14 DAY TRIAL // Worried that spending too much time on Facebook is affecting other aspects of your life? Now, you can turn this time sink into revenue while also ensuring that your friends spend more on the social network as well. AppBank, a new startup in the crowded world of Facebook app makers, has an interesting plan, one that is already profitable for the company and, interestingly, also for its users. The idea is rather simple, AppBank provides an app creation platform, which allows users to make their own quiz apps or games in return for a share of the revenue.
“After months of development and operation in stealth mode, we are excited to announce the release of our crowd-sourced, paid content platform. This patent-pending system is the first platform that allows developers to make money for creating applications on Facebook. Anyone can do it, there's no need to understand computer code, no website maintenance, and best of all it's free! All you have to do is create quality applications and then sit back and relax and watch the money roll in! Turn your spare time into 'cash time!',” the company announced at the public release.
The product has been in private beta for five months now and has already proved rather successful. Apps created on the platform attracted eight million monthly users in August and the company has some very lofty goals hoping to gain as much as 50 million users by the end of this year. While the number sounds rather optimistic, considering that it managed eight million in “stealth mode” and taking into account how popular Facebook apps can become, it may achieve it with relative ease. Zynga, the biggest app maker at the moment, is well past the 100-million monthly users mark.
There are a number of app platforms allowing users to easily create their own Facebook applications but so far AppBank is the only one offering a revenue benefit to its users. And the idea seems to be working as the company is already profitable and, if everything goes according to plan, it should bring in about $1.2 million by the end of the year, somewhat of rarity in the world of startups.