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Comment by yoz-y | Hacker News Reader

I assume that the author has better visibility to actual download numbers than App Annie or Sensor Tower. I assume they just got the number from the App Store connect.

That is, apple highlights are massively more impactful that any other venue. My app had reviews in multiple publications and I average about 200 downloads per week, at around 4500 impressions. It got featured once in some list (in Thailand) and I got about 1 million impressions per day. Sadly, the app was paid (and not translated) at the time so no sales.

10k downloads per week is legitimately impressive for this kind of app. Kudos

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I work on models like those of Sensor Tower and App Annie use to estimate downloads. They are extremely precise, the cross-validated error is << 10% for apps that are this small, and in the US (it increases with much bigger apps in countries where little data is available).

In general, could you tell a bit about how do app downloads get estimated? Now that I'm thinking about it, I think the first way to do it is to correlate the amount of comments in your particular app section to downloads numbers that you do know and extrapolate that out, assuming that comments/downloads ratio stay the same within a particular app category.

One could test this hypothesis out on different YouTube video categories for which this obviously is known to give the assumption some quick strength or falsification.

Anyways, this is the first time I'm thinking about this question at all. I'm curious what you're allowed/able to tell us.

There is a public ranking of apps ranked by downloads in the app store. If you know how many downloads correspond to what position in the chart (e.g. number 100 makes ~1000 downloads), you can fit a log regression to determine the number of downloads given the ranking in the category. I am oversimplifying because you also need to take into account seasonality and time trends (e.g. the app store is always expanding), but overall fits are very very precise (unless you get near the top positions, which are those for which they have more problems in estimating). Ah, and if you wonder where the data comes from, App Annie and Sensor Tower get data for downloads to fit their models directly from tens of thousands of developers that share it with them in exchange for free analytics,

For Android apps that are popular in rest-of-world geographies (including my own) those tools (and analogs like similarweb and apptopia) are way off in both download counts and active users, sometimes by 2-3x.

Maybe iOS apps in US can get here but I'm doubtful.

Comparing our app’s sales against Sensor Tower’s numbers, we’ve found it off by way more than 10%.

Woah... no sales on 1 million impressions?!

I understand the context, but still.

Yep, that's why I really don't agree with the point 3 of this article.

> 3. Don’t be afraid to ask for money

Only ask for money if you know you will get major coverage (either Apple placement in a feature in a country speaking a language that your app supports, or general public publications).

After switching to freemium model I earn more money per month than with a paid app during a year.

Another thing is, the author cites their app as a niche app but it is actually something a very large amount of people want. This helps _a lot_. Good, complex, apps are few on the App Store because apps must be free or very cheap.

if i understand freemium correctly, you give the "core" for free and charge for additional features, or are you talking about ads ?

Free app with in-app purchase that unlocks more functionality.

> Only ask for money if you know you will get major coverage.

Or just ask for money if it fits in organically with your product and audience.

We build a camera app. We considered freemium, but couldn’t find a way to lock features without compromising the intended experience.

It also acts as a bit of a filter, as people do research before paying for an app. We suspect that if we were free, we’d have to contend with more support requests for things like video recording, which isn’t the use case for the app.

I agree, sometimes a freemium model is not viable, like in your case. And paid users are definitely more involved so they usually ask better questions if they have any.

Nevertheless, I believe that for a paid app, one needs good media coverage to be successful. Since there are no trials, there is not much the users can do to test the app before purchasing. (I think many people actually don't know that they can get refunds)

Oh shit, you made Halide! Great app, thanks!

Anecdotal experience: bought it knowing that it doesn't record video, got exactly what I expected.

Really looking forward to a new phone so I can take advantage of the exciting new stuff, but I hear the 12 Pro might shrink to a 5.4" screen so I'm going to try and hold out. Once that happens I don't know if I'll touch my SLR again - it's already seeing minimal use because the phone is much more convenient.

Thanks!

I went to check this actually and found out that what I told was inaccurate.

I got a million impression in a week, not per day. The app was featured for about a week and got ~100k impressions per day.

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