7 ms·

Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core

231 points by markfenton 15y ago

nekgrim 15y ago
Duplicate : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2836024 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2836024
- seanalltogether 15y ago
  It's weird, I tried submitting this story about an hour ago and was taken directly to that thread instead of it going through the system, I wonder why this link made it through?
  - ConstantineXVI 15y ago
    This one was HTTPS, therefore technically a different link.
  - Macha 15y ago
    This link is to the https version, the other (and presumably your attempt too) was to the http version.
jccodez 15y ago
I have done discounted promotions in the past, but we did revenue sharing and it turned out great. 100k free downloads is painful. I wonder if there is a way to tell amazon to limit the free copies to the first 5k people who download, then go into discount mode.
rkalla 15y ago
<edited to remove the unintended snarky tone and clean up some points> What I got from this blog post is that they made an uninformed decision, and ended up with an unexpected result that pissed them off from the perspective of "lost sales". The email from Amazon clarified there were no money to made and sure enough, no money was made. The added costs of the server is unfortunate and justifiably something to be upset about (especially if you weren't accounting for it), but I have to point out that the sales before the free-app-of-the-day listing[1] were slow: 2, 4, 14, 20 sales... then 101k copies given away in one day. For an app selling 10-20 copies a day, how much would it have cost that company, paying a PR firm, to get it infront of 101k new users (forget about payment)... how many tweets would you have to get out or blog posts written to make 101k people aware of your app? Amazon gave that company an incredibly aggressive marketing campaign for 1 day and from where I'm standing, gave that company an enormous opportunity to be successful with a future app or future subscription services for their existing app. I think things like what Amazon are doing certainly don't fit in the old model of software sales and if you are betting the company on that model, it is going to be a painful trip for you. Something to consider is that if this app offered a subscription-based premium mode or some in-app micro transactions and just 5% of people that downloaded the app engaged in that, I think the tone of this entire blog post would have been completely flipped about how awesome the Amazon model is. Even if that app could simply be used to announce the release of a new app in the app store from the same company when the time comes that would be a huge amount of people seeing that announcement that would not have otherwise seen it (not the full 100k, but whoever is still using the app). Given that, I would assert that the Amazon App Store model isn't broken, it is just different and requires some planning to take advantage of. If you have a flexible business model and can roll with the punches and take advantage of opportunities like these and see them coming you stand to benefit quite a bit from Amazon's free app of the day. Let's say everything I've typed up until now is garbage and you waved it all away, another reason this was a good thing for the company: reviews. Out of 101k people that now have this app, how many are going to eventually leave reviews? 20? 30? How many reviews may be a half to a full star higher because the app was free and there isn't that feeling of being owed value by the reviewer because they got your app for free. So now let's say in a few weeks (or at some point in the future) this company now has 15, 20 or 30 reviews on this app, all fairly good (4 and above). Now that the app is no longer free, how much higher in the search results is this app going to show up for people when they are searching for apps like this? How much more likely are people browsing the Amazon App Store to buy this app because it has such good reviews? I would argue had this guy listened to his co-founder and not flown off the handle, and left his app in the app store, and built off of this success he would have seen sales gradually increase over time, similar to how it was trending before they had the one day give away. All those sales before the give away were people finding the app because (I assume) they wanted an app like that. The one day give away was likely a bunch of people that just grab every free app they see each day. Either way, it sounds like he took the gift horse he was given by Amazon, punched it in the horse-face and then let it run off a cliff because it wasn't the exact horse they were expecting. </end-backseat-internet-business-driving> [1] http://shiftyjelly.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/results2.png?w=497&h=175 http://shiftyjelly.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/results2.png?...
- shiftyjelly 15y ago
  Can I just reply here? Here goes. I think you missed the entire point of the article. We agreed to be featured, we stand by that decision. What we take issue with is the public perception that Amazon pays their (publicly stated) 20% of the asking price for developers to be featured. They don't. Simple as that. Everything else is a beef, yes, but not our primary beef. Also we left it a month, we got featured June 27th, it's now August. Virtually no change in sales on Amazon.
  - rkalla 15y ago
