mocoNews.net - To Boost AppStore Sales, iPhone Apps Need To Crack Top Fifty

iPhone application developers have known for quite a while now that sales at the App Store is a bit of a chicken and egg game. In order to get a real boost in sales, you have to crack the top tier to build the momentum you need to generate more sales. More exposure creates more momentum which creates more sales, and so on, until the app is sitting pretty in that golden stratum of the Top Ten. One successful app developer has detailed what momentum means in terms of sales. Infomedia, creators of the scarily popular iFart?which does exactly what you think it does?is currently number one in paid entertainment apps in the App Store and number two in overall paid apps, 10 short days after its 12 December launch. Web marketing specialist and internet entrepreneur Joel Comm, whose behind Infomedia gives this very fascinating breakdown:

12 December 75 units #70 entertainment13 December 296 units #16 entertainment14 December 841 units #76 overall, #8 entertainment15 December1510 units #39 overall, #5 entertainment16 December1797 units #22 overall, #3 entertainment17 December 2836 units #15 overall, #3 entertainment18 December 3086 units #10 overall, #3 entertainment19 December 3117 units #9 overall, #2 entertainment20 December5497 units #4 overall, #2 entertainment

Comm asks in his blog post, "So why the massive leap on 12/20?" He guesses that once you hit the top five, "there is an exponential jump." He also muses that it could also be down to the release of Sim City, whose popular app is currently the top paying one on the App Store. As Comm notes, it could be a case of "a rising tide that lifts all boats." Writes Comm, "Since [Sim City] rocketed directly to the #1 spot, there are many eyeballs looking at the top ten." Whatever the reason, as Mobile Orchard, a blog devoted to iPhone development notes, "As a 99 cent app and after Apple's 30 percent commission, this means iFart has raked in $13,205 for Infomedia over 9 days."

As an aside, there were rumblings in the blog world about whether Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was right to loosen its standards, having once rejected a similar farting app on the grounds that it was of "limited utility." The argument ran that a number of useless gag apps were pushing out better ones, or at least making them hard to find. But as we can see from the success of iFart, who can predict what the collective public thinks is useful? For Apple, missing out on iFart means that it would have lost out on $5659 in the course of nine days.