Facebook Cookbook

Where’s the Money?

Problem

I’m totally excited about building my app, but something keeps bugging me. Where’s the money in this game? How can I make mad cash through my apps?

Solution

If you’re in this app-building game to make a quick buck, you’re in the wrong game. There was a time when your app could attract a million users overnight, but those days are long gone (and probably for the better, since users hated being bombarded with constant app propaganda). Platform has evolved to become much more focused on keeping users happy, sometimes at the expense of app developers who had gotten used to attracting users through certain channels and are adverse to change.

That said, if you’re determined and ready to put in the work, you can definitely still make a really good living from Facebook apps. There are lots of examples of developers (some of whom have contributed recipes to this book) doing very well off the apps they’ve built. Try to stay away from the tempting world of quick, throwaway apps, in which you build hundreds of them, keep the ones that make a little cash, and hopefully end up on top of the world. Sadly, this often just leads to lots of apps that don’t make any money, and it upsets the small user base they attract when you stop supporting them, thereby guaranteeing that those users won’t install any more of your apps and would firebomb your house if they only knew where you lived.

Discussion

Generally speaking, people who make money from Facebook apps do it by running ads ...