What used to be purely organic, set-and-forget growth has transitioned in to requiring a more tactical approach to see real growth. The top players in the space leverage strong review acquisition strategies to inflate their ranking, listing optimization to increase search traffic, and relationships to get featured spots. If you can’t or won’t participate in these, you won’t see as much growth.
The nature of the ranking algorithms gives an advantage to apps that have already seen success, so the initial success is the hardest part. You can use that initial success to drive continued organic long term growth.
The other thing I warn people of who are thinking about Shopify apps as side income in the support requirements: merchants are, as a rule not sophisticated. This means you generally get a lot of incoming customer support. If your store modified the front end, much of this support will be not directly related to your app, but how your app interacts with the multitudes of apps and themes the merchant may have installed.
Shopify also has rules that require you to offer a certain standard of customer support, and you’ll need to meet them to remain in the store. Support is also one of they key drivers of reviews, which are incredibly important for ranking highly and seeing that organic growth.
Source: built and managed the team behind the Shopify App Store from 2012-2017. Still involved as a participant. Always happy to chat with anyone thinking about the Shopify ecosystem.