Developers, before you released your first app (mainly iPhone, but other platforms might be interesting too), what were your sales predictions like? Were they realistic? How close did you get to hitting them? Just interested in other experiences, because we've found it really hard to predict with our apps. Our British Military Fitness app for example hit the number 1 spot in 17 countries, but our actual sales were still less than expected. Anyone got any useful tips on how to better predict success or failure in the market?
Unless you have your own marketing source (lots of other games and rep to back it up) I think its nearly impossible to predict sales. There are so many variables. Getting posted on one popular site can boost sales big time, or getting a bad review can drag them down, none of these things are in your control. For my first iphone game I had no idea what to expect.
According to my extensive research, the only way to have a predictable hit that meets or exceeds your sales expectations on the app store would be to publish "Farting Zombie Doodle Boobs" Even with a small army of statisticians and PR/Marketing people any estimate of sales volume is going to be a guess, plain and simple. I suggest keeping your expectations low (in the zero to 10 sales a day range) and consider anything above that to be a runaway success. Oh, Steve Jobs is up now! Off to watch the keynote feeds!
I guess I'm more interested in what the disparity was between predictions and actual results, than in trying to predict sales, which, as we all know, is a bit of a crapshoot.
Everyone expects the world on a release - unfortunately it rarely happens. Be happy that you're getting decent sales in 17 countries. It's not so much the climbing the charts as maintaining the position you get.
Right... the big thing is where are you going to level off? If our numbers are anything to go by, it looks like we may be leveling off at about 10% of what we hit during our release spike. Thats assuming we really are leveling off and aren't going to dip any further The other sad, but true thing I think is that if you're not getting thread views or any Youtube views or any publicity before you release, you probably shouldn't expect to sell much unless you happen to get featured by Apple. Even something simple like a thread... if no one is willing to click on the thread and comment, you probably shouldn't expect anyone to click on your app and buy it either.