Wow. I've been hearing for years that the gold rush of 99 cent apps on the App Store was done for, but this kinda gives me hope. I might get around to finally finishing any app I've worked on...
That shouldn't stop you from finishing your app though. Building and later publishing an app to your audience can be an awesome experience. Go for it!
I looked the app on Appannie (non paid account) and the pricing history is quite interesting:
26 Mar 2017 - 0.99 to Free
29 Mar 2017 - Free to 0.99
19 Jul 2017 - 0.99 to 1.99
20 Jul 2017 - 1.99 to Free
02 Aug 2017 - Free to 0.99
04 Feb 2018 - 0.99 to Free
10 Feb 2018 - Free to 0.99
03 Mar 2018 - 0.99 to Free
27 Mar 2018 - Free to 0.99
04 Dec 2018 - 0.99 to Free
03 May 2019 - Free to 0.99
05 Sep 2019 - 0.99 to Free
From the above details, it was a paid app for most of it's time. I wonder why the developer played with the pricing as much though?
I would often change the price to 1. See if I could squeeze a few more dollars out of the work and 2. Generate more downloads.
A fun "trick" for getting more downloads is to temporarily make a paid app free, as many, many people follow "Apps Gone Free" type of bots or directories and if your app has any substantial numbers behind it more people tend to notice when it switches to free.
“This app is no longer supported by the developer“
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/snaplight-photo-highlighter/id...
He probably got 10,000 downloads a week while he was featured on that page then dropped to almost zero. Millions of apps in the store means you won’t get much random traffic.
I made a comment elsewhere here (and updated the article to state) that downloads currently are around 40 each week, with an occasional bubble of a few thousand when a blogger or news site re-discovers the app.