I am in the top 1-2% of Android developers [1], and while I've found it relatively easy to reach decent traction with a few apps (say 1000 downloads a day, or say $1000 a month), it is very challenging to keep an app in the very top (25k downloads a day, or making more than $15k a month) for very long.
You can put a good fight during your first month, since you can make it very high in the "Top New" rankings, but after that you are against the big guys.
As the article says, paid promotion is a prohibitive channel. At the usual free to paid conversion rates, making ads pay off is extremely difficult.
These two points the article makes are flat out wrong:
> The search function is unusable unless you know the name of the app you’re looking for
Absolutely no. SEO (we call it ASO in the app store) is important, and keyword search is a definitely a source of organic installs.
> This means that unless you actively manage your reviews, expect to have a 2–3 star average.
No way, a high quality app can have a 4.5+, and many decent ones have at least 4.0+.
[1] Not me personally, but the small company I cofounded