Opera App store for Android -- apps.opera.com

General (non-technical) Marketing and Monetization
#1

I was contacted via email by someone at opera.com about getting our app published on their marketplace.  I think Opera is legit (same company who makes the opera web browser) but was wondering if anyone can verify that.  e.g. experiences with the submission process, payments, downloads compared to Google Play, Amazon, Samsung, etc.

From the email:

One of the leading independent  app stores in the world, the Opera Mobile Store, has doubled its traffic in a year, reaching 60,000,000 monthly visitors and more than 2,000,000 app downloads per day.
The strongest growth has been attained in the emerging markets such as India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and others.

Another thing that is a bit different is that you can opt-in to a subscription model.  I’m not exactly sure how that works

http://apps.opera.com/en_us/

IMHO, It almost seems like there ought to be a sub-topic just to deal with the various app marketplaces.

If anyone has experience in app stores outside the big 4 or 5, I’d appreciate hearing about them, particularly regarding Opera.

Cheers,

Dave

#2

I just submitted several apps to the opera mobile store, each of which have tens of thousands of downloads across Google Play, Amazon Appstore and iTunes.  I have had ZERO downloads from the store.  Unless they somehow take off in the future, I would say submitting apps to opera is just about useless.

Same is true for the samsung app store, IMHO.

Hope this helps!

#3

My Opera experience has been an interesting one.  They actually installed all the free apps for me.  One app, the free version of my space shooter jumped to like 6000 downloads in a couple of days and then I found out my ads were not working correctly, so I uploaded a couple of fixes.  Things have slowed down considerably.  Now after a couple of months, it’s floating in the low 8000 range.   They however do not do updates, so those first 6000 did not get the new version with the ads.

My other free app a photo gallery of Yosemite National Park, only has 60 downloads in the same period.

My paid apps, which I had to upload have had ZERO.  I asked my contact about it and even though I had filled out everything on their website (probably the easiest of the vendors to work with and upload content btw).  I needed to respond “I Agree” to an email to get them to turn on paid sales.  I’ve only sold 2 Omniblasters and nothing of my others.  But that’s 2 more than Ive sold on Google Play in the last 6 months.  

It seems to me that my free space shooter must have gotten promoted or something.

Samsung is seeing some app sales now that I have my apps finally up there, but given that my bank charges $14 for an international wire transfer, I’m worried that after this initial surge, I may end up loosing money.

#4

I just submitted several apps to the opera mobile store, each of which have tens of thousands of downloads across Google Play, Amazon Appstore and iTunes.  I have had ZERO downloads from the store.  Unless they somehow take off in the future, I would say submitting apps to opera is just about useless.

Same is true for the samsung app store, IMHO.

Hope this helps!

#5

My Opera experience has been an interesting one.  They actually installed all the free apps for me.  One app, the free version of my space shooter jumped to like 6000 downloads in a couple of days and then I found out my ads were not working correctly, so I uploaded a couple of fixes.  Things have slowed down considerably.  Now after a couple of months, it’s floating in the low 8000 range.   They however do not do updates, so those first 6000 did not get the new version with the ads.

My other free app a photo gallery of Yosemite National Park, only has 60 downloads in the same period.

My paid apps, which I had to upload have had ZERO.  I asked my contact about it and even though I had filled out everything on their website (probably the easiest of the vendors to work with and upload content btw).  I needed to respond “I Agree” to an email to get them to turn on paid sales.  I’ve only sold 2 Omniblasters and nothing of my others.  But that’s 2 more than Ive sold on Google Play in the last 6 months.  

It seems to me that my free space shooter must have gotten promoted or something.

Samsung is seeing some app sales now that I have my apps finally up there, but given that my bank charges $14 for an international wire transfer, I’m worried that after this initial surge, I may end up loosing money.

#6

FWIW,  After 3 months on the Opera and Yandex app stores, our 99 cent app has had zero downloads.  I asked both stores to remove our app and both complied.

