Affiliate programs are great. They can be a great way to monetize your website. Simply deliver quality content, give answers to the people in need and refer them to a fitting product or service.
What really bugs me is that Google does not offer an affiliate program for Google Play. Many websites and blogs depend on income through affiliate programs. I would even go that far and say that many websites are even started solely for the purpose of earning money using programs like, for instance, the Amazon.com Associates program.
Affiliate Programs & The Mobile App Economy
Gaming is big in mobile and plays a huge role in the mobile app economy. A PopCap survey conducted in June 2012 found, that 44% of all adults asked played a game on their mobile device within the last month. According to gaming industry analyst IHS Screen Digest mobile gamers in the UK will spent a whooping £300m on mobile games in 2013. That’s huge!
We’re always thinking about expanding the content portfolio of trendblog.net and app reviews could be a great new topic. That’s why I did a quick search for a Google Play affiliate program just to find that the Google product forums are full of threads asking about an affiliate program.
Finding an official answer was quite hard and only got me to a post from April 2013 on the old Google Affiliate Network blog, saying that the network will be shut down.
We’ve made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.
Google Play, however, was never part of this network. Another dead end.
Alternative Android App Affiliate Programs
With Google Play being no help, I tried to find alternative programs. The one alternative I found was the Amazon.com App store, but not all Android apps are available there.
So what should we do? I guess we have to live with the situation for the moment and hope that Google will soon implement a Google Play affiliate program. I guess they have their reasons for not offering it, but I personally think that such a program would be very beneficial for the Android platform.
I mean, seriously, giving away a few % of sales for massive exposure, relevant content, reviews and more platforms and people actively promoting Android apps? Why Google, why?
