Boosted App Store Listings

D&D Character Roller

The app I wrote one of the early issues of Swift Sprints about has been out for about 5-6 months. I listed this app for $3 on the App Store and in that time it has generated nearly $30 in revenue. Not bad for something I wrote quickly just to try out an API, but also not great.

The app had some decent success from Apple’s initial rankings boost, but quickly fell off.

A few issues this app has faced:

• Good keyword targeting but not enough downloads to rank in them

• Only about 6% of paying users left a rating

So I’ve decided to make this app free with Ad support while I build some premium features in the meantime. Letting the app gain more downloads via being free should hopefully allow it to rise in the rankings a bit more.

One big lesson this app has taught me?

Sort out your App Store Optimization and keyword approach before you launch your app. Apple boosts your app’s ranking for about the first week. As you can see, that first week is the highest my impressions and traffic have been. You really want to have your ducks in a row for that boost.

I’ll be revisiting this app in the future as I experiment more with the subscription price and paywall approach when the time is right.

Swift Bites

Some of the most controversial Apple News this week was the company’s announcement of an App Store rules change to allow external payments for developers.

Apple will still be taking a cut of 12% for developers who are a member of the App Store Small Business Program and 27% for other apps that use these payments.

If you’ve got an app that uses OpenAI’s API or another GPT API, you might be interested in protecting that API key using this new project from Ronald Mannak.

Some pieces of content I’ve been loving lately are deep dives into the monetization strategy of some high-grossing mobile apps. This one covering Sole Retriever really intrigued me. This app charges a $15/month subscription and Peter explains how they add enough value to make users want to pay that.

Ariel (@arielmichaeli) from AppFigures posted this guide on twitter this week and it’s a great read for anyone looking to launch an app and even a great refresher for those who have already launched.

That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading, and if you loved the newsletter today, I would love it if you would give it a share somewhere!

Happy coding!

Morgan Zellers

P.S. If you have any suggestions, topics you'd like me to cover, or an app to share, please reach out! I truly value feedback and want to make Swift Sprints an engaging and valuable resource for the Apple developer community.