How to reach #1 in the AppStore

Want to know how to convert an app from drowning in the sea of over 65,000 apps, selling in single or double digit numbers, into the #1 downloaded app in the AppStore within a week?

Well, we have an answer for you …. our big secret …. unfortunately it may not make you much money, but here’s how we did it – you switch the app to free 🙂

Our app Fling!, despite being well received and even being featured by Apple (featured under “What we’re playing”, which it turns out isn’t as lucrative for sales as being in something like “What’s hot”), was not selling a great amount, so this week we decided to try making it free as a promotion for a few days and sure enough, like our previous app Fuzzle before it, within three days it had rocketed to the top of the free apps, sitting yesterday+today at #1, having leapfrogged over the thousands of ‘lite’/’trial’ apps and everything else that was being giving away for free.

So what does this mean? Well …. we would say that this shows that a reasonably polished, good-looking app that users are happy to pay a few dollars for, can probably reach #1 in the free apps by going free …

And while this is undoubtably cool, and the idea that an individual or small team can (still) make a small iphone app and with zero marketing dollars have it potentially seen+played by millions of people is really amazing, what this doesn’t tell you unfortunately is how to make $$$ by doing this ….

In this regard, our thinking is that we hope the word-of-mouth etc might make up for the loss in potential buyers, and that this will help prevent our app being lost in the sea of apps. And if not, well at least the about 500,000 users who downloaded it in those four days will get to enjoy our game, who otherwise might never have heard of it 🙂