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.
iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
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Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#12There'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…
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)?
Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#13I'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.
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...
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. :)
Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#14At 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.
Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#15It'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.
Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#16It'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.
Ah, yes! I wanted to point that out. Do you have an idea of what the number for iPad should be?
Re: iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
#17It'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.
Ah, yes! I wanted to point that out. Do you have an idea of what the number for iPad should be?
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!