
Ask HN: How are top-grossing apps calculated? - bvod
How does Google and Apple calculate top grossing apps, when a number of those apps have their sales from a subscription model that does not happen through the app store (spotify, netflix, etc)?
======
mdonahoe
Fun fact: if your app has a reasonable conversion rate, you can basically buy
your spot on that list temporarily by spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars on advertising.

It usually isn't sustainable, but can be helpful during launch of a new game
to make sure it gets attention. I think it was easier than cracking the Top
Free list, since fewer apps have IAP.

The ad team at my previous game company would do this and not tell the rest of
the rank-and-file employees. We'd be psyched to see our app in the top
grossing list... meanwhile the ad team would be spending more money than we
were earning.

~~~
idunno246
years ago, the dollar amounts werent that large even. my game company bought
us all gift cards and told us all to each buy a couple hundred dollars in our
app to bump a couple spots.

another interesting thing, basically everyone on the top grossing chart knows
roughly what the others are making - as you adjust ad spend you adjust your
revenue, and when you pass someone you know how much they are making. (or just
through word of mouth or multiple games)

even more crazy was buying tens or hundreds of thousands of downloads to get
to the top of the free charts from bots, before apple claimed to be cracking
down, which then triggered a couple percent of that in legitimate downloads.
those 'organic' downloads from the charts ended up costing a fraction of what
paid ads would have cost if you average the bot download cost over them. then
marketing/coo lying about not using bots......dont know why they thinks they
can hide stuff from the engineers

~~~
gberger
> my game company bought us all gift cards and told us all to each buy a
> couple hundred dollars in our app to bump a couple spots.

Is this allowed?

~~~
koolba
Sure why not?

It's like opening a restaurant and paying people to eat there for a while to
generate fake social proof.

~~~
freehunter
Fake it until you make it. It's natural conclusion of Doing Things That Don't
Scale: [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

First 100 people through the door get 15% off!

Beta testers get the full game half price!

And of course, authors do this on the NYT Best Seller list all the time... buy
enough copies of your own book at enough book stores and you'll shoot right to
the top:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Best_Seller...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Best_Seller_list#Controversies)

~~~
michaelmior
The first two examples of discounts you cited are very different from just
paying to directly inflate your ratings.

~~~
freehunter
I'm trying to show a progression from "discounts" to "more discounts" to
"we'll give it to you free just to get more 'sales'" That's why I called it a
natural conclusion.

The only difference between giving someone a coupon to entice them to buy
something from you and buying it yourself is how much money you're losing in
the short term. It's on the same spectrum, just at different ends.

~~~
jakobegger
No, this is not a spectrum.

Offering a discount or giving copies away is marketing.

Buying copies yourself and pretending someone else did is fraud.

------
Zakiazigazi
They don't account for revenue from outside the stores. Apple technically
doesn't allow purchases to happen outside its stores, in practice that has
always been a bit of a grey area, but in any case that revenue is not
disclosed to Apple and therefore cannot affect the rankings in any way.

As for the calculations, Apple updates roughly every six hours and I think
(the algorithms not being public for a good reason, I have no real proof),
they take into account the total sum revenue during the last period, but also
use the relative delta revenue as a factor, so even with slightly lower
revenue a suddenly popular app can appear higher in the rankings.

They also seem to change the algorithms every once in a while, we've seen
pretty drastic changes overnight a few times, eventually though the top apps
always normalize around the usual suspects, so it's possible that they just do
some sort of reset of historical data that also affect rankings.

~~~
freehunter
That's the answer. If Netflix is on the top grossing app charts, it's due
entirely to signups that happen within the Netflix app, not on Netflix.com.

The better way to think about the list is "top grossing apps for
Apple/Google". Their 30% cut is what they're counting there.

------
adamcanady
I also wonder why Apple allows some apps to accept payments via credit card
yet others need to use the built in payment solutions?

EDIT: some research later indicates that it's possible allowing a user to sign
up outside the app (and outside a webview initiated by the app) skirts around
the policy [1], since the user can return to the app and log in, then use
their account for payments.

[1] [https://www.designernews.co/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-
ly...](https://www.designernews.co/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-lyft-uber-
airbnb-skirt-apples-30-cut-on-each-transaction)

~~~
ProblemFactory
Apps are allowed to use external payment methods for "real world" goods and
services.

All digital content (premium features, game coins, file storage, music or
video libraries) accessible within the app must be charged through Apple, and
the user must not be able to find an alternative payment method from within
the app.

> EDIT: some research later indicates that it's possible allowing a user to
> sign up outside the app (and outside a webview initiated by the app) skirts
> around the policy, since the user can return to the app and log in, then use
> their account for payments.

Depending on the precise details of your signup page, this may or may not get
banned by Apple if they notice it. It's allowed to sign up users and accept
external payments outside the app - _but then you must not have links to this
payment page from within the app_. If the user already has an external paid
account, then they can use it, but any first-time users must only see IAP or
nothing.

Some time ago Apple threatened to ban Dropbox, because they had a webview for
signups, and it was possible to upgrade to a premium account within that
webview.

~~~
aaronbrager
That's false. You can offer your own solution presented side-by-side with IAP.

------
mdonahoe
How do you know a large fraction of subscription signups don't happen through
the App Store? [https://9to5mac.com/2015/09/24/netflix-in-app-
purchase/](https://9to5mac.com/2015/09/24/netflix-in-app-purchase/)

------
soulchild37
I think Apple only take in account for direct app purchase, in-app purchase
and subscription plus this ranking is calculated weekly.

------
richardwhiuk
I believe top grossing apps only includes payments made via the App Store for
Apple.

It includes both in app purchases and cost to buy.

