I appreciate the response. I'll try and address each thing you mentioned.
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but let me tell you what i see. 'Amazon is building their market on the backs of apps by giving them away for free.'
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This company's app uses a simple software model. You pay $1.99 and you get their app. Your comment decries the entire Amazon model as benefiting them and not the developer.
I don't agree with this and here is why... let's say this company had a subscription-based app or some in-app-payment-enabled app. Suddenly it is on 101k new devices and let's say that 5k of them (5%) buy some simple subscription or even less, some 1-time-in-app-micro-resource inside the app for $.99.
Now suddenly this blog post has a very positive tone to it and the developers are praising Amazon for such a progressive app sales model and we are all here nodding our heads about how awesome it is and you and I are high-fiving each other over Skype Video because we are so excited.
The Amazon model isn't broken and it's not building a market on the backs of its developers. It can be an aggressive, mutually-beneficial relationship if both parties are prepared to take advantage of what Amazon has to offer. These guys weren't ready for that yet, but I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that come this time next year they will have a new app back in Amazon App Store, ready to do the 1-day-free-giveaway AGAIN, but this time they are going to be prepared to take advantage of all the traffic.
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Its also unnecessarily diminutive to say '... I have to point out that the sales BEFORE the free-app-of-the-day listing[1] were not impressive...". The fact of the matter is they made infinitely more money before the deal of the day then we can say they did AS A DIRECT RESULT of the deal of the day listing.
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I agree that my comment came off way too demeaning and I didn't mean it that way. I was getting carried away with making my point that from a sheer-number-of-device-installation perspective, they went from a trickle of water to a firehose in one day and that isn't a bad thing.
Very rational. I agree that the Amazon model is not broken, its just different (I did not mean to suggest it was broken, though I can see that being implied from my statements). I also agree that it is OK for the developer to publicize (critically) that there was an alternative/non-public agreement to become the app of the day which varies from the publicized terms. At the end of the day, you are both "right". There are types of apps that this can work well for (which I think you do a good job arguing for) and there are pitfalls to the system which Amazon tries to not make public (which I'm thankful to the author for having written about).
If they had a subscription-based business model, they likely wouldn't have been charging for the app to be begin with. Amazon pitched it to them, and pitched it to others, as benefiting sales. Their claim needs to be evaluated on that basis, otherwise, you're just moving the goal posts.
I appreciate the response. I'll try and address each thing you mentioned.
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but let me tell you what i see. 'Amazon is building their market on the backs of apps by giving them away for free.'
--------------------
This company's app uses a simple software model. You pay $1.99 and you get their app. Your comment decries the entire Amazon model as benefiting them and not the developer.
I don't agree with this and here is why... let's say this company had a subscription-based app or some in-app-payment-enabled app. Suddenly it is on 101k new devices and let's say that 5k of them (5%) buy some simple subscription or even less, some 1-time-in-app-micro-resource inside the app for $.99.
Now suddenly this blog post has a very positive tone to it and the developers are praising Amazon for such a progressive app sales model and we are all here nodding our heads about how awesome it is and you and I are high-fiving each other over Skype Video because we are so excited.
The Amazon model isn't broken and it's not building a market on the backs of its developers. It can be an aggressive, mutually-beneficial relationship if both parties are prepared to take advantage of what Amazon has to offer. These guys weren't ready for that yet, but I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that come this time next year they will have a new app back in Amazon App Store, ready to do the 1-day-free-giveaway AGAIN, but this time they are going to be prepared to take advantage of all the traffic.
----------------------
Its also unnecessarily diminutive to say '... I have to point out that the sales BEFORE the free-app-of-the-day listing[1] were not impressive...". The fact of the matter is they made infinitely more money before the deal of the day then we can say they did AS A DIRECT RESULT of the deal of the day listing.
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I agree that my comment came off way too demeaning and I didn't mean it that way. I was getting carried away with making my point that from a sheer-number-of-device-installation perspective, they went from a trickle of water to a firehose in one day and that isn't a bad thing.