Marketplace Does Have Good Dev Support

I don’t have enough fingers to count how many articles I’ve read about Marketplace and how it’s unfriendly to developers, nonresponsive, etc. Well I’ve had several opportunities to test these theories both first hand and through conversations with some developers and as it turns out, Marketplace is a pretty friendly place. Let me start with some first hand experiences. I was talking to some developers and when they had questions regarding app submissions I did the simple task of emailing MS and promptly received an email from people within Marketplace addressing the questions. It was far from painful and far from the stories I had heard. And as questions arose the same process played out, with people within Marketplace providing an individual contact person within Marketplace to assist with the submission process.

Just the other day, I put some of the internet rumors to the test. A story that’s made the rounds is that no developers got paid from Marketplace last month. A Marketplaces spokesperson informed me that “Developers are being paid for their applications in Windows Marketplace. We had the first payout cycle in December, and are executing the second payment cycle throughout January. There are some isolated cases where developers are missing key information needed to process their payment and we are working to address those issues.” I also asked about why developers are penalized by upgrading their applications by having the reviews of their apps deleted entirely and also losing their SKU/hyperlink which makes it harder for developers to link to their apps. I was told “We are aware of this issue and are working on a solution that will be available soon.” Many of the other responses that I was provided dealt with individual applications or individual developers and aren’t appropriate to share but my experiences have been confirmed by developers. If there is a problem, a simple email does seem to do the trick and you should be able to get a  prompt response to any reasonable question.

I’m not here to say that Marketplace is perfect but I do think it’s received some pretty harsh reporting and from the outside it’s hard to tell if it’s really a cold cold world…it’s not. If you’re a developer considering joining Marketplace don’t be afraid. If you run into any problems just ask nicely…