How to survive Apple’s 7 day cliff and get more app downloads

After many late nights of hard work & QA, you finally get your app uploaded to the store & the waiting begins.

Getting one of these emails still feels like Christmas :)

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Your app is going to be seen & downloaded by millions, and it’s time to buy the yacht now right?

Not quite.

Depending on what category you choose, your app will appear in the paid/free section of that category on the day it’s released. This category is shown on iTunes on your laptop & also on iPhones and iPads. So every app gets a nice ‘lift’ at launch as your app icon is visible to users who are searching that category.

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This category updates daily and is really important for indie developers to get exposure for their new apps. We don’t have the big games budgets of the large studios and can’t buy our way to visibility by using paid traffic.

7 days after your launch, you can expect the downloads for most apps that do not use paid traffic to drop off dramatically. Welcome to the Apple 7 day cliff.

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You may be lucky enough to be hand picked by Apple to be featured in your categories ‘NEW’ section, will will add some downloads but again this is again temporary.

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The 7 day cliff is very real.

I’ve experienced this with all my apps. It makes sense too. Once your app is not listed in any new / free charts anymore, it’s much harder to find in the store which results in much fewer downloads.

The aim of the app development business is to publish apps that will bring you reoccurring passive revenue for months and years after publishing.

You want your apps to continue to earn money, long after their initial 7 day launch period.

The alternative is you need to keep publishing apps regularly, which defeats the purpose of a passive income stream if you’re still working all the time!

So my task over the last few months was to focus on battling the cliff. I tested many strategies to increase both my downloads and revenue for my existing apps.

Learn more about the strategies I use in the app starter kit.