My first released iPhone app made it to the App Store last week. I meant to do a post about it, but it didn't happen. C'est la vie. For what it is worth, the app is mind-numbingly simple game called GoGoBongo. Basically, you tap the screen as fast as possible while alternating between two drums. 10 seconds. Done.

That said, as simplistic as it sounds, it has been a hit with my kids, so I decided to release it for free. Apple accepted it, so there it is.

In any case, a couple of weeks ago, Billy Lavoie released some sales information for the first week of his much better game, Tangled. His data showed a strong start followed by a sharp drop off.

So, being a good sport, I decided to do the same after my first week.

Surprise! The same shape as Billy's graph. My numbers seem higher, but this is no doubt because his app costs a whopping $.99, while mine is free.

Now, can we generalize from these two graphs? No, of course not. Some apps will go viral or be anticipated and have a stellar graph that the rest of us can envy. Others may go thud even faster. That said, I don't think this sort of graph should really be a surprise for apps that are not heavily marketed. I don't know what Billy did for marketing, but mine consisted of mentioning it on Reddit and in my Facebook status. I am hardly a bigwig in either of those communities, so it may not have mattered much. Heck, I didn't even tweet about it or post here.

I would love to include a cogent point here about what we can learn from this, but I am honestly not sure. My suspicion is that the biggest lesson may be that just throwing an app out there is not enough.

As a side note, there was a nice ironic synchronicity last week. The same day that Apple accepted by app into the App Store, they kicked me out of their affiliate program for lack of activity. Of course, this is the first time I had any reason to try to promote anything in the app store. Funny old world, isn't it?