My entrepreneur friends and I have many apps like this that were learning experiences or that never materialized into anything. I was having a conversation with

My entrepreneur friends and I have many apps like this that were learning experiences or that never materialized into anything. I was having a conversation with someone just yesterday brainstorming with them how to wind up a project like this and helping them to get past emotional attachments, sunk costs, etc. The thing is that when someone buys an app you've finished, but that isn't generating revenue, they're buying both an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity is obvious - maybe you can turn it into a money printing machine. The problem is the developer cost to maintain and improve the app. Unless it's a complete business that's generating cash already (in which case it would be worth more than $10K), it's going to cost significant $$ for another dev to maintain and build on it. Most dev salaries are around $50k to $150 per year. But lets assume you offshore it, find some killer talent and pay them $20k per year. If it needs 2 years of work and growth to be successful, that's 400% more than the $10K it costs to buy it in the first place. [Ignoring time value of money] The point I'm making is that the $10K price tag is arbitrary to a buyer because what they're really getting into is a much larger commitment and quite a bit of risk. So what to do? I don't have the answers but I'll throw out 2 ideas: 1. Open source the project and recruit your friends to keep building it. Use the publicity and interest surrounding it to drum up consulting gigs worth more than $10K and funding and credibility for future projects and businesses. 2. It might not be a home run because Facebook has done it, but spend an additional 20% of the time you've spent so far to put in place a payment processing system and charge for the service. You may make more than $10K per year in recurring revenue. Just because Facebook did it doesn't mean you can't too.