Nope.. Some are just simple flash games ppl can play on their profile. I also created an app from my blog which just shows feeds, I also have a music app where they can do a search from their profile but the results will take them to my website. I have many more like video apps, chatrooms, news. I made them all at widgetbox.com.. If you're planning on making really basic/simple apps widgetbox is good.
These are some ad networks to use with FB http://www.adblade.com/ http://www.adchap.com/ http://www.appvert.com/ http://www.cpastorm.com/ http://www.cubics.com/ http://www.fbexchange.com/ http://www.rockyou.com/ http://www.socialmedia.com/ http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=18584639088&b&ref=pd http://www.videoegg.com/ Some of these have bad feedback though.
facebook is 100% where the money's at, its just a matter of how best to monetise your app, adsense is cr*p for facebook, and hosting costs for a succeseful app are HUGE. I have blogged about this several times: http://www.costawebsites.com/2008/01/how-to-make-money-with-facebook.html http://www.costawebsites.com/2008/01/make-money-with-facebook-part-ii.html Happy reading! MOG
interesting posts. So what you are saying is buy a FB app, which I presume gives you the code? are you able to change the code therefore creating your own unique app? you then need to install that code on your own server somewhere? I looked at that turnkey site, the problems I would have with that, is that you end up with a app that 100 other people could of bought? why a FB user sign up to "woulddyoudo" if they have sent it already by other people? I think the other point you made in your post is very true right now, there are LOTS of FB apps out there, and people are getting FB app fatigue (look at the FB developers forums to see what I mean), which is why they introduced the rating system. Lastly you think these apps can be sold for that much still?
It is getting a bit off topic, and I have answered all of those questions in other posts, but to refresh for the benefit of the original poster: 1) Yep, the idea is to buy your source code and CUSTOMISE it as much as possible, its the same as a website, if its the same as hundreds of others you aint going to get any good traffic. a few of our customers have some GREAT apps that they have customised from versions of our turnkey ones. You do need to install them onto your own server as well, basically we provide the building blocks. 2) Regarding valuation of apps, the prices we offer are actually a lot cheaper for the complex ones than you can get anywhere, particularly the Tees app, or the Tattoo app, these are both around $60 and would normally cost around $300 to $500 to buy from a developer. ------------------********----------------- BACK ON THREAD!! The question here is one of "where is the money", well, my answer is firmly the money is at facebook, not myspace, which to quote my son is "so last year". Im not trying (overly ) to sell the idea of www.turnkeyfacebookapps.com (I never linked to it in my original post) - Im just drawing reference to my blog posts on making money out of facebook, it is very possible and I have done it many times in the last 3/6 months. Thanks, MOG
Myspace has more members and is more profitable therefor You would think myspace. But even though myspace is like 10 times bigger (sorry if my numbers are off) They have 10 times more apps. Therefor It would be more profitable for Facebook in my oppion
way off base there mate, facebook get a huge amount more traffic than myspace do, so regardless if myspace had 10 billion users, its not as popular hence not as potentially profitable as facebook.
umm....I think it's a nice idea the turnkey thing, but like you said, you need to change the app as much as possible, and that requires programming knowledge which if you already have that, you might as well create an app from scratch! , but I appreciate you pitching in with the concept. My own area of expertise is Flash, and I've been trying to find out how to get flash to load in facebook users info, but it seems strangely quiet on that front, for reasons I suspect are to do with people do not want to give away how that's done. As for the facebook vs myspace api thing, well the myspace API is launched on Feb 6th, so that will be a relatively clean slate to go to work on compared to FB.
what is the situation with the hosting of apps, you said huge costs, can you give me some idea as to how many users/installations = bandwidth?
I've just spent the last 50 mins posting a big list of Facebook developer resource at my site, see link in my signature.
Yes but many of our apps will take weeks to hand code from scratch even for a good coder, or you can buy it off the shelf for $50ish - it depends on what your time is worth, to me thats a great deal. it totally depends on the bandwidth used. A simple quote app with 1,000,000 installed users will only use the same bandwidth as my arcade app with 10,000 users, so its totally subjective. It is hard for me to comment further on it as I own a host, so bandwidth is cheap for me at least! Good list, I actually know and have EVERY other site in the list bookmarked! One thing mate, you listed our www.TURNKEYfacebookapps.com as "Turkey" Apps, which isnt "clucking" right LMAO!!! (by the way, avoid doing triple posts like above, you get infraction points for it, I should know, Im nursing NINE of the little beggars in my account, so im treading ultra carefully!)
haha.....oops! sorry about that dude, I've corrected the title. I don't like doing multiple posts in the same thread, but I'm on a steep learning curve right now and I'm just trying to absorb as much info as quickly as possible. The hosting costs do look scary though for apps.
there are plenty of hosts that are free, you could even use the host in my sig to host your app for free, at www.hostedwith.us
its getting a bit off topic here people....... but in answer to your question just go to www.widgetbox.com and add one their it will take you about 5 minutes.
I would have to disagree with the comments about facebook being over saturated. Sure, it is if you want to do a 'top friends' list, or something that has been put out there a million times. This is true with web design and ANYTHING else in the web and life in general - quality of quantity will win every time. You just have to make something that isn't there yet, and believe me its no where near as saturated as the actual internet.
But I think the point is, is that for the past 6 months you could knock out a very simple app (like a quiz or top whatever), stuff it on Facebook and make some decent money. Now you can't. All the easy idea's are gone. And for the amount of time it takes to come up with an original/interesting idea combined with the extra development time something like that takes, it's now not as clear as it was, whether it's worth the effort or not.