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> Amazon Appstore will reduce developer revenue cut from 30% to 20% and give 10% in Free AWS Credit I feel like this title is amazingly hard to read for many r

> Amazon Appstore will reduce developer revenue cut from 30% to 20% and give 10% in Free AWS Credit I feel like this title is amazingly hard to read for many reasons all working against us at the same time! ‘developer revenue cut’ really means it’s Amazon’s part that’s reducing, not the developer’s. And they’re reducing the ‘cut’ as in the proportion, not reducing some other previous cut they made to revenue. ‘Amazon reduces App Store fee from 30% to 20% and also gives 10% in AWS credit’ is I think what they mean, and is the opposite of almost every way I could find to read their title.

pbreit 5y ago
Totally! In fact, developer share is increasing from 70% to 90% (with 10% being paid in AWS credits).
- thih9 5y ago
  That seems a dangerous way of wording this. The market value of AWS credits is less than the equal amount in regular currency (so: 10% in AWS credits is less than 10% of the revenue). The developer share is increasing to 80% (with bonus AWS credits). Also: > You may not sell, license, rent, or otherwise transfer Promotional Credit. Promotional Credit may be applied only to your own AWS account. Promotional Credit has no intrinsic value, is not redeemable for cash, has no cash value, is nonrefundable, and serves merely as a means to provide an incentive to use our Services. Promotional Credit may not be purchased for cash, and we and our affiliates do not sell Promotional Credit. Source: https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/ https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/ And: > The AWS promotional credits can be used for 12 months from the date they were granted. Source: https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/93e89be7-1611-4764-8f97-f4eef0a7c0e0/coming-soon-amazon-appstore-small-business-accelerator-program https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/93e89be7-16...
  - munk-a 5y ago
    While I definitely agree that saying it's upping the take home from 70% to 90% would be misleading - in a fair number of cases that 10% credit will be pretty easy to convert to direct value. It is certainly more valuable than, say, 10% of earnings being spendable on Amazon Basic items - they're not quite trying to pull a company store trick here and the fact that 80% of revenue is take-home sales already puts a decent chunk above Apple.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      As a general labor rule, when a company gives me credit, I value that at $0. Even if this is technically wrong (it is definitely valued more) the reason for this is that the limitation imposed to how I use the value of my labor is a disingenuous negotiation tactic and I will not under any circumstances let my self by fooled by it. Therefore I treat the 10% credit as nothing more valuable then a smile or a letter of good will.
    - servercobra 5y ago
      Apple gives 85% for devs under a million/year in sales. Google as well.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- p1necone 5y ago
  It's increasing to 80%, the 10% AWS credit is nice, but it's not the same thing as an actual extra 10% of revenue. Lets not forget the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
saurik 5y ago
FWIW, I had understood it first try, but I do agree that it is a bit strange as the normal way of phrasing this would be "Amazon reducing their cut of developer revenue from...".
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  How did you disambiguate ‘developer revenue cut’ to be Amazon’s cut not the developer’s? Since it says ‘developer’ not ‘Amazon’. And weirder than that it’s not Amazon’s cut of the developer’s ‘revenue’ either - since the developer was never getting it in the first place - it’s their cut of the sale price, or the combined revenue, not the developer’s revenue.
  - saurik 5y ago
    1) We normally don't talk about the developer / manufacturer getting a cut: we talk about the middleman / sales channel "taking their cut", so inherently the word "cut" is biased to make it at least sort of understandable. 2) And no: developer "revenue" is the full cost of the receipt, and then a cost of their doing business is the cut taken by the platform, which decreases their resulting "income". The word "revenue" specifically is a number from which you deduct costs to obtain "income".
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      I think revenue is money you get your hands on, and then pay costs out of. If you never get your hands on it then it's not your revenue, it's someone else's revenue that they're paying their costs - your developer fee - out of. Like a singer's revenue is not all record sales as they're not selling the records they've just licensed someone else to do so and they're getting a cut (wait... so that's cut the other way around...)
      - saurik 5y ago
        So, the definition "money you get your hands on" definitely isn't correct, and the way to make this clearer is to think of it in terms of credit card processing and merchant accounts: if you sell a $5 product and the credit card processor takes $0.25, your revenue is $5, not $4.75, and they actually will report the full $5 to the government as part of a 1099-K and then your job is to report that full gross income and deduct the fees you paid. They also will report any sales you made which were refunded, and you would then separately report deductions for that also. Now, that said, one can actually use that construction to argue that the store is then having revenue, and giving a royalty to the developer or something, and in fact my store did something where I sometimes modeled it as a retail storefront of licenses I purchased wholesale, but these are just not normal models for how the word "cut" is then applied: most people reasonably--and I think correctly--believe that the user bought something from the developer, with the store acting merely as a middleman payment processor charging a "fee" or taking a "commission" off of every sale (and I am pretty sure at least Google even models it directly in that way in its reports; there are a ton of advantages to the store to doing that, and I think even Apple sometimes reaches for this model). From such standpoint, and to look at this using descriptive linguistics, you simply don't ever see anyone say "Apple recently increased the cut of smaller developer's from 70% to 85%": every single headline I've seen says "Apple recently decreased their cut from smaller developers from 30% to 15%".
have_faith 5y ago
It took me multiple passes to read even though I already understood what it was trying to say.
elliekelly 5y ago
Sorry, for some reason I’m still having a hard time understanding. If a developer with less than $1 million in revenue sells an app on Amazon’s app store for $100 Amazon would get $30 and the developer would get $70 from each sale but now Amazon will get $20 and the developer will get $80 plus $10 in AWS credit from each sale. Am I understanding that correctly?
- jrockway 5y ago
  That's exactly right.
- conductr 5y ago
  That’s how I grep. But wouldn’t be shocked if the credit was $8
- eipipuz 5y ago
  That's what I understand as well.
- idorosen 5y ago
  The first paragraph of the article is much clearer, and seems to agree with your interpretation: “The Amazon Appstore has announced that it will be reducing its cut of developer revenue from 30% to 20% for developers that earn less than $1 million in revenue per year. The new terms, which Amazon is calling the Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program, will also provide developers with AWS promotional credit in an amount equivalent to 10 percent of the developer’s revenue if they earn less than $1 million in revenue per year. If a developer chooses to use those AWS credits, that brings their total Amazon Appstore revenue share up from 70% to an equivalent of 90%.”
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    I think maybe I was (am?) reading too much into it because when I initially read that paragraph it just left me more confused! I guess I don’t really understand how the accounting of it works because they called it a “revenue share” which made me think one sale would result in: $80 in developer revenue $20 in Amazon revenue But it also said the AWS credits will be based off of the developer’s revenue and judging by the “equivalent of 90%” it would seem that Amazon sees the transaction as more like: $100 in developer revenue ($20) in developer expenses to list on the app store resulting in $20 in Amazon revenue But I wouldn’t consider that revenue sharing?
dang 5y ago
Submitted title was "Amazon will reduce dev. revenue cut from 30% to 20% and give 10% in AWS Credit". We've replaced it with a prefix of the article title. (The specific numbers don't need to be in the title, and we try to avoid abbrevs.)

