Slashdot Mirror
What Amazon's Alexa Economy Pays the People Building Its Skills (cnet.com)
From a report on CNET: On a lark, Joel Wilson started developing skills for Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, this past January. After a few weeks of coding, he launched two skills -- Amazon's term for voice-controlled apps -- called Question of the Day and Three Questions. Both quiz people on science, literature and pop culture trivia. In May, he got an email from Amazon telling him to expect a check in the mail as part of a new program that pays cash to makers of popular skills. That first month, Amazon sent him $2,000. It got better from there. He's received checks for $9,000 over each of the past three months, he said. Wilson unexpectedly joined a new Alexa economy, a small but fast-growing network of independent developers, marketing companies and Alexa tools makers. Two years ago, there wasn't nearly as much to do on Alexa and the market for making Alexa skills was worth a mere $500,000. Now, with more than 25,000 skills available, the market is expected to hit $50 million in 2018, according to analytics firm VoiceLabs.
whooooooooo carrrrrrrres
World's richest man, leverages technology invented by socialist universities paid by taxes he avoids, showers pocket change on the hoi polloi!
What wonderful times we live in.
Neat! Now you can work for Amazon and get no benefits and really shitty pay! Boy, this American economy is just humming right along...
I don't respond to AC's.
This will make me as much money as I already invested in Bitcoins. I will just write a program that will ask both Google and Siri the questions and have them give the answers.
This I can run 24/7.
And while we are at it, please be faster with responding to your captcha. My car does not know if it is a car in front of it or a storefront.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Napoleon D. offers some insight on the topic of skills.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Obviously. But not well. 50M is laughable.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
These voice servants just have no real utility for me. Yes, it's exciting to use my voice to turn off my lights, but frankly my remote control I prefer. Guess I just don't understand the joy of asking them for the weather forecast, tell a joke, or read a recipe. I went through a list of top Alexa skills, not one was of any use that I could see...
What Amazon giveth, piracy will take away, because everything digital doesn't have the same protections as physical items. So a sustainable livelihood can only be built upon what piracy can't touch.
Here ya go.
It's useful to think about the real numbers here:
The most successful independent developer CNET interviewed made about $30k off his two skills over a one year period (not a steady $9k/month).
The low end of independent skill writing was some amazon server credit for two years of work.
The high end of paid skill writing was $100k for a skill, and that's for the guy who worked on developing Alexa and left to start a company writing skills for companies wanting smart advertisements on the system. The low end of paid skill writing was $300 with a $100/month upkeep fee.
Much is made of the $9000/month (!!!!) the independent guy brought in briefly, but the best money here is in writing the smart advertisements for a set fee.
I want residuals or go fuck yourself.
Does Google have similar app platform?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion