More and more apps for kids are available on Amazon Underground. Amazon Underground offers free versions of over 2,000 apps and games on Android smartphones and Fire tablets. Starting today, Mister Maker: Let’s Make It! and Fireman Sam – Junior Cadet, developed by P2 Games Limited are available for download from Amazon Underground.

Inspired by the popular TV carton, in Fireman Sam – Junior Cadet young fans can learn with Fireman Sam and the rest of the Fire Crew as they take on the role of a fire cadet in training. The Underground version contains more features than the paid version: 8 different ways to play including interactive single and multi-player games, video player with 6 videos, and a special reward sticker book 70 stickers and 12 background scenes. The game is suitable for 3 to 6yrs old.

JH Digital Solutions was founded by Finnish developer, Jari Huomo, and is the creator of hit Amazon Underground app, Zen: Coloring book for adults. Jari Huomo is an indie developer and self-proclaimed “coffee addict” working out of his home basement to build apps for all ages. After hearing about Amazon Underground on social media, Jari published his app, Zen: Coloring book for adults, to Amazon Underground, and now makes more on Underground than on all other platforms combined.

“My Amazon Underground experience has been superb so far! Zen: Coloring book for adults is now published for Amazon, Mac, Windows 10 desktop, iOS, and Google Play devices. The Amazon Underground version is the most downloaded one and Underground has currently made more money than other platforms combined!”

GETTING INTO AMAZON UNDERGROUND

JH Digital Solutions has adopted a business slogan of “Apps for everyone,” building everything from storybook apps for kids, to tax calculator apps for entrepreneurs. In 2015, what began as a kids coloring app evolved into an adult coloring app with coloring pages created by artists from around the world.

FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué for a live Twitch broadcast on Monday, April 18 – 9 AM PDT, 6 PM CET.  During the live broadcast, Gerard Piqué will showcase his app Final Kick, which is available through the Amazon Underground program. 

Spanish Footballer Gerard Piqué founded Kerad Games in 2012 and went on to create and distribute popular football games. In December 2015, Gerard Piqué launched Final Kick in Amazon Underground making the game 100% free for Amazon Underground customers. Final Kick is a freemium game where customers pay for in-app purchases on all other platforms, but those in-app purchase are 100% free on Amazon Underground.

Coffee Stain Studios is a developer based in Skövde, Sweden and creator of the blockbuster game, Goat Simulator. We recently sat down with the CEO of Coffee Stain Studios, Anton Westbergh, to learn how an idea to build a game about a destructive goat could lead to over 7 million paid downloads worldwide since its creation, and become one of the top grossing games in Amazon Underground since launching in August of 2015.

The Beginnings of Goat Simulator

Coffee Stain Studios started in 2010 with 9 students from the University of Skövde working on a game project that would become the prototype for their first hit PC game, Sanctum. In 2014, during a company brainstorm about their next game, the idea to build Goat Simulator was born. After posting a YouTube video of an early prototype of Goat Simulator that received 3 million views in the first week, Anton and his team knew they had created something customers were going to love. This has proven to be true, as 2 years later, Goat Simulator, which can be played for free with no in-app purchases on Amazon Underground, has topped the charts on almost all major platforms.

“We were hesitant to put Goat Simulator in Amazon Underground because when you have a really good, working monetization model, it’s scary to move into a new platform and try something different. We worried that this would affect our sales on the other platforms, but it has not. It’s definitely a platform that has worked for us and we’re going to have other titles in Underground in the future.”

Spanish Footballer Gerard Piqué founded Kerad Games in 2012 and went on to create and distribute popular football games. In December 2015, Gerard Piqué launched Final Kick in Amazon Underground making the game 100% free for Amazon Underground customers. Final Kick is a freemium game where customers pay for in-app purchases on all other platforms, but those in-app purchase are 100% free on Amazon Underground. We recently sat down with Piqué to learn about Final Kick and how they have seen an increase in downloads and revenue since launching in Amazon Underground.

