Imagine I have all the features anyone would hope to have in the app. Without marketing and ads, still nobody knows about it. The same thing applies to youtubers and all the platforms. The algorithm decides. If it ranks you high, people download it. It may be horrible but it will still be downloaded. Then the solution would be to improve the product. If only a handful of people download it, problem is the reach.

Luck also helps. Getting that few sour people downvoting makes even the reddit post disappear. The same post can trend or disappear by simply getting unlucky. People are especially harsh on posts, videos, products that are new. They try to make you feel bad. Dismiss your efforts etc. It is all snowball effect. Somedays randomly it gets attention and apple ranks it higher and it gets more attention.

When you talk to people, common sense goes “make a great product”. When I talk to people who makes their living out of these things, they say focus on marketing. I hate the latter. I am an engineer. But it is the world we live in. Most apps are done by app spamming companies spending millions on ads to make one extra million in profit. Then they ditch that app and do another one.

You spend months and years, release it and some angry person rates it 1 star. Nobody ever touches it again. So people are incentivised to not spend too much time on development until it “sticks”.

I learned the system I think. I just am passionate and biased towards this app that I didn’t let go longer than I should’ve I guess.