Isolation, COVID-19 and the App Store
Published 4th September, 2026 by Stuart Hall
I originally published this article in May 2020. It's the next chapter of my App Store experiment, covering the first few months after I bought the 7 Minute Workout app back, and what happened when COVID-19 turned the world upside down. We're republishing the original story because it captures something we still believe in strongly at Appbot: user feedback is the best guide to what you should build next. The Apple Watch app in this chapter came straight from requests in app reviews. If you haven't already I recommend reading the previous chapters to catch up on the story: How I got 2.3 million app downloads (without spending a cent on marketing) and The Resurrection. And you'll find where the story goes next at the end of this post. TLDR; In 2013 I made an app in a night, grew it to 2.3m downloads before being acquired in 2015. In 2020 I re-acquired the app. Here's the results from the experiments that followed. Jump ahead:
- Product Hunt
- Price Increase
- Apple Watch
- COVID
- New Icon
- Ratings Progress
- Subscriptions
- Observations
- What happened next?
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Try Appbot free for 14 days →Product Hunt
Like all good (and bad) startups I thought I should give Product Hunt a go. In December, thanks to the awesome Robleh Jama from Shopify, it was listed.
It went pretty great, ended up on the front page. 483 upvotes and the #4 Product of the Day. It even got the shiny badge below.
I was pretty excited to see the results. I assumed front page and 400+ upvotes meant many thousands of downloads.
The results were pretty underwhelming. 257 people clicked through, 56 of those people ended up downloading the app, with a grand total of $12 in sales.
Is this normal for Product Hunt? Maybe it was a bad fit for my app ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Price Increase
Given I have had good success previously with price increases, I tried increasing the in app purchase from $1.99 to $9.99. It made zero difference, the volume of conversions went backwards at the same rate.
Apple Watch
An interesting book was released in February claiming to share valuable business secrets of the App Store.
Given my German is non existent I relied on other's interpretations. One that caught my attention was the requirement to support Apple Watch to have any chance of being featured by Apple. Unsurprising, but good validation.
This had also been requested a number of times in my app reviews.
It took me until April to get around to it, but I added an Apple Watch app!
It didn't have any direct impact on downloads or sales. Unfortunately still no Apple feature yet!
COVID
The world turned upside down in mid March. COVID-19 meant many of us stayed home to work. Gyms closed and people started looking for alternatives.
This resulted in a big spike in downloads for the app.
And also a spike in sales.
There's definite signs of the spike easing as some countries start opening up again.
New Icon
Our amazing Appbot designer Corey Ginnivan offered to make me a new icon. He smashed this together in about 15 minutes and I loved it. Better than I could do in a lifetime.
It hasn't had any positive, or negative, impact on conversions so far. But I love it.
Ratings Progress
As mentioned in the previous post I implemented a ratings prompt. Lifting the app up to 4.8 stars in the USA.
The volume has been on an improved velocity as well.
Subscriptions
Going back to the book that leaked all the juicy App Store information it also mentioned how Apple loved subscriptions as a business model. This is pretty well known, but a good reminder.
A new update has been submitted swapping over my business model to subscriptions using RevenueCat (Thanks to Matt Comi for the recommendation).
Right now I'm stuck in a loop with App Review where they won't approve my IAP subscriptions because my app doesn't support it, but also won't approve my app because the IAPs aren't approved. I'd love to hear from anyone that's been stuck in the same situation.
I'll let you know how it goes in a few months :)
Observations
To me the most interesting stat is the change in sales per download. Back when I sold the app in 2015 it was averaging around 3,000 downloads a day, but each of those downloads would only average around 10c in sales. Now the downloads average closer to 500 a day, but on average generate 60c in sales.
Would 6x more downloads now result in 6x more sales? Hopefully I can find out in the future. Follow along on my blog or the Appbot blog for future updates. You can try out the 7 Minute Workout app here.
What happened next?
This post was originally published in May 2020, and the experiment kept going. Here's where to continue the story.
Are App Store subscriptions better than one-off purchases?
The next chapter turns to one of the biggest questions facing app developers: how should you monetise an app? After years of relying on one-off purchases, I moved 7 Minute Workout towards a subscription model. In Switching to App Store Subscriptions, I share what happened when I introduced monthly and yearly subscriptions, including the impact on recurring revenue and overall app revenue.
Read the next chapter → Switching to App Store Subscriptions
And the experiment isn't over: in 2026 I rebooted it and started testing the app's App Store screenshots, with the results documented on my blog.
Explore your app reviews with AI
The Appbot MCP connects your app reviews to the AI tools you already use, so you can ask questions and get data-backed answers about your users.
Try Appbot free for 14 days →Where to from here?
- Explore the strategies employed by top grossing apps and learn how to achieve success.
- Utilize strategic app review prompts to encourage users to share their experiences.
- Master the art of writing an irresistible app store description that captures attention and drives downloads.
- Discover effective strategies for app review management to efficiently handle and leverage user feedback.
About The Author
Stuart is Co-founder & Co-CEO of Appbot. Stuart has been involved in mobile as a developer, blogger and entrepreneur since the early days of the App Store. He built the 7 Minute Workout app in one night and blogged the story of growing the app to 2.3 million downloads before exiting to a large fitness device company. Previously he was the co-founder of the Discovr series of applications which achieved over 4 million downloads. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
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