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The only platform that is still monetizable for the little man is the web. I hate to say it but developers brought this to themselves. The amount of pumping and

The only platform that is still monetizable for the little man is the web. I hate to say it but developers brought this to themselves. The amount of pumping and hyping that mobile development got over the years is through the roof. You don't need an app for that. (But then again, developers make money making the apps, not by selling them)

mrtksn 7y ago
How do you monetize the web these days? I don't remember the last time I visited a website that is not an established publication or a storefront for a giant corporation. Google doesn't return interesting lesser-known websites too, it would prefer to bring me an unrelated page from a well-established site instead of something that is new and coming. Not sure why websites would be any more monetizable than apps, with apps you can actually sell something. On the Apps, you can compete on quality. On the web, the only metric is pageviews.
- diminoten 7y ago
  If you browse Reddit or HN for any nontrivial amount of time you'll hit someone's personal blog/project/app/whatever.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    Most of the time It's just a blog that will receive some traffic until the novelty wears out. Probably much better monetizable on Youtube, the ad revenue from few hours fame is not paying any bills. Sometimes it's a service that helps you do something but the website part is irrelevant, just a landing page for the service. Not really a web business. I think the crypto people had some success in these things. The money for the small guy, I think, is in growing social media accounts and do advertorials. edit: is SEO spamming still a thing?
- t0ughcritic 7y ago
  Agree with this. No small or new projects can ever be discovered given keywords and links are hyper optimized and new indies may not have funds to market it.
coldtea 7y ago
>The only platform that is still monetizable for the little man is the web. I hate to say it but developers brought this to themselves. Em, brought what to themselves? Developers make tens of billions from the app stores... That's larger than what the overall app market was in the 90s (including enterprise apps). Of course if there are 1 million developers with apps out there, they shouldn't all expect to (a) hit the jackpot, or (b) make a decent living. There's tons of fluff in the 2 million apps+ in iOS Store, for example, and 90% of everything is crap. You, the parent, take a look at the apps in your PC or phone. Or take a look at the webapps you use. Are they some random distribution of what's available? Or do you have mostly the basic apps everybody almost has (e.g. Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Word, Sublime Text, Photoshop, etc, you know, famous apps, or their FOSS famous alternatives, Vim, GIMP, etc), and the rest are a handful of outliers? Well, everybody else does the same. Nobody choses at random for it to be a random distribution, people use what others use, so the most popular apps get even more popular, and you have a power law distribution.

mrtksn 7y ago

How do you monetize the web these days? I don't remember the last time I visited a website that is not an established publication or a storefront for a giant corporation. Google doesn't return interesting lesser-known websites too, it would prefer to bring me an unrelated page from a well-established site instead of something that is new and coming. Not sure why websites would be any more monetizable than apps, with apps you can actually sell something. On the Apps, you can compete on quality. On the web, the only metric is pageviews.

diminoten 7y ago
If you browse Reddit or HN for any nontrivial amount of time you'll hit someone's personal blog/project/app/whatever.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  Most of the time It's just a blog that will receive some traffic until the novelty wears out. Probably much better monetizable on Youtube, the ad revenue from few hours fame is not paying any bills. Sometimes it's a service that helps you do something but the website part is irrelevant, just a landing page for the service. Not really a web business. I think the crypto people had some success in these things. The money for the small guy, I think, is in growing social media accounts and do advertorials. edit: is SEO spamming still a thing?
t0ughcritic 7y ago
Agree with this. No small or new projects can ever be discovered given keywords and links are hyper optimized and new indies may not have funds to market it.

coldtea 7y ago

>The only platform that is still monetizable for the little man is the web. I hate to say it but developers brought this to themselves. Em, brought what to themselves? Developers make tens of billions from the app stores... That's larger than what the overall app market was in the 90s (including enterprise apps). Of course if there are 1 million developers with apps out there, they shouldn't all expect to (a) hit the jackpot, or (b) make a decent living. There's tons of fluff in the 2 million apps+ in iOS Store, for example, and 90% of everything is crap. You, the parent, take a look at the apps in your PC or phone. Or take a look at the webapps you use. Are they some random distribution of what's available? Or do you have mostly the basic apps everybody almost has (e.g. Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Word, Sublime Text, Photoshop, etc, you know, famous apps, or their FOSS famous alternatives, Vim, GIMP, etc), and the rest are a handful of outliers? Well, everybody else does the same. Nobody choses at random for it to be a random distribution, people use what others use, so the most popular apps get even more popular, and you have a power law distribution.