pbreit 5y ago

Totally! In fact, developer share is increasing from 70% to 90% (with 10% being paid in AWS credits).

thih9 5y ago
That seems a dangerous way of wording this. The market value of AWS credits is less than the equal amount in regular currency (so: 10% in AWS credits is less than 10% of the revenue). The developer share is increasing to 80% (with bonus AWS credits). Also: > You may not sell, license, rent, or otherwise transfer Promotional Credit. Promotional Credit may be applied only to your own AWS account. Promotional Credit has no intrinsic value, is not redeemable for cash, has no cash value, is nonrefundable, and serves merely as a means to provide an incentive to use our Services. Promotional Credit may not be purchased for cash, and we and our affiliates do not sell Promotional Credit. Source: https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/ https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/ And: > The AWS promotional credits can be used for 12 months from the date they were granted. Source: https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/93e89be7-1611-4764-8f97-f4eef0a7c0e0/coming-soon-amazon-appstore-small-business-accelerator-program https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/93e89be7-16...
- munk-a 5y ago
  While I definitely agree that saying it's upping the take home from 70% to 90% would be misleading - in a fair number of cases that 10% credit will be pretty easy to convert to direct value. It is certainly more valuable than, say, 10% of earnings being spendable on Amazon Basic items - they're not quite trying to pull a company store trick here and the fact that 80% of revenue is take-home sales already puts a decent chunk above Apple.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    As a general labor rule, when a company gives me credit, I value that at $0. Even if this is technically wrong (it is definitely valued more) the reason for this is that the limitation imposed to how I use the value of my labor is a disingenuous negotiation tactic and I will not under any circumstances let my self by fooled by it. Therefore I treat the 10% credit as nothing more valuable then a smile or a letter of good will.
  - servercobra 5y ago
    Apple gives 85% for devs under a million/year in sales. Google as well.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
p1necone 5y ago
It's increasing to 80%, the 10% AWS credit is nice, but it's not the same thing as an actual extra 10% of revenue. Lets not forget the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store

saurik 5y ago

FWIW, I had understood it first try, but I do agree that it is a bit strange as the normal way of phrasing this would be "Amazon reducing their cut of developer revenue from...".

