Apps don't spread from being useful. Being useful might be a baseline requirement for them to spread, but massive marketing budgets, social media spamming, and

Apps don't spread from being useful. Being useful might be a baseline requirement for them to spread, but massive marketing budgets, social media spamming, and shady deals with handset makers (if you can get them) are what cause most apps to truly be hits today. Long gone are the days when an independent developer writes a little app and, and much to his or her surprise, it goes viral and they make six or seven figures quickly. There are many reasons for this - fierce competition, terrible app store discovery models, etc. The commission cut will only make the problem worse, by lowering the incentives to write about little-known but good apps. Instead, the only apps that get written about will be those where the app creator has a big budget and puts pay-per-install offers on affiliate networks. The competition and steep commissions on these netowrks is such that a typical install will cost a publisher $2-$4, making it unprofitable except possibly in the very long term, and even then only if the app has an extremely aggressive revenue model.