Thread: Developer selling his profitable iPhone/iPad app on eBay

Think this can get interesting especially for people who want to get in the business. The only issue I can see is from an updates. Unless you know how or know of someone that can do it for you it can be an issue. However, if you are making money then its a non issue. I'm sure that could be improved to make more. Good opportunity to develop a market place to resell apps.

Mobile app developer Neal Schmidt, maker of the scavenger hunt game Buckshot, is selling his iPhone app on eBay where it had a starting price of just $1.00. The app was posted to eBay on December 29th, and, according to the listing is for “complete ownership” of the game, including both the free and paid versions.

As of today, the app has received 17 bids and is currently up to $202.50.

According to the seller “nSchmidt7,” the multi-player photo scavenger hunt game now has attracted 20,000 registered players since its May 2011 launch. It generates $300/month in revenue from sales and iAds in the free version. In addition, the Amazon cloud server the app runs on is a little more than $2/day.

The developer also claims its the “easiest thing in the world to maintain” – which of course begs the question, why sell the thing? That piece of information is notably missing from the app’s listing. A guess? The longtail of mobile app development in this case wasn’t profitable enough to be worth the effort, as minimal as it may be.

But the sale is apparently legit. Both the developer’s Twitter account and the app’s Facebook Page link to this blog post detailing the eBay sale, which also showed up via tips. The seller’s account has been an eBay member since March 2008 and has a 100% positive feedback rating (61 reviews).

According to the listing, the sale will end on January 5th. We’ve reached out to Schmidt directly to ask why he’s decided to move on from Buckshot, and will update when we hear back.

Update: Neil has responded explaining why he’s selling the app. He says he’s tired of paying $99/year to use iTunesConnect, is tired of Apple’s 30% cut of everything he generates and is tired of waiting in line for a week or more with the Apple Review Board every time he has an important update. (Ouch!) Going forward, Neil says he will invest his time in HTML5 development instead.

Developer Sells iPhone App On eBay, Starting Price: $1 | TechCrunch

Link to the ebay sale?

Originally Posted by pmdowd6

Link to the ebay sale?

If its not in the article google is your friend.

BuckShot iPhone App | eBay

Swinging $5k... this will be very interesting in the next day.. seeming how he has pulled in $20k +/- so far.

that's one way to make money off of apps :P

Wow it's up to $14,600!

yikes sold for $16.6 i bet it was probably a company that owned a few aps already, or someone just getting in who thinks they will make it big revising this ap.