It's only been a bit over two days, but I'm very encouraged about a couple of things happening over at the Amazon Appstore.  First, it appears that the rankings are very dynamic, changing continually throughout the day.  Rankings have been a complaint of developers selling on the Google Android Market almost from day one.  There have been big changes on the Android Market, but the rankings are still a bit static and just as difficult to understand as they ever where.  There is no more transparency on Amazon, but I like how they call out "Hot New Releases" and "Movers and Shakers" as sub-categories under "Best Sellers".  They offer lots of ways for an app developer to get their app on some kind of temporal and constantly updated list...

What I'm impressed with so far is that Amazon knows how to sell things.  They've got this affinity and "Also Bought" pattern figured out.   It's very early, but on the Appstore, my conversion rate is 30%!  If you follow the "upgrade from lite to pro" model for your app, you know that kind of conversion rate is crazy high.  On the Android Market, in the best days of Screebl, the conversion rate was 10%, and over the long-haul it's more like 6%.  The graph above shows conversions on Appstore for three full days, and one partial day (graph was rendered on 3/25/2011 at about 8:30 am).

Competition is good.  I've written about the pain that market fragmentation causes for developers, and I haven't changed my mind about that.  I'm warming to the idea of multiple markets though if these alternates can sell apps in a way that Google so far hasn't been able to do.