How Amazon App Store Deals Developers
Three months ago, we decided to try to place our applications in the Amazon App Store. At that time, many thought that this was a solution to problems with Google Market; analysts like Andy Inatko admired him .
The main feature of the Amazon App Store is the action called “Free App of the Day.” According to their public conditions, they pay developers 20% of the regular price, even with free distribution. And customers and naive developers may think that this is a great chance to earn serious money - a rarity for Android. But Amazon has one dirty secret - they don’t actually pay a cent. When they choose you to participate in the promotion, you will receive such a letter:
(Selection in the original message.) We asked them to confirm the proposal, which seemed crazy to us:
They have replyed:
It seemed to us very much one-sided. Amazon persuades developers (who are often in dire need of fame) to give away their applications for free, for the benefit of Amazon. We have a controversy over whether to accept this offer. I was sharply opposed; my partner for In the end, we agreed that since we started developing on Android as an experiment, it would be strange to abandon another batch of experimental data. So, the day of the action has come:
Yes, Amazon gave 101,491 copies of our application! At first, we thought we misunderstood something and really earned the indicated $ 54,800 per day, as it would have been by public agreement; but now we can confirm that because of the secret agreements with Amazon, we earned $ 0. But maybe we have benefited from advertising? By no means, the next day, sales increased slightly, and then returned to the original level - several orders a day. Moreover, Amazon also sprinkled salt on our wounds - just a few days later, they lowered the price of our application to 99 cents.
')
All we have achieved is 300 letters a day for the next few weeks. It is possible that most people who would have bought our app got it for free. Worse, Pocket Casts uses our servers to parse streams of podcasts so that new releases instantly fall on users' phones, and we needed to buy new equipment to cope with the increased demand (and in the foreseeable future we will have to pay for its operation).
What infuriates us is the fact that the public is confident that Amazon is paying developers to participating applications. Absolutely everyone we asked was sure that by downloading the application, they help the developers (well, they get a free application at the same time). Amazon not only does not try to dispel these misconceptions; their letters forbid even to mention changes of conditions. But this is not our only claim to Amazon:
In general, we asked the question: "Why do we deal with them at all?"
Yes, we understand the counterargument: we voluntarily accepted the terms of Amazon, no matter how ugly they were, so they are to blame. Well, maybe. Fortunately, for us this is really just an experiment, and our main source of income is apps not for Android, but for iOS. However, we don’t want to give Amazon the freedom to exploit those who are not so lucky.
So, from now on, we are completely leaving the Amazon store, and not only us .
We apologize for the inconvenience to everyone who bought our application in the Amazon Store (as many as 200 people). If you want to upgrade to the version from the Google Market, and receive compensation for your purchase, we will be happy to help. For more details, contact us.
For those who downloaded for free, we are sorry, but there will be no more updates. Your copies will still work with full functionality, but if you like the application so much that you cannot do without updates, you will still have to buy it :)
Translation add:
The main feature of the Amazon App Store is the action called “Free App of the Day.” According to their public conditions, they pay developers 20% of the regular price, even with free distribution. And customers and naive developers may think that this is a great chance to earn serious money - a rarity for Android. But Amazon has one dirty secret - they don’t actually pay a cent. When they choose you to participate in the promotion, you will receive such a letter:
You probably already know that the Free App of the Day is one of the most visible and valuable positions in the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your application in this program. In our experience, this action brings tremendous results; You will certainly get a lot of positive feedback and traffic. It is an opportunity to promote your brand in close connection with the Amazon brand. The current price of this placement is 0% of the income for the day the application is hosted.
(Selection in the original message.) We asked them to confirm the proposal, which seemed crazy to us:
Thanks for your letter. If I understand correctly, you want to distribute our application for free and don’t pay anything to us? This is very generous of you, but we like to get paid for our work. I understand that Amazon is trying to promote its store and get more users. But the fact is that now you have the reputation of “a place for downloading free applications”, and for developers who do not place ads inside applications (for example, for us), there is nothing good in this.
We would willingly agree if you paid us the 20% that was indicated in our original agreement, but this new option is only beneficial for you.
