I find it educational when other developers release their sales figures,  so I’d like to give back a little.  Let’s jump right in:

This is our sales data up till mid February.  As  you can see, it’s been a rollercoaster.  Most of the jumps occurred when we released updates, as James described in his last post.  This accounts for the peaks at A, B, and D.   At C, we were reviewed in TUAW, the only review that led to a noticeable rise in downloads.

This is our sales data from release till present.  Notice the much larger scale on the graph.  In the middle of February, Apple was kind enough to feature us in their “New and Notables” section.  Why?  We have no idea.  Our app just showed up one day.  However, we do know that it closely followed an update, so if you’re looking for further motivation to give your existing apps a little love, take note.

As you can see, the feature gave a large, but ultimately unsustainable boost in sales.  Each week, as a new set of featured apps were released and we were bumped back a page, our sales fell by a few hundred units.  None-the-less, the feature was a nice windfall.  Here’s a quick summary:

• Our sales record for a single day went from 80 units to 1150 units
• During the four weeks we’ve been featured, we’ve had over $10K in sales
• Our total sales went from ~650 units to 16.5K units in a month
• Our highest app rank went from #25 on the top paid education list to #51 on the top paid overall list

I wished I had a neat little lesson to expound upon based on our experience.  All I can say with confidence is that it’s critical to experiment.  Constantly try new things.  Tweak your feature set.  Send emails to blogs asking for reviews.  It’s almost impossible to determine ahead of time what will work and what won’t, so just keep trying.  You never know when Apple might reach down and make you king for a day.