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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.
I wouldn't exactly call $9k per month pocket change.
$9K/mo is not exactly "shitty pay", mister 1%-er.
If building skills for Alexa is where the money is, that's where people will go. The phone app ecosystem is overcrowded and hard to stand out. Alexa skills aren't yet: you can still do alright there.
That price will drop once the flood of Chinese, India, and Filipinos cash in on the action....perhaps paid in BTC too.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
For longer than he'll keep spending time creating those skills. That's not bad. I'm expected to keep producing every single work day if I want to keep getting paid.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
For no healthcare, no superannuation, no benefits.... itâ(TM)s shitty pay dude.
For a side gig? For royalties on something you've already created? Seems pretty good to me. I don't get paid anything for code I've already written. My boss is hooked on me creating NEW code ALL THE TIME!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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...
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.