It's an interesting question indeed. I think it's not profitable for real developper with skills. They won't spend time on a project where their work is not respected and rewarded. This is why in 99% of cases, you only find clone coins with people who don't know how to program well and cause big bugs (various problems in the recent PoW/PoS coins for example). I wonder how devs behind projects like Netcoin and eMunie will launch their coin, and how they will premine it...

I think it's much more paying for devs to make sharewares or services for bitcoin where the market is well-established.