Anyone have any approximate sales figures for how many sales you need to get into the top charts? For example, anyone know about how many sales you need to be top of board games? How about number 50 in board games? Are any categories more competitive than others?
The popular categories like action, adventure, puzzle etc will be much higher than less popular ones. Usually you don't need too many to get into Top 100 category. I don't think that board games is that popular, so between 75-100 can get you into the top 25 pretty easily. I've heard other developers say that they got into the top 25 with about 60, but that was a while ago, so it's probably higher since then. It's really not that hard to get into these top categories, unless you go for action/adventure etc.
Mr. Ugly, I know that previous downloads do not count... as I understand it, the sales chart is based on the previous week's sales? So If I get everyone I know to download it the first day that would help, no?
Mr. Ugly is right. Downloads from promo codes no longer count towards chart ranking (they used to, but Apple fixed that). Getting a lot of real downloads in a short time does increase your ranking, even on an hour-by-hour basis. On a day-by-day basis you are, of course, going to be much higher ranked if you get 100 downloads in a day rather than 100 downloads in 3 days. For Paid Board Games category in the US charts, about 15-18 copies a day puts you around 150-200. About 30 copies will break into the top 100.
Weekday, US charts only. Rank ~200 Action: 100/day RPG: 5/day Arcade is slightly easier to get into than Action, but just barely. Top 200 paid games overall takes about 400-500 units/day. Top 200 paid games is approximately top 400 overall paid. Rankings and numbers change quickly. Info may already be out of date.
In the US, 35-40 downloads/day put me in the top 150 paid strategy and 200 action. This was 4-5 months ago though, I'm sure it changed a lot.
I can't directly compare, but 200-300/day corresponded to top 15-25 free strategy games in the US - for iPad only.
From what I can tell, the Top 25/50/100 charts are continuously updated live with the current amount of downloads. If it was based on the previous week (or day, or any combination) games wouldn't move during the day. When I had apps in the Top 25/50 they would change in the rankings (up and down) every hour or so. The higher the rank the more downloads I had that day for that app. This is especially noticeable in foreign countries where every download counts.