    shifty, Admittedly, my response was focused more on the other beef than that single point. Given how much other information was in the post, I didn't think the 20% == 0% was the central argument; my apologies for missing that. My core belief that in the long(er) term that the give away likely would have helped the movement and sales of your app still stands though. I think you leaving it in the store for an extra month is valuable data point, but not quite enough for me to categorically agree with "Yep, totally experiment failure, f Amazon!" Did any reviews come in from any of those massive downloads? How were the reviews? What was the average score? I would give up the argument completely at 6 months after a few more update releases if there were 0 reviews and 0 sales, otherwise I stand by my original statement that this was a GOOD thing for you and your company. It is my feeling that you are focusing too much on this bait and switch. Fine, it happened... but you also have your app on 101k more devices than you did the month before so do something with that, flip your perspective a bit and take advantage of it. You cannot convince me that having your app on 101k more devices in 1 day is a bad thing (except maybe the server costs). It may be scary/odd/unexpected, but you guys are smart, you will figure out some good way to grow from this.
    - rkalla 15y ago
      Would appreciate clarification on the downvotes guys. If I'm missing something let me know.
      - mbateman 15y ago
mcantelon 15y ago
>Amazon gets to set the price of your app to whatever they want, without any input from you, or even the chance to reject their price ... Amazon re-writes your description, and in ours they even made up things ... you can’t remove apps from their store That doesn't seem great.
- robtoo 15y ago
  To be honest, this is true of every product that Amazon sells.
  - irons 15y ago
    But it's not true of any other app store with which Amazon competes. Whether or not it's true of Walmart isn't really relevant.
  - autarch 15y ago
    No it's not. Amazon does a lot of selling for third parties who set their own prices.
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  Re-writing descriptions is such a bizarre thing to do I don't know why Amazon would choose to do it. Clearly they are getting things wrong in the descriptions, which is misleading to customers, which must be illegal in some fashion. Holding apps hostage -- not being able to choose unilaterally to remove them -- is beyond the pale. Whose app is it anyway? Does Amazon think they own these things the second they get uploaded?
  - phreakhead 15y ago
    They rewrote the description of my app, also with mistakes. Very annoying, especially since if you try to change it it takes at least two weeks to show up! In the span of app sales that is a lifetime!
- neuroelectronic 15y ago
  Yes, but they still pay you as if they charged full price. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. The description thing is just odd though.
robtoo 15y ago
thanks to Amazon’s secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day. These secret back-door deals that were so secret that they were written in bold in the email, so secret that they noticed this and wrote back to amazon, and so secret that amazon then confirmed them. They were offered a crappy deal, realized this and double-checked it, but decided to go for it anyway. When it turned out that the deal really was pretty crappy, they then act surprised and self-righteous and blog about it.
- cbs 15y ago
  These secret back-door deals that were so secret that they were written in bold in the email Secret to the masses, not the parties involved. Yeah, its bold, but its bold in an email between two parties where they agree upon terms contrary to the public terms.
- eavc 15y ago
  It does seem problematic that to consumers it seems as though the dev gets a cut.
  - watty 15y ago
    A cut of what?
    - funkah 15y ago
      Amazon's money.
      - jonknee 15y ago
        Amazon's didn't make any money either, it was a free app. I doubt your average downloader thought for one second about the relationship between Amazon and the developer. They saw free, they downloaded. Who other than the app developer and Amazon care one bit about the financials of the deal? When I see a great sale in a store I don't care if it's the store or the manufacturer taking a hit.
Jacobra 15y ago
It seems like small developers could get around this by releasing some kind of trial edition on the free-app-a-day promotion.
- rkalla 15y ago
  From what I understand, Amazon won't feature a trial or "lite" version of your app for the Free App of the Day. It doesn't have the same value-proposition for users.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Developers don't chose to be part of the promotion, Amazon hand picks them.
wallflower 15y ago
I've been doing a binge of Kindle buying recently, and I have noticed that a lot of the more expensive books have a price that is set by the publisher. Now, in the Amazon AppStore, perhaps the larger publishers will eventually be able to set a minimum price. The prices are already so low but better than zero. I love Amazon's FAAD, and I feel safe downloading any app from Amazon while the Google market is more strip mall than indoor mall. The new Market app is a major improvement though but I am anxious to download let alone buy anything with less than 250k downloads.
ghempton 15y ago
