During his GDC lecture, Pusenjak presided over a packed lecture hall of developers, sharing his knowledge and expertise in the art of keeping an app at the top of the charts. When you're operating outside of a giant corporate machine and without the help of an already well-known brand name, you need all the help you can get.

"When we first released Doodle Jump, we thought we'd put it out there and it was just so good that it would sell itself," said Pusenjak. But the release date totals came in at only 21 copies downloaded. A feature in the iTunes store's new releases chart helped the game move to number six on the Top Paid Apps chart, but that peak didn't last long. "Through persistence and some creative promotion, we were able to reverse the fall and bring Doodle Jump back into the top 25, where it has stayed since July 2009."

This is a common story among indie app developers. A spot on the "New and Noteworthy" list in the iTunes store creates a sort of honeymoon phase for new apps, but once they've been bumped off of the list, sales fall significantly. Reviews from major blogs and publications help keep things alive for a bit, but nothing assures sales like your game's icon front and center on the App Store homepage, and the only way to do that is make the top 10 on the paid or free charts. At this point it's necessary to begin phase two of app marketing.

Frequent updates are perhaps the most important ingredient in maintaining a successful game. Rather than releasing an app and then praying for longevity, many developers believe that it's a much better strategy to slowly roll out new features with purposeful progression. Still, an update is not just about what it adds to an app -- packaging is also a major factor. Once upon a time, an update would immediately shoot an app to prominence on the new releases chart, but recently Apple stopped including updates on the list.