HN user
Thanks Timothee,
This may just be a case of wording, we started as a bit.ly for iPhone apps, and moved into the services for iPhone developers. If bit.ly would offer a premium service where you use a subset of their URLs (say, bit.ly/app_XXX) and they put in affiliate codes so that they can track your sales data and give it back to you, people's reaction would be 'sweet, more features from bit.ly'.
If a commission of 1.5 cents for a 99cent app is a profit channel for you, I recommend pan-handling :-)
No, that's not possible without tons of code to generate codes, cross reference, generate reports. appsto.re is a turn-key service, doing it by yourself is much more work than you would expect, and isn't worth it to a single or even a small group of developers.
Hi guys, many name is Ohad and I'm one of the guys behind appsto.re
There is a very wide mis-understanding of LinkShre, Apple, etc, here are a few tasty facts:
* Apple will give its affiliate partners 5% out of their 30% profit. For a 99c app, that's 1.5c, that is not money on any scale. * This money comes out of Apple's pocket, remember? 99.9% of developers don't setup a relationship with Linkshare and claim that money. * Linkshare is a horrific 1990's-stlye company, where the site is down more than it should be, the reports are extremely hard to consume. This explains why its not worth for the average or even the successful developer to work with them for that measly commission.
Now, as for appsto.re: * We built significant infra-structure around integrating with Linkshare, sucking out the info, generating the various reports (many of which are far from trivial). * No, you can't just 'hookup Google-Analytics and Linkshare in 1 hour', it doesn't work like that, Linkshare doesn't want to be your friend, they won't really tell you how/what got sold, and it will require significant research and development.
In short, we built what we believe is an awesome service for iPhone developers/marketers, its turn-key so they don't need to bother with anything. We've been beta-testing with hundreds of developers, they are all happy to the roof, because this allows them to focus on their app and its marketing.
How do we make money? Not from Linkshare that's for sure, we're going to be Freemium.