“The mobile game industry moved a few years ago from paid to freemium. I see the Amazon Underground model as the new big movement for the mobile game industry,” said Gerard Piqué, owner of Kerad Games. “We saw immediately that Final Kick was perfect for Underground so we decided to join the Underground program and become a launch partner. We are very happy to collaborate so closely with Amazon.”

More Downloads, Increased Usage, and Higher Revenue

Amazon Underground helps attract more users with the promise of 100% free content that customers have to pay for in other Appstores. Kerad Games has experienced this growth first hand. Since launching Final Kick in Amazon Underground, they have seen a 900% increase in average monthly downloads. 

When creating a build of your game for Amazon Underground, it’s important to make sure that your APK has a unique bundle identifier and an icon with the Underground sash. These two requirements help make your Underground game stand out when installed on a player’s device and also help avoid any installation conflict you may have with the paid version of your game. You can learn more about these requirements from our dev portal here. If you are building a Unity Game, you already know that there isn’t an easy way to create separate Android builds per target. Once you configure the build, it's the same for all Android platforms. To get around this, we are going to talk about a plugin called Advanced Builder which will help you not only automate your different builds but also allows you to write a custom build script to change out icons based on whether it’s an Underground version or a standard one. Let’s get started.

Advanced Builder

Advanced Builder is paid plugin on the Unity Asset store that allows you to set up individual builds based on target platforms and automate a lot of the tedious build steps. Once you have it installed you can create a new release type for the Underground build. Here you can see I have a Standard build and my Underground Build.

On November 3^rd 2015 300+ attendees, two tracks about monetization and gaming, 13 sessions, multiple guest speakers and the Amazon Appstore evangelists animated a very successful developer-focused conference: the Amazon Appstore Developer Summit 2015, which took place at CodeNode, London.

The Amazon Appstore Developer Summit focused around unique insights into the Amazon Appstore ecosystem, emerging user interfaces and devices that are driving new user behaviors, like Fire TV and Amazon Echo, and new business models like Amazon Underground and Merch, which are opening up opportunities for customers and the developer community.

Here you can find the recordings of all the sessions, complete with slides, organized by topic:

Amazon Underground has extended availability to customers on 2nd generation 2012 Fire tablets, giving developers the opportunity to reach another large and active group of customers with their Amazon Underground app or game. Amazon Underground is a new app for Android phones where customers can access over $20,000 in apps, games and in-app items 100% free – that’s over 2,000 apps and games that would normally cost money to download and play. As a developer, Amazon will pay you for every minute your Amazon Underground app is used, by every customer. You can monetize 100% of your Android users, and starting today, that includes customers using Amazon Underground on 2^nd generation 2012 Fire tablets. These customers will now find an Underground tab added to the Appstore on their device giving them access to 100% free apps and games on Amazon Underground.

Developers are Successful in Amazon Underground

Amazon Underground launched in August of 2015, enabling developers to get paid for every customer, and generate revenue for every minute of usage. With Amazon Underground, developers have seen their download numbers and their revenue on Amazon increase as a result. We recently sat down with Halfbrick Studios, and GIANTS Software to discuss their success since launching on Amazon Underground. 

The all-new Fire tablet was the #1 best-selling, most wished-for, and most gifted product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com this holiday season, and all of these tablets come pre-loaded with Amazon Underground. The 2015 holiday season was the biggest holiday ever for Amazon devices-up 2x over last year’s record setting holiday. With this record setting shopping season, millions of customers are lighting up their new devices this month and downloading their first 100% free Amazon Underground apps and games. With proven success for developers like Halfbrick Studios and Rovio, and millions of new Fire Tablet customers, now is the time to get your apps and games published to Amazon Underground.

