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<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 wi

by 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
      Generally it seems like you're expecting the OP to take on your perspective without really taking his perspective seriously. Just saying you have a "core belief" that waiting longer would help doesn't really seem like a fair point. Why don't server/support costs matter? Why does it have to be that it's more beneficial for these guys to have their software on 100k more devices than not? Why should all business models have to work that way? And why should someone who has a business model expecting to profit from Amazon's advertised 20% be willing to accept waiving that? OP seems to have a valid complaint against Amazon and a worthwhile warning to others in similar situations, and you're just telling him to suck it up figure out some way around it. Okay, I get what you're saying, but withdrawing from what is by all evidence an unprofitable app market driven partially by a bait-and-switch still seems perfectly reasonable.

by rkalla 15y ago

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
    Generally it seems like you're expecting the OP to take on your perspective without really taking his perspective seriously. Just saying you have a "core belief" that waiting longer would help doesn't really seem like a fair point. Why don't server/support costs matter? Why does it have to be that it's more beneficial for these guys to have their software on 100k more devices than not? Why should all business models have to work that way? And why should someone who has a business model expecting to profit from Amazon's advertised 20% be willing to accept waiving that? OP seems to have a valid complaint against Amazon and a worthwhile warning to others in similar situations, and you're just telling him to suck it up figure out some way around it. Okay, I get what you're saying, but withdrawing from what is by all evidence an unprofitable app market driven partially by a bait-and-switch still seems perfectly reasonable.