Sergii Baidachnyi

New life – new developer account in Microsoft Store.

I just moved to Vancouver, BC, so I decided to open my own account in order to publish some Windows Phone and Windows 8 applications. Today, you can pay $20 and get unlimited account there. But from the one hand, I still don’t have a local bank account in Canada, and from the other hand I already heard about a program, which provides some benefits for new developers, who don’t have Store account yet. That’s why I decided to start with https://devcenterbenefits.windows.com/ site.

As you can see, according to the program, every developer has a chance to get many benefits from Microsoft like consulting, priority support, gift cards etc. These are very cool benefits because thanks to them, every developer has a chance to increase quality of his applications as well as get some tools for promo. Probably, later, I will share my experience about each of these benefits but right now I found that I am able to get Free Dev Center account.

Of course, I clicked “Join Now” at once and passed several registration steps there.

In the first step you need to login with existing Live ID or to create a new one.

At once as you logged in, you need to accept the program agreement and click “Accept & Continue”.

In the next step you are able to submit links to your application in order to get upgrade to the next level of the Dev Benefits program. Because I just wanted to create a new account I skipped this step. You will be able to add your applications at any time, later.

Next step allows you to help Microsoft to understand who you are and what you are going to do on Microsoft platform. You can answer these questions or just skip this step.

Finally, my Dev Benefits account was created and I got access to my offers including free developer account.

Pay special attention there that in order to redeem your registration code, you need to agree that you will publish your first application in 90 days. So, if you are not ready to build your application right now, don’t click the button. If you redeemed you code but didn’t publish the application your offer could be expired (but I didn’t have a way to check it).

Therefore, I spent about 3 minutes in order to get my registration code. Additionally, I spent 2-3 more minutes in order to create my Store account using this code. And CREDIT CARD WAS NOT REQUIRED!