

Ask HN: Do people make money from Facebook Apps? - abuzzooz

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time posing a question, so please be gentle. I searched HN but didn't find anything similar (not recent enough at least).<p>I have an idea that I think would be quite popular on Facebook (at least among my FB friends). I think I will go ahead and implement it anyway, but was wondering if FB apps really make money.<p>If there is anyone with experience writing (and, more importantly, successfully monetizing) FB apps, then I'd appreciate sharing their experience.<p>Thanks.
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portman
Yes.

The easiest way to monetize is with banner ads from one of the 40+ authorized
Facebook ad networks. <http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/> Believe it
or not, people DO click on banner ads, and you should see about a $0.10 eCPM
for US and UK traffic. (Traffic outside of those two regions often have less
than a penny eCPMs.)

The second-easiest way to monetize is to create a virtual currency that has
value to your users, and sell that currency via Facebook Credits.
<http://developers.facebook.com/credits/>

I've personally built about a dozen Facebook apps, and have been involved in
close to 100. A general rule of thumb is to expect to make $100/month for
every 10,000 monthly active users (MAUs). A modest success on Facebook can
garner about 100K MAUs which should net you in the low thousands of $USD per
month.

If you want to support yourself full-time, you'll need to aim for 1,000,000
MAUs.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

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abuzzooz
Helps greatly. Thanks for the info.

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dmc
Zynga are an extreme 'yes' example.

I have experience with some FB apps, mainly just app versions of websites.
These were not monetized(by me at least).

<https://developers.facebook.com/> is your friend!

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abuzzooz
Thanks. Zynga are the exception rather than the rule. I don't expect my app to
go viral like Farmville (but I wouldn't mind if it did!).

I've already been all through FB's dev website, but wanted to get some
feedback from real users.

Thanks again for the input.

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noodle
do facebook apps make money? yes, some do. how? same way as normal web apps.
some charge subscription fees. some use ads. some will be or are using credits
to sell things. etc..

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wmboy
...and some get acquired by EA Sports.