They have replyed:
Thanks for the reply. The promotion “Free App of the Day” is the most valuable and prominent place in our store. It was used to launch such successful applications as “Angry Birds Rio”, “Plants v. Zombies and many others. Amazon does not receive any share of revenue from the free app of the day; and after one free day, you automatically get a place on the Appstore homepage for the next 14 days.
And these valuable accommodations cost you absolutely nothing. We want to advertise your application by exchanging the placement for 0% of the income for just one day.
It seemed to us very much one-sided. Amazon persuades developers (who are often in dire need of fame) to give away their applications for free, for the benefit of Amazon. We have a controversy over whether to accept this offer. I was sharply opposed; my partner for In the end, we agreed that since we started developing on Android as an experiment, it would be strange to abandon another batch of experimental data. So, the day of the action has come:
Yes, Amazon gave 101,491 copies of our application! At first, we thought we misunderstood something and really earned the indicated $ 54,800 per day, as it would have been by public agreement; but now we can confirm that because of the secret agreements with Amazon, we earned $ 0. But maybe we have benefited from advertising? By no means, the next day, sales increased slightly, and then returned to the original level - several orders a day. Moreover, Amazon also sprinkled salt on our wounds - just a few days later, they lowered the price of our application to 99 cents.
')
All we have achieved is 300 letters a day for the next few weeks. It is possible that most people who would have bought our app got it for free. Worse, Pocket Casts uses our servers to parse streams of podcasts so that new releases instantly fall on users' phones, and we needed to buy new equipment to cope with the increased demand (and in the foreseeable future we will have to pay for its operation).
What infuriates us is the fact that the public is confident that Amazon is paying developers to participating applications. Absolutely everyone we asked was sure that by downloading the application, they help the developers (well, they get a free application at the same time). Amazon not only does not try to dispel these misconceptions; their letters forbid even to mention changes of conditions. But this is not our only claim to Amazon:
- It may take up to two weeks to check the new version (I lost count of the number of questions, why there is a later version on the Google Market).
- Amazon sets the price at its own discretion, without asking developers.
- Amazon changes your application description; in our case, they came up with "adds up to 100 podcasts." I have no idea where they got this number from.
- Amazon does not report any errors found (unlike Google).
- They do not yet support multiple apk for one application.
- They pay much later than Google. In fact, we still have not received a single check from them.
- Works only in the USA.
- Much less real-time sales information than Google.
- (This surprised us especially) There is no regular opportunity to remove the application from the store, for this you need to contact support. In no other store, we have not encountered this.
In general, we asked the question: "Why do we deal with them at all?"
Yes, we understand the counterargument: we voluntarily accepted the terms of Amazon, no matter how ugly they were, so they are to blame. Well, maybe. Fortunately, for us this is really just an experiment, and our main source of income is apps not for Android, but for iOS. However, we don’t want to give Amazon the freedom to exploit those who are not so lucky.
So, from now on, we are completely leaving the Amazon store, and not only us .
We apologize for the inconvenience to everyone who bought our application in the Amazon Store (as many as 200 people). If you want to upgrade to the version from the Google Market, and receive compensation for your purchase, we will be happy to help. For more details, contact us.
For those who downloaded for free, we are sorry, but there will be no more updates. Your copies will still work with full functionality, but if you like the application so much that you cannot do without updates, you will still have to buy it :)
Translation add:
- Yes, the contract is not broken. We did not say this. This TechCrunch article formulates the problem more clearly than happened in this post: techcrunch.com/2011/08/02/amazons-appstore-youll-make-0-when-we-give-your-app-away-and-youll -like-it
- The status of our application in the Amazon store: "Expired". I do not know what it means, but it sounds ominous :)
- Particularly pleased were the people who wrote: “Oh, you hide how much they sold in the next two weeks. Surely millions have earned! ”There was some temptation to write“ Damn it, we were exposed! ”, But someone could take it seriously. Here is the sales schedule for July (the action was on June 27; if you think that we earned a lot from June 28-30, then this is already funny ;-P):
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/125529/
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