Along the lines of @Kamille_Parks’s questions, I think I just don’t understand what incentive I have, as an independent developer, to build and maintain Apps in Airtable’s Marketplace.
I will certainly be developing Apps for myself. I have some inkling of desire to share some of the Apps I build with others, for their general benefit.
What I don’t have is a desire to receive a flood of incoming email from people I don’t know asking me for upgrades, bug fixes, improvements/enhancements, technical support on an App I decided, out of the goodness of my heart, to share with the world – and especially when there is absolutely no economic incentive for me to do so.
Marketplace seems like it makes a lot of sense for established companies that have a web service with an API. They have an incentive to publish an App on Airtable’s Marketplace for free, to move users towards their service and offer a desirable integration.
But I just don’t see how this makes sense for someone like me - a casual, independent developer. I work hard in my free time to develop quality Apps that I think others can benefit from. My reward for publishing these in Airtable’s Marketplace is that, if I want to benefit economically from this, I have to set up any payment processing and information gathering myself, and have no way to really police the use of my app; and in addition, I am on the hook to receive and respond to any manner of feedback regarding my App.
The economic incentive just isn’t there. I had imagined, as Custom Block’s beta began and was rolling along, that Airtable was targeting individual developers, “Makers” and “DIYers” if you will, with the platform. But it looks like they are targeting companies providing a web service that have an economic incentive just by having incoming traffic to their API’s and services. This is fine - it’s a valid direction to go - it’s just a little disappointing to someone like me.
