Pangea Software is one of the success stories of the App Store

and iPhone/iPod touch gaming. With titles including Cro Mag Rally, Bugdom 2, Enigmo, Antimatter, and Otto Matic in its library already you can be confident the developer knows what it takes to release a successful title on the App Store.

During the GDC iPhone Summit, which started in Austin yesterday, Brian Greenstone, CEO of Pangea, gave developers not only some useful tips on marketing iPhone apps, but also a heads-up on what kind of sales they can expect to achieve depending on where they fall in the App Store charts.

The top stat he gave was that reaching number one in the App Store can be worth more than 30,000 sales every single day. If your app makes it into the top ten then expect around 6,000 sales a day, and make it as far as the top 100 list and you can achieve 1,000 sales a day, which is still pretty respectable.

Greenstone believes that for an app to be a success you need to follow these five tips

1. Get your app into the top 200 list
2. Get the customer’s attention
3. Promote your app
4. Diversify your portfolio
5. Keep development costs low

All of those tips may seem quite obvious, but it’s the work involved in achieving them that is the hard part. Good icon design, great screenshots, a focus on keywords in your app description, and choosing your name wisely as lists are alphabetized, are all important aspects of a release he says. Next to that marketing is key, but he also points out that bursts of sales are better than regular sales over a longer period as the burst takes you up the charts and therefore gives the chance of even more sales.

Greenstone also warns that you will face what he calls Apptards - angry kids who rate you down for silly reasons and how you can controversially counter that with your own reviews. He also warns against releasing lite versions of games and highlights the importance of having a good relationship with Apple in order to get on some of its other lists.

The full tips breakdown is available on Gamasutra and is well worth a read if you are developing or considering developing apps for the App Store.

Matthew’s Opinion

As I mentioned yesterday when I talked about EA and Gameloft slowly pushing up the prices of their iPhone games, there is going to be a greater focus on marketing apps going forward in order to get them seen. There are just so many apps now that you have to do something or your app will not sell, regardless of how great it is.

Marketing isn’t actually that expensive due to the nature of the App Store business. You don’t have to pay for expensive advertising space in retail stores or on TV like you have to for console games. Instead, you can build a website for free, send out some free copies of your game to the better review sites, and start uploading screenshots, videos, and useful information about your app regularly.

I’m not so sure about reviewing your own apps and I think there are a few developers that would argue lite versions actually help sell apps. If you are a developer or indeed regular App Store buyer what seems to work for you in making an app worth buying?