When it comes to selling your app it can be far too easy to just think in terms of either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Although true that these are the two biggest market places for your app, by ignoring the Amazon App Store – especially if you’ve built an app for Android – then you are missing out on a fast-growing piece of the takings.
Why bother with the Amazon App Store?
With the launch of the new Kindle Fire last year, and this year the Fire Smartphone, combined with the fact that the Amazon App Store is available in nearly 200 countries, Amazon is clearly trying to position itself as a major player in the bustling bazaar that is the app marketplace.
Indeed, Amazon are also being a bit clever in their approach to selling their hardware, making their tablets significantly cheaper than similar offerings from their competitors. Their hope seems to be that if they can get as many users on board with their products in the first place, then they can concentrate on profiteering from content sales. An interesting approach, certainly different, and if it proves to work then there will increasingly be more and more users of Amazon hardware, and so, your app needs to be available to them. So, that’s one reason why you should be putting your app on the Amazon App Store – here’s 5 more.
1. Cross-Selling Opportunities
Amazon App-Store isn’t only for Amazon hardware, it is also available for any device running on OS 1.6 or higher. This is indeed a great selling point when it comes to start pitching your idea to developers, as the reach of the store indeed goes beyond users of Amazon’s hardware products.
Amazon has been a major player in retail and digital sales for years. Indeed, it is a global brand that is trusted and enjoys millions if not billions of users. In other words the customer base is already there, so it is an unrivalled platform on which to reach out to them. Your app will turn up in search results across Amazon if you place it in the store, and of course Amazon’s “Customers who bought this item also bought” can get you added exposure too.
2. International Distribution
Now available in nearly 200 countries, the Amazon App Store has an extensive global reach. Indeed, Amazon is used the world over extensively, and so it really is a no-brainer to make your product visible to all of those customers – even if they’re using an iOS device, they may find the Android version of your app on the store and begin searching for it on Apple.
3. Customer Reviews
People have been using Amazon Reviews for a lot longer than they have been doing so in app stores. As a result, the feedback generated from reviews on the store tends to be a lot more honest and insightful than in other stores where users are still finding their feet with the process. This is great news for you as a developer – you want honest feedback, as this is the only real way of determining how to make the experience of you app even better when it comes to releasing updates, and indeed when you come to start building your next app.
4. Revenue Per Active User
Something that you should not ignore is that the average user on the Amazon App Store spends more money than the average user on the Google Play Store. The actual number of customers is still significantly lower, however, but, if Amazon continue to grow their smartphone and tablet user base at the same rate as they are now, then this figure will of course grow in line with it.
5. Free App Promotions
What the Amazon App Store allows you to do, which Google Play does not, is change your paid-for app into a free one for promotional purposes. This can of course be a great method of driving downloads and thusly awareness of your app, and you can of course whack a price tag back onto your app when the promotion is over. Amazon also have a Free App Of The Day promotion, and, if you get in on this then you can find that your visibility on the store increases dramatically, which is especially good if you have other apps available.
Getting Your App On The Amazon App Store
So, now that you’ve been convinced that putting your app on the Amazon App Store is a good idea, you are probably wondering what to expect from the process when the time comes to submitting. Well, you first have to create an app developer account, which will set you back $99 a year, and then download the Amazon Mobile App SDK, and finally submit your app to the Amazon team for review and approval. Any apps you manage to sell – or indeed any in-app purchases that you generate – will earn you 70% of the revenues. For a hundred bucks it’s definitely worth a punt, but, to be honest, if you’ve developed an app for Android, then the Amazon App Store should never be ignored when it comes to seeking platforms for market.
