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Comment by pivo | Hacker News Reader

> And as anybody who's spent 5 mins on app-store "optimization" knows - the better your paid, the better your organic - by a right mile.

Sorry, I guess my English is bad. I do not understand this sentence. Could you explain?

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I think a few people missed the mark here (in the sub-comments). The point is, if you're already have paying customers, you will get more. Users looking to download new apps discover them on the Top Paid charts more than anywhere else. The exception is to get featured, but this is a crapshoot. In other words, social proof is the strongest indicator for the long term viability of revenue for iOS apps, and it's hard to be gamed.

So (as others have rightfully pointed out) many app developers solve this issue in their early days by using paid ads...mainly FB ads, as their conversion rate analysis is so ridiculously well engineered. Which means you can theoretically turn off paid search/discovery and rely on on your high position on the Top Paid charts to drive you more even traffic. (Note - Many of them do not turn off paid acquisition channels as they are still highly lucrative anyway)

> the better your paid, the better your organic - by a right mile

I interpreted it as meaning the higher your app is ranked in the 'paid' category (preferrably in the top 20 or higher), the better your organic acquisition rate is going to be (logically because you'll get all the "free" advertising for being featured on the front page of the "Top Paid".

It's a self-reinforcing cycle...more customers, higher ranking, more customers...if you can swing it.

He's saying that the more money you put into paid ads and the more conversions you pay for, the more organic (non-paid: referral, from press, or search, etc.) conversions you'll get.

Yeah, that was tricky. I think he means "the better your paid [search results], the better your organic [search results]." Meaning you can buy improved organic search results.

It means the better your paid install rate (via advertising), then you'll have greater organic installs as a result (usually due to your app spamming enough unwise people on twitter and facebook).

This is a natural result of paid advertising driving installs which the app store uses to rank games in their categories or create recommendations for their landing pages.

Source: I worked at a f2p mobile company.

paid advertising turns into far better organic growth by a very large margin.

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