the likely hood of making a living is from creating applications?  I’m finding it a bit hard to get a job right now and was thinking that I might be able to make just as much if not more if I can find a nice outlet to sell a steady stream of products to.  Also which market place do you think would be the best with generating revenue?  I’m thinking the iPhone app store might give me the best chance at making a little money but I would have to buy a Mac to submit my apps.  Would there be a better place to try and sell my own apps?

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