How to earn £1.21 from the Amazon App Store in 2.5 years
Two and a half years ago I put These Robotic Hearts of Mine on the Amazon app store. Yesterday I received a cheque for £1.21.
Now I don’t want to be that guy saying the Amazon app store isn’t worth it. That’s just the first time someone bought it from the UK. It’s sold a further 17 sales in the US in that 2.5 years, totalling $31.88, so clearly the Amazon app store is a thriving hub of activity!
I only have to reach $100 in US sales before I get a payment in that currency too! At this rate, that’ll take another 5 years, so come 2019 I’ll be swimming in it!
But that’s not the only store not worth being on! Shortly after the game’s release I was approached by ToyStudio, who wanted to publish my game for Nook tablets. I wasn’t planning to release for this platform (nor was I really aware that it existed), so if they wanted to take care of releasing and marketing my game, surely this was win-win!
Nook tablets are another Android-based platform, so code changes were minimal. Barnes & Noble would take the standard 30% cut, ToyStudio would take 20% and I would get 50%.
But as I’m sure you can guess, this didn’t turn out to be the amazing opportunity I was promised. So, how many copies did it sell in 2.5 years?
Well, I’m not sure. I received 4 months of sales reports (35 copies sold, my cut $17.44), after which there was a “Moving on from Toy Studio” email from my contact, and thereafter no sales reports.
I’ve intended to follow this up at some point, but since the contract I signed says they get to hold the money until my earnings pass $300, it hardly seems worth it.
[Update Oct 2014: Toy Studio decided to stop supporting Nook & Amazon App Store and pulled all their published games from those platforms. I got sent a cheque for $29.74.]
Rating slightly ahead of those two platforms, on BlackBerry phones the game has been downloaded 24 times, including one 5-star review!
And I’ve even received that money: a staggering $41.13.
Sadly, as of BlackBerry OS 10.3.1, Adobe AIR apps will no longer work and so this money well will finally run dry. Oh well, all good things must come to an end…
… as must this blog post.
For context, the game has sold 1,326 copies on Android, ~700 copies on iOS, and also had ~9,000 free downloads across two days of being free on iOS (on Android you unfortunately cannot make a game temporarily free). It’s been played online 231,093 times.
You can buy These Robotic Hearts of Mine for your phone from the Amazon app store or for your Nook device if you don’t want me to get any of the money.