Lots of larger studios actually pay to acquire installs of their app to get an initial placement on the charts and to drive organic growth from there. In that context, 101k new users for free is very valuable.
- barredo 15y ago
  But it didn't get any growth (at least the 5 next days) and it is costing them server money to provide service to these new users
akeefer 15y ago
I was curious what their developer agreement actually says; I didn't bother signing up us a developer, but their FAQ states: "What is the payment structure between Amazon and me? Amazon pays developers 70% of the sale price of the app or 20% of the list price, whichever is greater." https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#Sales https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#Sales, Payment and Tax That's clearly the bit the author was referring to as being deceptive: in public they state that developers will always get at least 20% of the list price (which leads some people to think developers still get paid when their apps are listed as free), but in private they ask developers to take 0% of the list price when they promote the app as the "free app of the day."
foxit 15y ago
There are a lot of points in this - both in the sales pitch that Amazon gave the developers and the outcome of having participated - that are strikingly reminiscent of the Groupon experience for some businesses. (Many, even, based on the links dibarnu posted.) http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316 http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316
- neuroelectronic 15y ago
  I guess you're leaving the actual comparison as an exercise for the reader. IIRC, both involved people who had little business savvy and a missed opportunity presented as a regretful decision. no money is exchanged here however, and they never detail the cost occurred to them by the extra load.
jexe 15y ago
It seems like a purely promotional placement, Amazon isn't giving you money that neither you nor they received -- that seems perfectly reasonable to me. If you don't want to bear the auxiliary costs like server load or customer service, you don't have to agree to it. If Amazon is correct, though, this promotion should mean that post-promotion sales are higher than pre-promotion sales. But the chart ends on the day of the promotion. Though there's a little text about it, I'd be curious about more detail on how things are shaping up afterwards. Either way, up to them of course, but it feels a bit extreme to me to abandon ship because of agreeing to an unsuccessful promotion and because they're behind in features vs. the Google market.
kemiller 15y ago
My understanding was that the 20% figure applies only to cases where Amazon changes the pricing of your app without your specific approval (which they can do). There is apparently enough demand for the top spot that they can ask the developer to take the hit. Up to them whether they do or not.
jamespo 15y ago
Are there any stories of positive experiences (for Developers) with Amazon's App Store? This is the second bad one I've read on here.
woodall 15y ago
My worthless 2cents. > Did the exposure count for much in the days afterwards? That’s also a big no, the day after saw a blip in sales, followed by things going back to exactly where we started, selling a few apps a day. In fact Amazon decided to rub salt in the wounds a little further by discounting our app to 99 cents for a few days after the free promotion. Well here is the image with sales numbers from the day after. http://i.imgur.com/bBovl.png http://i.imgur.com/bBovl.png What I'm seeing is a a huge sales/profit increase; $300 that day as compared to <$50 before. Full discloser, i.e. sales from the subsequent days, would be very nice to see at this point. Next logical step? You have a >100,000 user base so push an update to the free app so that it now includes ads. The tone of the article feels like the author is just upset he didn't get his way- "I was against putting the app on Amazon and my partner was for it"- so now he is trying to make himself appear "right". It's called pivoting.
- phreakhead 15y ago
  "You have a >100,000 user base so push an update to the free app so that it now includes ads." The problem is, the users who got it when it was free got the PAID version, so they can't push an update to the people who got it for free without making all the users who ACTUALLY paid also get ads. They'd also have to add ads to the paid Google Market version, since the Amazon dev agreement requires that you keep app versions synchronized across all app stores. Amazon has basically put them in a position where they can only lose money or piss off their actual paying customers.
  - woodall 15y ago
    That makes a lot more sense, however, it's not entirely impossible for them to find out what users downloaded the app on that day and only target updates for them; they want out of amazon any way might as well break the TOS. They should be logging some type of 'first_install' after every user pings the server for the first time... but I'm making excuses for Amazon. TBH both parties are at fault. Them for not reading the letter Amazon send WORD FOR WORD and not Amazon for discounting their app to 99cents the day after.
MaysonL 15y ago
What this story teaches is a simple business lesson. If you give an app away, you should build in some monetization.
shareme 15y ago
Remember folks, its 20% after Amazon twists your arm to price all android products not in Amazon store at Amazon's prices..

