Imagine sitting at your boring day job knowing that tens of thousands of dollars were pouring into your checking account during the day. That’s exactly what happened to Steve Demeter when his iPhone game Trism hit big in August.

The game, which he created in his spare time, made Demeter $250,000 in its first two months on Apple’s “App Store” — enough to entice him to quit his job as an ATM software designer and start his own game development studio.

But Demeter’s game earned mere pocket change compared with some of the other independent developers who’ve hit it big recently. Look no further than Ethan Nicholas, a one-man team who watched his own game, iShoot, climb to No. 1 on Apple’s list of most popular paid applications.

In just two weeks, iShoot netted Nicholas almost $400,000 in profits… and the application is still selling as we type. That mountain of money has prompted Nicholas too to quit his day job at Sun Microsystems to pursue game development full time.

The move was a decisive one for Nicholas. And his response to those who ridiculed his move to leave his lucrative day job was in the true spirit of a self-made businessman: This is why you will never be rich.

There’s also the story of the hit iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge. The application is essentially a handheld version of Guitar Hero, in which the player attempts to tap the proper notes to the beat of a song. The game, which is available for free on the App Store, has been downloaded over two million times.

Tapulous, the developer of the game, recently started inserting advertisements in the game. With a strategy that has become increasingly popular during the broadband era, the company gave away their product for free, and then figured out how to generate revenue later (much like Google did with Gmail).

The potential of the mobile applications is enormous. Small software developers stand to make a great deal of money as smart phones become increasingly common.

But just because you don’t have any game-creation skills doesn’t mean that you’re precluded from getting a piece of the mobile game market — and who knows… maybe, you too will be able to quit your day job. We believe this mobile marketing revolutionary will make a significant impact this year, and the early small-cap investors stand to make some huge profits along the way.

Best,
Greg Guenthner

January 23, 2009

Greg Guenthner

Greg Guenthner heads up Agora Financial’s small-cap division and is the founder of one of the only independent OTC research advisories in the industry. A graduate of George Mason University, Guenthner joined Agora in 2005 after several years as a journalist. He is managing editor of Penny Stock Fortunes and Bulletin Board Elite.

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