For us we have seen the most success in iTunes followed by Google Play, Amazon, and Nook.   We have held off on Samsung since it seemed it was more hassle than it was worth.  The banking setup and money transfer seemed more complex than the US based stores which scared us away a little bit (at least it was 6 months ago).

Is anyone making money on paid apps in the Samsung store?

#7

FWIW,  After 3 months on the Opera and Yandex app stores, our 99 cent app has had zero downloads.  I asked both stores to remove our app and both complied.

For us we have seen the most success in iTunes followed by Google Play, Amazon, and Nook.   We have held off on Samsung since it seemed it was more hassle than it was worth.  The banking setup and money transfer seemed more complex than the US based stores which scared us away a little bit (at least it was 6 months ago).

Is anyone making money on paid apps in the Samsung store?

#8

I too have my last app on both Opera and Samsung.  But, zero sales on Opera, and last time I checked it was less than 10 sales on Samsung.  This is a game with tens of thousands of sales across the other app stores.  So, they’re a big waste in my mind.  BTW - Samsung was the absolute by far worst worst worst app store to upload to.  I had to get a new bank account to handle the international transfer crap, and it wasn’t just that, it was also just the upload process in general was crazy hard, including having to figure out exactly which android devices to include.  I’d include as many as possible, just to get rejected 4-5 days later for some weird test on some obscure device. So, upload again, and remove that device and any matching whatever that device was, just to have it rejected again and again, like this.  I finally got with Corona support to ask what boxes to check to get it past, and they had no clue either.  So, in the end, I just checked the biggest newest devices and it finally made it up there.  And now 8 months later, haven’t even made $7.  Huge nightmare of effort to payout.

#9

@dvboren - btw, I bought your app several months back.  I try to support corona devs as much as I can, especially if it looks like a good app, but it always makes me smile inside to see an app that I bought before knowing it was corona built, like your 3d knot app.  I bought it for a fishing trip, it worked awesome.

#10

@tielore - That’s awesome!  It makes me smile to know someone finds the app useful!

I never tried Samsung and your experience validates that decision.  Nook revenue has steadily declined, particularly after BN allowed Google Play installs on the Nook.  Since the account is already setup and it isn’t too much trouble to upload to BN, I’ll probably keep doing it.  Amazon DL’s are slightly up but the lion’s share of download are from iTunes and Google Play. 

#11

I too have my last app on both Opera and Samsung.  But, zero sales on Opera, and last time I checked it was less than 10 sales on Samsung.  This is a game with tens of thousands of sales across the other app stores.  So, they’re a big waste in my mind.  BTW - Samsung was the absolute by far worst worst worst app store to upload to.  I had to get a new bank account to handle the international transfer crap, and it wasn’t just that, it was also just the upload process in general was crazy hard, including having to figure out exactly which android devices to include.  I’d include as many as possible, just to get rejected 4-5 days later for some weird test on some obscure device. So, upload again, and remove that device and any matching whatever that device was, just to have it rejected again and again, like this.  I finally got with Corona support to ask what boxes to check to get it past, and they had no clue either.  So, in the end, I just checked the biggest newest devices and it finally made it up there.  And now 8 months later, haven’t even made $7.  Huge nightmare of effort to payout.

#12

@dvboren - btw, I bought your app several months back.  I try to support corona devs as much as I can, especially if it looks like a good app, but it always makes me smile inside to see an app that I bought before knowing it was corona built, like your 3d knot app.  I bought it for a fishing trip, it worked awesome.

#13

@tielore - That’s awesome!  It makes me smile to know someone finds the app useful!

I never tried Samsung and your experience validates that decision.  Nook revenue has steadily declined, particularly after BN allowed Google Play installs on the Nook.  Since the account is already setup and it isn’t too much trouble to upload to BN, I’ll probably keep doing it.  Amazon DL’s are slightly up but the lion’s share of download are from iTunes and Google Play.