I understand continual advertising/promotion can help bolster games to stay in the top charts but are the organic downloads alone from being in the top charts not enough? I see some apps spike in the charts, top 10 free, but they only stay a few days and then fall back into oblivion. Why do they fall so fast if they are receiving (I assume) so many organic installs from being on the top of the charts?
Probably because those games were boosted up the charts for a few days to get a foothold on the charts... But if the game is crap then it will fall back down the charts and if it's good then it will stay. But boosting a game up the charts, especially for the free ones, is very common practice now.
I guess what Im trying to figure out is how is it possible that the games aren't able to stay high in the charts once they've been boosted? Why do they fall so fast? Shouldn't they be getting enough organic installs to maintain for a few days, then slowly fall (assuming the game sucks)?
The organic installs will be very small for the games that free falls... Free games, the ones that do very well, have large numbers of installs per day and can sustain the positions easily. This is why the Free To Play model sucks for most developers, if you are a well known developer/publisher with a well known brand and go for this model then you will make millions of dollars (this really works for EA as they recently gave info on how much money they make from mobile). But if you are unknown, even if your game is good, the odds are not very good for success. Sure there will be cases where a game will go viral but those examples are getting fewer and fewer. To make millions follow these rules. 1. Make a game with a well known brand 2. Make it free to play 3. Nickel and Dime your user base 4. Make sure the game is playable with polish 5. Because you are a well known developer/publisher the press will give you coverage 6. Boost the game up the charts At this point two things can happen: 1. The game will not take and fails (you fail) 2. It starts generating lots of money (you win) The difference of everyday joe failing and the well known developer/publisher is that they have enough money in the bank to keep repeating this process. So if in one year you have 4 fails and 1 success then you are still winning. Like that old saying "Money makes money".
So what's the advice then if you have limited budget? To do a succession of rounds of much cheaper / lower chart position boosting over a series of days and hope that will be enough to get you the organic growth to at least sustain that lower chart position?
Big publishers like EA, Chillingo, Gameloft, etc. already have large userbase in existing games so they can do cross-promotion effectively to boost their new games for some period of time. There are multiple services can help you boost your free games in a short time like that such as FreeAppADay. Some services cost money, but some are free
On a limited budget my advice is to try using advertising in a limited Market. Using mobile ads to get near the top of the charts in the US could cost you $50k, but in the UK it could cost you $10k. Try focusing your ads just one chart, eg France iPad chart. If you can do a cost effective campaign for one chart, perhaps you can repeat for many charts. This way you don't risk all your money in one go, and profits from one promotion can fund the next.
Regarding flathead's question about why boosted apps fall so fast off the chart when promotion ends, I guess that's because the visibility of being on the App Store's top lists now is less important compared to other ways of marketing. In the early days, people often said that Angry Bird's success is a loop: it's on the top list, so people see it, then people buy it more, keeping it on the top longer and so on. I guess now that kinda visibility is not significant due to the emergence of many other effective marketing channels
