As a one-man company, I only had limited resources.
I learned I had to use my resources very wisely and accept that I can't build everything.
One thing
I regret when I look back is I have spent a great amount of time on supporting
multiple app store.
I have
supported Play Store (Google), Amazon, Samsung, Opera, and Hiapk (Chinese app
store).
You might
think, 'can't I just build one APK and applied to all app store? How hard is
that?'
Not
really.
You have
to:
- Build separate APKs for at least Amazon & Samsung app store for numerous reasons. They won't accept your APK if certain conditions don't meet. [Solution: use flavour in Gradle - I will write another blog how to manage creating multiple APKs for multiple app store]
- Maintain multiple app stores: trust me, it takes time just to maintain. You need to respond to users feedbacks, some policy change which requires you to update, etc.
I can go
in more detail how much work is needed but instead I will convince you another way.
It is not worth it.
When I
was actively supporting all app stores (2011~2014), following was my profit
distribution:
80% Play
Store
10%
Amazon
10%
Samsung
0% Others (Opera, HiAPK, etc)
*
Now-a-days it is not fair for me to say the distribution because I currently
don't actively support other app stores anymore.
I read
from other blogs that other developers
have similar profit distributions.
20% is
not a negligible amount. However, if you are making $1000 a year, then you
would rather want to concentrate on making your app better to earn $10'000 a
year than earn missing $200 from other app store. When you start to make enough
profit, then diversify to other app store to maximize your profit. It is not
too late to do it then.
However,
publishing on Samsung store early has one benefit.
They have
their own QA team who reviews apps more strictly like Apple. It means this is a
free QA for you. They make
sure the quality meets their standard.