231 points by markfenton 15y ago

nekgrim 15y ago

Duplicate : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2836024 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2836024

seanalltogether 15y ago
It's weird, I tried submitting this story about an hour ago and was taken directly to that thread instead of it going through the system, I wonder why this link made it through?
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  This one was HTTPS, therefore technically a different link.
- Macha 15y ago
  This link is to the https version, the other (and presumably your attempt too) was to the http version.

jccodez 15y ago

I have done discounted promotions in the past, but we did revenue sharing and it turned out great. 100k free downloads is painful. I wonder if there is a way to tell amazon to limit the free copies to the first 5k people who download, then go into discount mode.

rkalla 15y ago

<edited to remove the unintended snarky tone and clean up some points> What I got from this blog post is that they made an uninformed decision, and ended up with an unexpected result that pissed them off from the perspective of "lost sales". The email from Amazon clarified there were no money to made and sure enough, no money was made. The added costs of the server is unfortunate and justifiably something to be upset about (especially if you weren't accounting for it), but I have to point out that the sales before the free-app-of-the-day listing[1] were slow: 2, 4, 14, 20 sales... then 101k copies given away in one day. For an app selling 10-20 copies a day, how much would it have cost that company, paying a PR firm, to get it infront of 101k new users (forget about payment)... how many tweets would you have to get out or blog posts written to make 101k people aware of your app? Amazon gave that company an incredibly aggressive marketing campaign for 1 day and from where I'm standing, gave that company an enormous opportunity to be successful with a future app or future subscription services for their existing app. I think things like what Amazon are doing certainly don't fit in the old model of software sales and if you are betting the company on that model, it is going to be a painful trip for you. Something to consider is that if this app offered a subscription-based premium mode or some in-app micro transactions and just 5% of people that downloaded the app engaged in that, I think the tone of this entire blog post would have been completely flipped about how awesome the Amazon model is. Even if that app could simply be used to announce the release of a new app in the app store from the same company when the time comes that would be a huge amount of people seeing that announcement that would not have otherwise seen it (not the full 100k, but whoever is still using the app). Given that, I would assert that the Amazon App Store model isn't broken, it is just different and requires some planning to take advantage of. If you have a flexible business model and can roll with the punches and take advantage of opportunities like these and see them coming you stand to benefit quite a bit from Amazon's free app of the day. Let's say everything I've typed up until now is garbage and you waved it all away, another reason this was a good thing for the company: reviews. Out of 101k people that now have this app, how many are going to eventually leave reviews? 20? 30? How many reviews may be a half to a full star higher because the app was free and there isn't that feeling of being owed value by the reviewer because they got your app for free. So now let's say in a few weeks (or at some point in the future) this company now has 15, 20 or 30 reviews on this app, all fairly good (4 and above). Now that the app is no longer free, how much higher in the search results is this app going to show up for people when they are searching for apps like this? How much more likely are people browsing the Amazon App Store to buy this app because it has such good reviews? I would argue had this guy listened to his co-founder and not flown off the handle, and left his app in the app store, and built off of this success he would have seen sales gradually increase over time, similar to how it was trending before they had the one day give away. All those sales before the give away were people finding the app because (I assume) they wanted an app like that. The one day give away was likely a bunch of people that just grab every free app they see each day. Either way, it sounds like he took the gift horse he was given by Amazon, punched it in the horse-face and then let it run off a cliff because it wasn't the exact horse they were expecting. </end-backseat-internet-business-driving> [1] http://shiftyjelly.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/results2.png?w=497&h=175 http://shiftyjelly.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/results2.png?...