Halfbrick CEO Shaniel Deo Discusses Amazon Underground

In 2015, Amazon introduced a new monetization model called Amazon Underground in its continuing effort to make mobile developers successful. Instead of charging for each download or encouraging in-app purchases, developers can earn revenue through Amazon Underground for every minute that their app is actually in use by every customer.

By removing the usage friction associated with pay walls and in-app selling, Amazon Underground leads to a more engaging user experience, helping you attract more users to your app with the promise of 100% free content. We recently sat down with Shaniel Deo, founder of Halfbrick, to talk about the results his company has seen with Amazon Underground.

Halfbrick’s Colossatron

Creator of blockbuster games like Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja (which Deo says have worldwide downloads of more than 500 million and 1 billion, respectively, across all platforms), Halfbrick has released many popular mobile games over the years using traditional monetization models like premium, freemium, and ad-supported. According to Deo, “We had varying degrees of success. [Amazon Underground] really piqued my interest when I heard about it. This is something that I think is innovative, and allows us to reach a different audience, while at the same time generate revenue from that audience.”

Colossatron was the first game Halfbrick published to Amazon Underground, and Deo has been pleased with the customer response.

Amazon Underground is a new app for Android phones where customers can access over 1,500 free versions of apps and games that normally cost money to download and play (including unlimited, free in-app items).  Amazon Underground launched in August of 2015 for customers in the US, UK, Germany and France. Starting today, Amazon Underground is available in 16 additional countries and territories including Italy and Spain, opening up new and exciting opportunities for mobile developers to reach an even broader audience.

Amazon Underground customers will find  free versions of popular premium titles like Office Suite Professional 8 and Fruit Ninja and popular titles with in-app purchases like Frozen Free Fall, Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions, Angry Birds Slingshot Stella, and many more.   Any developer can submit their app, which means more apps and games will be added to Underground all the time.

In Dev Chat – Short Answers to Big Questions, our new video series of short videos created by Amazon Appstore, developers of successful apps and games answer your questions in less than 90 seconds.

In this edition, the team behind NeuroNation explains how their focus on the customer experience has fostered increased user engagement. They also discuss how they monetize globally by adapting their business model to the way their users connect and behave, and how they see Amazon Underground as a unique opportunity to align monetization with their high user engagement.

Today Marmalade announced the launch of the free Marmalade for Amazon SDK. If you are like me, you have thought of half a dozen ideas for apps that would be great in Amazon Underground, where apps are #ActuallyFree for customers and developers get paid for every minute that the app is used. Now, getting those built is a whole lot easier with the launch of the Marmalade for Amazon SDK.

Marmalade is the first cross-platform solution to implement support for Amazon Underground APK management, including single click publishing, to simplify publishing apps to both Underground and the Amazon Appstore. 

You’ve built a great app, and you may have spent a lot of time implementing IAP in your app so you can make a bit of money for your efforts (or better still, make a lot of money from your efforts!).  But perhaps like most developers, maybe 2-10% of your customers actually buy anything. It can get frustrating. Now, with Amazon Underground you have the option to monetize your app and get paid based on how much time users actually spend using your app. All your users.

If you are interested in trying out this new monetization model by submitting an existing IAP-based app, the following is a guide for you!

Amazon Underground represents a new opportunity for developers of premium games that are looking to expand their audience and still monetize well. Ideally when you lower the price of a game or make it free it increases the number of downloads and exposure but usually at the expense of earning money. This is one of the major factors that has made Free 2 Play (F2P) so appealing to developers since you can get a larger audience and focus on converting players into paid customers via in-app purchase (IAP). Unfortunately not every game lends itself to this model.

With Amazon Underground’s monetization approach, Amazon pays you for every minute a customer uses your Amazon Underground app, and customers pay nothing.

In this post we’ll talk about four things you’ll need to do in order to take an existing premium game and submit it into the Amazon Underground program. It’s also a great opportunity to turn non-paying customers into paying ones through deeper engagement and longer play sessions.