In-app purchasing is probably the best way for developers to monetize their products, something Amazon did not consider when they launched the Amazon Appstore for Android over a year ago.

The Amazon Appstore gave Android developers another venue to launch their babies, unfortunately, it was another store that gobbled up apps.  Consumers had a hard time looking for the apps they wanted and developers found it hard to compete with established publishers.  Developers either had to significantly lower the price of their apps in order to gain users or offer their apps for free, which was bad for developers who want to earn revenue from their mobile efforts.  The only way they can break-even is with in-app purchasing, but Amazon’s Appstore doesn’t have that.

After hearing consumer and developer complaints, Amazon finally gave in.

“Amazon has always done a great job in supporting our retail customers but for the Appstore, one of our core tenets is to treat developers as kind of our first-class customers, as well. We are definitely making strong efforts to make sure that we promote and help monetize developers’ content in the most effective way that we can,” said Ameesh Paleja, director of engineering for the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon launches In-App Purchasing

Earlier this month, it was reported that Amazon was testing in-app purchasing for software downloaded in their Appstore.  And today, after testing the service to developers such as ZeptoLab, Disney, Glu Mobile Inc., Storm8, Social Gaming Network, Gameloft, G5 Entertainment Inc., and top publishers like Condé Nast, Dow Jones and New York Post, Amazon launched  the In-App Purchasing (IAP) service.

“Amazon Appstore’s In-App Purchasing service enables developers to generate more revenue from their apps,” said Aaron Rubenson, Director of Amazon Appstore. “In-App Purchasing is simple to integrate and gives developers access to millions of Amazon customers who are already familiar with Amazon’s 1-Click payment system. Many of Amazon Appstore’s customers have shopped with Amazon before and they trust Amazon’s easy payment process, which leads to higher conversion of developers’ in-app content and subscriptions.”

How it works

For developers, all you need to do is set up your Amazon account if you haven’t already, upload your app, define the items that you would like to sell and upload the appropriate metadata and pricing for those items, the list price.  And to setup the IAP,  register the intent for which you want to use the IAP, and implement a way for your customer to actually trigger a purchase.

“[I]if you are making a racing game and you go to the pit stop and you want to buy some tires. You press that button and it will call the API on our side that will bring up a purchase dialogue to buy that item. Then, you implement an API to handle the response back from the server that says that this has been successfully purchased, please give the customer the tires or the new car or whatever they chose to buy,” Paleja explained.

And for users, if you have an Amazon account, in-app purchasing is as easy as pie.  Just one click and you’re all set.  No more exiting the app just to get the item you want, no more time consuming redirects.

The development makes Amazon’s Appstore even more competitive with Google Play, not to mention iOS’s iTunes App Store.  Amazon’s already taken liberties with the Android OS for its Kindle tablet, and the creation of its own app store was another play against Google.  With more developer function integrated into the Appstore, Amazon’s extending its ecosystem and appealing to app publishers, and potentially generating more income from digital goods.