shiftyjelly 15y ago
Can I just reply here? Here goes. I think you missed the entire point of the article. We agreed to be featured, we stand by that decision. What we take issue with is the public perception that Amazon pays their (publicly stated) 20% of the asking price for developers to be featured. They don't. Simple as that. Everything else is a beef, yes, but not our primary beef. Also we left it a month, we got featured June 27th, it's now August. Virtually no change in sales on Amazon.
- rkalla 15y ago
  shifty, Admittedly, my response was focused more on the other beef than that single point. Given how much other information was in the post, I didn't think the 20% == 0% was the central argument; my apologies for missing that. My core belief that in the long(er) term that the give away likely would have helped the movement and sales of your app still stands though. I think you leaving it in the store for an extra month is valuable data point, but not quite enough for me to categorically agree with "Yep, totally experiment failure, f Amazon!" Did any reviews come in from any of those massive downloads? How were the reviews? What was the average score? I would give up the argument completely at 6 months after a few more update releases if there were 0 reviews and 0 sales, otherwise I stand by my original statement that this was a GOOD thing for you and your company. It is my feeling that you are focusing too much on this bait and switch. Fine, it happened... but you also have your app on 101k more devices than you did the month before so do something with that, flip your perspective a bit and take advantage of it. You cannot convince me that having your app on 101k more devices in 1 day is a bad thing (except maybe the server costs). It may be scary/odd/unexpected, but you guys are smart, you will figure out some good way to grow from this.
  - rkalla 15y ago
    Would appreciate clarification on the downvotes guys. If I'm missing something let me know.
    - mbateman 15y ago

mcantelon 15y ago

>Amazon gets to set the price of your app to whatever they want, without any input from you, or even the chance to reject their price ... Amazon re-writes your description, and in ours they even made up things ... you can’t remove apps from their store That doesn't seem great.

robtoo 15y ago
To be honest, this is true of every product that Amazon sells.
- irons 15y ago
  But it's not true of any other app store with which Amazon competes. Whether or not it's true of Walmart isn't really relevant.
- autarch 15y ago
  No it's not. Amazon does a lot of selling for third parties who set their own prices.
shaggyfrog 15y ago
Re-writing descriptions is such a bizarre thing to do I don't know why Amazon would choose to do it. Clearly they are getting things wrong in the descriptions, which is misleading to customers, which must be illegal in some fashion. Holding apps hostage -- not being able to choose unilaterally to remove them -- is beyond the pale. Whose app is it anyway? Does Amazon think they own these things the second they get uploaded?
- phreakhead 15y ago
  They rewrote the description of my app, also with mistakes. Very annoying, especially since if you try to change it it takes at least two weeks to show up! In the span of app sales that is a lifetime!
neuroelectronic 15y ago
Yes, but they still pay you as if they charged full price. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. The description thing is just odd though.

robtoo 15y ago

thanks to Amazon’s secret back-door deals, we made $0 on that day. These secret back-door deals that were so secret that they were written in bold in the email, so secret that they noticed this and wrote back to amazon, and so secret that amazon then confirmed them. They were offered a crappy deal, realized this and double-checked it, but decided to go for it anyway. When it turned out that the deal really was pretty crappy, they then act surprised and self-righteous and blog about it.

cbs 15y ago
These secret back-door deals that were so secret that they were written in bold in the email Secret to the masses, not the parties involved. Yeah, its bold, but its bold in an email between two parties where they agree upon terms contrary to the public terms.
eavc 15y ago
It does seem problematic that to consumers it seems as though the dev gets a cut.
- watty 15y ago
  A cut of what?
  - funkah 15y ago
    Amazon's money.
    - jonknee 15y ago
      Amazon's didn't make any money either, it was a free app. I doubt your average downloader thought for one second about the relationship between Amazon and the developer. They saw free, they downloaded. Who other than the app developer and Amazon care one bit about the financials of the deal? When I see a great sale in a store I don't care if it's the store or the manufacturer taking a hit.

Jacobra 15y ago

It seems like small developers could get around this by releasing some kind of trial edition on the free-app-a-day promotion.

rkalla 15y ago
From what I understand, Amazon won't feature a trial or "lite" version of your app for the Free App of the Day. It doesn't have the same value-proposition for users.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Developers don't chose to be part of the promotion, Amazon hand picks them.

wallflower 15y ago

I've been doing a binge of Kindle buying recently, and I have noticed that a lot of the more expensive books have a price that is set by the publisher. Now, in the Amazon AppStore, perhaps the larger publishers will eventually be able to set a minimum price. The prices are already so low but better than zero. I love Amazon's FAAD, and I feel safe downloading any app from Amazon while the Google market is more strip mall than indoor mall. The new Market app is a major improvement though but I am anxious to download let alone buy anything with less than 250k downloads.

