How does Google and Apple calculate top grossing apps, when a number of those apps have their sales from a subscription model that does not happen through the app store (spotify, netflix, etc)?
Fun fact: if your app has a reasonable conversion rate, you can basically buy your spot on that list temporarily by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising.<p>It usually isn't sustainable, but can be helpful during launch of a new game to make sure it gets attention. I think it was easier than cracking the Top Free list, since fewer apps have IAP.<p>The ad team at my previous game company would do this and not tell the rest of the rank-and-file employees. We'd be psyched to see our app in the top grossing list... meanwhile the ad team would be spending more money than we were earning.
They don't account for revenue from outside the stores. Apple technically doesn't allow purchases to happen outside its stores, in practice that has always been a bit of a grey area, but in any case that revenue is not disclosed to Apple and therefore cannot affect the rankings in any way.<p>As for the calculations, Apple updates roughly every six hours and I think (the algorithms not being public for a good reason, I have no real proof), they take into account the total sum revenue during the last period, but also use the relative delta revenue as a factor, so even with slightly lower revenue a suddenly popular app can appear higher in the rankings.<p>They also seem to change the algorithms every once in a while, we've seen pretty drastic changes overnight a few times, eventually though the top apps always normalize around the usual suspects, so it's possible that they just do some sort of reset of historical data that also affect rankings.
I also wonder why Apple allows some apps to accept payments via credit card yet others need to use the built in payment solutions?<p>EDIT: some research later indicates that it's possible allowing a user to sign up outside the app (and outside a webview initiated by the app) skirts around the policy [1], since the user can return to the app and log in, then use their account for payments.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.designernews.co/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-lyft-uber-airbnb-skirt-apples-30-cut-on-each-transaction" rel="nofollow">https://www.designernews.co/stories/9695-how-do-apps-like-ly...</a>
How do you know a large fraction of subscription signups don't happen through the App Store?
<a href="https://9to5mac.com/2015/09/24/netflix-in-app-purchase/" rel="nofollow">https://9to5mac.com/2015/09/24/netflix-in-app-purchase/</a>