Amazon Appstore: Company pays small developers more money

A new rule in the Amazon Appstore is likely to please smaller developers in particular. The commission that developers have to pay to Amazon is reduced if sales do not exceed a certain limit. So more money beckons.

Amazon Appstore with new rule

Back in June 2021 the company communicated a change regarding commissions in the Amazon Appstore, which is now coming into effect. In order to make their own store more interesting, small app and game developers will henceforth have to pay fewer commissions to the company and will be allowed to keep a larger portion of the revenue accordingly.

The Amazon Appstore is mainly used on Fire TV devices and the Fire tablets of the mail-order giant and offers a much more manageable number of programs and games than the Google Play Store or Apple’s Appstore.

Therefore, some developers, including those of popular programs, leave out the Amazon counterpart. To compensate for this, smaller developers will receive a larger share of the money generated by their app or game in the future.  As reported by the blog AFTVnews, the new policy was implemented in the Appstore as early as December 22, 2021.

10 percent more money

If developers earn less than $1 million per year, they are a part of the “Appstore Small Business Accelerator” program. This reduces the percentage of revenue from the app offered by the developer that you have to fork over to Amazon. Instead of the usual 30 percent of sales, Amazon now only keeps 20 percent.

The classification as a participant in the Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program is based on the earnings in the past calendar year. If the sales threshold of 1 million US dollars per year is exceeded, the full commission of 30 percent is due.  Only in the following year is it possible to switch to the Small Business Accelerator Program again, AFTVnews reports.

Participants in the small developer program can also look forward to a credit for using AWS (Amazon Web Services) equal to 10 percent of the developer’s revenue. These credits are expected to be unlocked sometime during 2022, and developers will be notified accordingly via email.