

iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank - chrisa
http://www.mobilesort.com/blog/ios-sale-numbers-by-app-store-rank.html

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teej
There's this lingering myth about app store charts. The myth pertains to a
magical "line", some sort of tipping point, over which all your download
problems go away.

This myth is patently false.

From what I've seen with apps ranked anywhere from #1 to #5000, the organic
download boost from being in the Top 50 is minuscule. It's not self
sustaining. It's not magical. And it certainly doesn't make your problems go
away.

As this article points out, the number of downloads you need to rank higher in
the app store grows exponentially. What it doesn't point out is that organic
download growth from ranking higher grows linearly. That means it gets harder
and harder to keep your position in the app store unless you support those
downloads somehow.

How can apps maintain their app store ranking? All the big co's do the
following (starting with the most effective):

* Big ad spend

* Aggressive cross promotion

* Purchasing incentivized installs

* App store search optimization

* App Store features

Now, the story is a little different when you look at the top grossing chart.
The reason for this should be obvious - the more money you make, the more you
can dump in to ads. More ads means more users means more revenue. None of this
is by accident - these companies understand their user acquisition channels
extremely well and are constantly looking for new opportunities to spend.

A little more info: How people discover apps by type -
[http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/503fd59beab8eab44a0...](http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/503fd59beab8eab44a000015-960/chart-
of-the-day-how-people-find-apps-august-2012.jpg)

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chrisa
Interesting point about linear growth from organic downloads.

Do you have any advice about which of those methods would be most effective
for increasing downloads of a side project (no money for big ad spend, not a
large network to do cross promotion, etc)?

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sanjkris
At a very order-of-magnitude level, your stats are exactly in line with my
1.5yrs of experience in the paid-app biz category. 3 of my apps have spent
large amounts of time b/w #17 and #300. In the biz category, you can get into
the top-25 with about 70+ downloads per day. 30-50 will get you into the
top-50. My apps are priced 1.99-4.99

All the comments about spending $$ to get into the charts is bs. I know
competitors who have released their first apps in the last few weeks. And
reached the top-10 very quickly. Fantastic UI, rock-solid services and solving
a real problem took them there. They charge $10...yup. Thats right-10 bucks!!
All that bs about 99 cent apps only selling is debunked too.

DONT buy ads; dont spend $$ on anything other than solving the primary problem
the app addresses. Just narrow your problem domain. User will pay you $$ for
it.

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nanijoe
Regarding your footnote...Is top 50 really the inflection point? My experience
has been top 25, then top 10. I don't have the exact figures, but I had an app
(finance category) get in the top 25 on around 30 daily downloads, but bounced
between 11 and 13 with 100-150 daily downloads. It never did get into the top
10, or I suspect I may have been posting this from my private jet :)

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chrisa
On the graph is looks like top 50 is where it started moving from "under 10"
downloads to hitting the "exponential" part of the curve. But yes, I imagine
that top 25 would show a similar jump, and top 10 even more so, as the top 10
in category list is what shows on the "Top Paid" list on iTunes.

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chrisa
I like it when other developers share their sales numbers, so I decided to
share some of mine. I'm happy to answer any questions!

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suhastech
I posted my first mac app yesterday.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668813>

It got just 20 downloads (USA) and it went to the Top 75 in the Utilities
category. I guess I missed the inflection point by just little bit.

The surprising part here is, all except 75 apps in the category gets less than
20 downloads? Whoa! Very little people on the top can make a living out of app
development.

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malyk
I think the mac app store is a much much MUCH smaller market than the iOS app
store. It's a new way for people to get apps on a desktop and my guess is the
adoption is slower, so it isn't really surprising to me that 20 downloads puts
you into the top of your category.

I have no data to back this up, btw. I'd be interested in seeing some mac vs.
ios store numbers. Anyone?

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RandallBrown
An app I worked on was briefly in the top 10 best selling on the day it
launched. We made it above some pretty notable games like Plants vs. Zombies.
The app definitely sold well that day, but it was surprising how low the sales
needed to be to make it that high in the rankings. It would have been a good
living making those sales every day, but it wasn't going to make anyone
millionaires.

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phil
It's great to see those charts. You're conflating iPhone and iPad rankings
though.

~10 sales/day won't get you into the US Music top 100 for iPhone since iPhone
is a bigger market than iPad. Yet that 80 sales/day number is for iPhone.
That's making the extrapolated bit of your chart steeper than it should be.

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chrisa
Ah, yes! I wanted to point that out. Do you have an idea of what the number
for iPad should be?

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phil
Unfortunately, I don't. I have two paid music apps but like yourself, only
have good data for lower portions of the charts. Plus it's tough to pick apart
iPad vs iPhone sales for universal apps.

If I had to guess, it's probably about half of iPhone, but don't rely on that!

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namityadav
I'm surprised that it took you only 80 downloads to reach top 25 in Music
category. The education category needs many many times more downloads to be
even close to top 25.

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chrisa
Is that paid, or free? The source used for numbers [1] shows 3,900 free
downloads needed for top 25 in Music, which might be more in line with what
you're seeing?

[1] [http://www.distimo.com/blog/2012_05_quora-answering-
series-d...](http://www.distimo.com/blog/2012_05_quora-answering-series-
download-volume-needed-to-hit-top-25-per-category/)

~~~
namityadav
Oh, sorry! Sometimes when you've spent too much time in your free app, you
forget about the 'paid' world. Even if the author specifies it right there in
the post. :)

