Amazon AppStore - worth try, it's free

Recently I got e-mail from some Amazon AppStore worker and he invited me to publish some apps there.

So I tried.

Here is my summary:

+ Android apps made with CocoonJS works without any problem (so you don't have to make 2 versions: Android and Amazon)

+ you can use AdMob too (confirmed by Amazon guy)

+ your app will be live within ~24 hours after upload

+ there is much less competition than in Google Play

+ nowadays it's free

• it's less popular so you can get 10-20 downloads / daily for free app

Is it worth?

I think yes... Let's say that your app is quite good (so only 50% users will uninstall it) and you have 10 downloads daily. After 1 month it will be 300 downloads and 150 installations on devices. After 2 months 600 downloads and 300 installations on devices... And so on. At this point it can generate a few additional dollars.

So I think that it is worth to submit our apps also to Amazon AppStore, because it's very easy and takes only 5-10 minutes (including binary upload time).

While you're here on the topic of ads, can other devs chime in the approximate income you guys get per day/month based on number of active users?

For my game, it seems I earn around $1.25 per 300-400 ad impressions. On average, each active user per day gets around 10 ad impressions from my game.

Basically ads earn peanuts unless you have active users in the 10,000s range and onwards..

i heard good things about amazon appstore, but i dont have any android device, specs and screen size seems complicated, which device should i get if i plan to port my game to android?

Hands down Nexus 7, cheap and very powerful, 16:10 ratio so it handles both 16:9 and native ratio well.

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I can speak about eCPM. In my case in AdMob good times I can get average ~1,5$ eCPM (so profit per 1000 banners shown) and on bad times only 1$ eCPM. For example: December - January = good time. Now just started bad times. It's connected (I guess) with ad budgets.

Of course I have also apps that makes 2-4$ eCPM.

A few days ago I started testing Fullscreen ad but for now it sucks. But will know better after 1-2 weeks.

Google Play: generally 1-2 years ago it was easy to get 300-400 downloads/day even for very average app (and 4-5000 for good app). Now it's much harder.

hollowthreat

see here:

developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/kindle-fire/app-development/01--screen-layout-and-resolution

1280x800 should be fine for everything

"generally 1-2 years ago it was easy to get 300-400 downloads/day even for very average app (and 4-5000 for good app). Now it's much harder."

Well there's only so much you can do, make a great game, release it... but nobody finds it. I mean my game, search on app store for "Ninja" and there's literally thousands..

Been about 10 days since release, less than 100 players tried it. Pretty disheartening, but gotta look into ways to advertise it better. I mean, it can't be such a sh*t game so few would try it.. or is it? heh

You're right about the CPM, its dropped down to around $1 now, per 1000 impressions.

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In the past it was enough to make not-tragic-app and select at least 1 good keyword. Now you have 100+ competitors on any app. My friend said that he knows guy who buys Google Play accounts from China (for 100$ each) and on every account he release lots of crapware with good ranking, best names and so on.

anyway: that's life. You should try release your app on Amazon too. Since 2nd generation (so already old) Kindle has 1 GB RAM.

p.s. only CPI (cost per install) campaigns works

p.s. only CPI (cost per install) campaigns worksCPI? You mean make it a paid game and advertise it?

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I mean that from paid options, only CPI is good. But in your case the best would be: make simple "ninja" runner game (use some of existing assets),

put BIG Ninja Legacy banner (with market:// link ) in main menu, write nice, keyword oriented, description for this small game and release it. Don't spend more than 3-4 days on it. Let one app advertise other app.

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I mean that from paid options, only CPI is good. But in your case the best would be: make simple "ninja" runner game (use some of existing assets),

put BIG Ninja Legacy banner (with market:// link ) in main menu, write nice, keyword oriented, description for this small game and release it. Don't spend more than 3-4 days on it. Let one app advertise other app.I like your idea, since Runner games are so popular, if its a decent one it should spur some interest towards my bigger epic game. I guess since Ive already work on this game for 8 months, spending a week or two to make a nice runner to help it is a good idea.

I just had a few quick mental planning on it and think it could be a very fun game, thanks!

Hi! I tried to create a new app but there is no verification key in my Files Tab (mentioned in the tutorial (http://www.scirra.com/tutorials/623/how ... n-appstore) and needed when you export your game for Amazon). How or where do I get it?

I tried it with the "Application Key". Is this the right one?

(btw: I hosted it on my server and set a price of $0.99. But if anyone opens the url on my server he can access it for free?)