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.
Selling complete ownership of my iPhone App on eBay: loggingpass.com/index.php/ipho…
— Neal Schmidt (@nSchmidt7) December 30, 2011