chrisseaton 5y ago
How did you disambiguate ‘developer revenue cut’ to be Amazon’s cut not the developer’s? Since it says ‘developer’ not ‘Amazon’. And weirder than that it’s not Amazon’s cut of the developer’s ‘revenue’ either - since the developer was never getting it in the first place - it’s their cut of the sale price, or the combined revenue, not the developer’s revenue.
- saurik 5y ago
  1) We normally don't talk about the developer / manufacturer getting a cut: we talk about the middleman / sales channel "taking their cut", so inherently the word "cut" is biased to make it at least sort of understandable. 2) And no: developer "revenue" is the full cost of the receipt, and then a cost of their doing business is the cut taken by the platform, which decreases their resulting "income". The word "revenue" specifically is a number from which you deduct costs to obtain "income".
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    I think revenue is money you get your hands on, and then pay costs out of. If you never get your hands on it then it's not your revenue, it's someone else's revenue that they're paying their costs - your developer fee - out of. Like a singer's revenue is not all record sales as they're not selling the records they've just licensed someone else to do so and they're getting a cut (wait... so that's cut the other way around...)
    - saurik 5y ago
      So, the definition "money you get your hands on" definitely isn't correct, and the way to make this clearer is to think of it in terms of credit card processing and merchant accounts: if you sell a $5 product and the credit card processor takes $0.25, your revenue is $5, not $4.75, and they actually will report the full $5 to the government as part of a 1099-K and then your job is to report that full gross income and deduct the fees you paid. They also will report any sales you made which were refunded, and you would then separately report deductions for that also. Now, that said, one can actually use that construction to argue that the store is then having revenue, and giving a royalty to the developer or something, and in fact my store did something where I sometimes modeled it as a retail storefront of licenses I purchased wholesale, but these are just not normal models for how the word "cut" is then applied: most people reasonably--and I think correctly--believe that the user bought something from the developer, with the store acting merely as a middleman payment processor charging a "fee" or taking a "commission" off of every sale (and I am pretty sure at least Google even models it directly in that way in its reports; there are a ton of advantages to the store to doing that, and I think even Apple sometimes reaches for this model). From such standpoint, and to look at this using descriptive linguistics, you simply don't ever see anyone say "Apple recently increased the cut of smaller developer's from 70% to 85%": every single headline I've seen says "Apple recently decreased their cut from smaller developers from 30% to 15%".

have_faith 5y ago

It took me multiple passes to read even though I already understood what it was trying to say.

elliekelly 5y ago

Sorry, for some reason I’m still having a hard time understanding. If a developer with less than $1 million in revenue sells an app on Amazon’s app store for $100 Amazon would get $30 and the developer would get $70 from each sale but now Amazon will get $20 and the developer will get $80 plus $10 in AWS credit from each sale. Am I understanding that correctly?

jrockway 5y ago
That's exactly right.
conductr 5y ago
That’s how I grep. But wouldn’t be shocked if the credit was $8
eipipuz 5y ago
That's what I understand as well.
idorosen 5y ago
The first paragraph of the article is much clearer, and seems to agree with your interpretation: “The Amazon Appstore has announced that it will be reducing its cut of developer revenue from 30% to 20% for developers that earn less than $1 million in revenue per year. The new terms, which Amazon is calling the Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program, will also provide developers with AWS promotional credit in an amount equivalent to 10 percent of the developer’s revenue if they earn less than $1 million in revenue per year. If a developer chooses to use those AWS credits, that brings their total Amazon Appstore revenue share up from 70% to an equivalent of 90%.”
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I think maybe I was (am?) reading too much into it because when I initially read that paragraph it just left me more confused! I guess I don’t really understand how the accounting of it works because they called it a “revenue share” which made me think one sale would result in: $80 in developer revenue $20 in Amazon revenue But it also said the AWS credits will be based off of the developer’s revenue and judging by the “equivalent of 90%” it would seem that Amazon sees the transaction as more like: $100 in developer revenue ($20) in developer expenses to list on the app store resulting in $20 in Amazon revenue But I wouldn’t consider that revenue sharing?

dang 5y ago

Submitted title was "Amazon will reduce dev. revenue cut from 30% to 20% and give 10% in AWS Credit". We've replaced it with a prefix of the article title. (The specific numbers don't need to be in the title, and we try to avoid abbrevs.)