My app charted on the App Store, and that sucked!

Reading the headline you're probably thinking that my app got popular and the backend couldn't handle the pressure, leading to thousands of unsatisfied users.

I wish that were the case. In reality, my app got four downloads. Not 400,000. Not 4,000. Four! And that, apparently, was enough to briefly get the app on the App Store charts as #15.

Granted, this was in a specific category (paid apps in the Lifestyle category in the Danish version of the App Store). However, the fact that just four downloads is enough to get to #15 in a specific category in Denmark seems to suggest that the number of people who are willing to pay to download apps (as supposed to making an in-app purchase in a "free" app) is shockingly low, even for the relatively small market that is Denmark.

It is of course entirely possible that the apps that are in the top ten in the Lifestyle category make bank - but it's not likely if just four downloads is enough to get you to #15 on the chart.

So what's the lesson here for new app developers? Well, organic search in the App Store has yielded zero downloads of the app. Same thing goes for Apple Ads Basic, and even a relatively large number of press releases has yielded zero results.

So the lesson, of course, is to give up! Nah, maybe not, and I'm sure a ton of things could be tweaked in order to increase the number of downloads. But the whole thing does make me sceptical as to whether it's actually possible to get a decent number of downloads if you're going the paid-apps route. It's not so much the fact that my app doesn't get that many downloads - that can probably be explained by my poor marketing skills. It's the fact that just four downloads get you on the charts, which would suggest very, very few people download paid apps.

The reason I chose to make Danish Names a paid app from the beginning was simply that I think it's a lot more honest and upfront to charge a small one-time fee before the download, as opposed to claiming your app is free and then charging a high fee or even a subscription inside the app. There's an honesty and straight-forwardness to paid apps that I like: You pay once, and then you don't get bothered with requests for paid upgrades when you're using the app.

Are these kinds of download numbers for paid apps common? Discuss on Hacker News.