ghempton 15y ago

Lots of larger studios actually pay to acquire installs of their app to get an initial placement on the charts and to drive organic growth from there. In that context, 101k new users for free is very valuable.

barredo 15y ago
But it didn't get any growth (at least the 5 next days) and it is costing them server money to provide service to these new users

akeefer 15y ago

I was curious what their developer agreement actually says; I didn't bother signing up us a developer, but their FAQ states: "What is the payment structure between Amazon and me? Amazon pays developers 70% of the sale price of the app or 20% of the list price, whichever is greater." https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#Sales https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#Sales, Payment and Tax That's clearly the bit the author was referring to as being deceptive: in public they state that developers will always get at least 20% of the list price (which leads some people to think developers still get paid when their apps are listed as free), but in private they ask developers to take 0% of the list price when they promote the app as the "free app of the day."

foxit 15y ago

There are a lot of points in this - both in the sales pitch that Amazon gave the developers and the outcome of having participated - that are strikingly reminiscent of the Groupon experience for some businesses. (Many, even, based on the links dibarnu posted.) http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316 http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316

neuroelectronic 15y ago
I guess you're leaving the actual comparison as an exercise for the reader. IIRC, both involved people who had little business savvy and a missed opportunity presented as a regretful decision. no money is exchanged here however, and they never detail the cost occurred to them by the extra load.

jexe 15y ago

It seems like a purely promotional placement, Amazon isn't giving you money that neither you nor they received -- that seems perfectly reasonable to me. If you don't want to bear the auxiliary costs like server load or customer service, you don't have to agree to it. If Amazon is correct, though, this promotion should mean that post-promotion sales are higher than pre-promotion sales. But the chart ends on the day of the promotion. Though there's a little text about it, I'd be curious about more detail on how things are shaping up afterwards. Either way, up to them of course, but it feels a bit extreme to me to abandon ship because of agreeing to an unsuccessful promotion and because they're behind in features vs. the Google market.

kemiller 15y ago

My understanding was that the 20% figure applies only to cases where Amazon changes the pricing of your app without your specific approval (which they can do). There is apparently enough demand for the top spot that they can ask the developer to take the hit. Up to them whether they do or not.

jamespo 15y ago

Are there any stories of positive experiences (for Developers) with Amazon's App Store? This is the second bad one I've read on here.

woodall 15y ago

My worthless 2cents. > Did the exposure count for much in the days afterwards? That’s also a big no, the day after saw a blip in sales, followed by things going back to exactly where we started, selling a few apps a day. In fact Amazon decided to rub salt in the wounds a little further by discounting our app to 99 cents for a few days after the free promotion. Well here is the image with sales numbers from the day after. http://i.imgur.com/bBovl.png http://i.imgur.com/bBovl.png What I'm seeing is a a huge sales/profit increase; $300 that day as compared to <$50 before. Full discloser, i.e. sales from the subsequent days, would be very nice to see at this point. Next logical step? You have a >100,000 user base so push an update to the free app so that it now includes ads. The tone of the article feels like the author is just upset he didn't get his way- "I was against putting the app on Amazon and my partner was for it"- so now he is trying to make himself appear "right". It's called pivoting.

phreakhead 15y ago
"You have a >100,000 user base so push an update to the free app so that it now includes ads." The problem is, the users who got it when it was free got the PAID version, so they can't push an update to the people who got it for free without making all the users who ACTUALLY paid also get ads. They'd also have to add ads to the paid Google Market version, since the Amazon dev agreement requires that you keep app versions synchronized across all app stores. Amazon has basically put them in a position where they can only lose money or piss off their actual paying customers.
- woodall 15y ago
  That makes a lot more sense, however, it's not entirely impossible for them to find out what users downloaded the app on that day and only target updates for them; they want out of amazon any way might as well break the TOS. They should be logging some type of 'first_install' after every user pings the server for the first time... but I'm making excuses for Amazon. TBH both parties are at fault. Them for not reading the letter Amazon send WORD FOR WORD and not Amazon for discounting their app to 99cents the day after.

MaysonL 15y ago

What this story teaches is a simple business lesson. If you give an app away, you should build in some monetization.

shareme 15y ago

Remember folks, its 20% after Amazon twists your arm to price all android products not in Amazon store at Amazon's prices..