This is part 5 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 4 here.
I was probably the first numerology app on the App Store. If you searched for numerology, my app would be first in the results. At some point this was no longer true. A competitor came out and my sales started to go down. Today, in 2025, there are possibly over a 100 numerology apps on the store.
After 2012, it’s no longer easy to make money on the App Store. There are tons of apps all vying for attention and people have lost interest in downloading just any app. It’s hard for customers to find you.
I tried lots of ways to stand out. In January of 2010, was featured on the iPhone App Podcast channel, which was a YouTube channel that reviewed iPhone apps. You can see it here.
I posted my own demo on July 19th, 2010. You can see it here.
I tried spinning off another numerology app that helped expecting parents name their baby using numerology. I paid for a professional video to be made to promote it: Numerology: Baby Namer App. That video was posted October 1st, 2012. I even remember being featured on a podcast for expecting parents. Here’s the product page for the app on infinitenil.com. I thought the app was pretty good, but it went nowhere.
The Numerology app kept chugging along, slowly making less and less each month. I remember it consistently making around $300- 400/month.
In September of 2019, I was approached by a TV show producer, asking if I wanted to be featured on their show. The show was called NewsWatchTV and had a tech segment on it that would showcase apps. The show aired on the AMC channel early in the morning (I think it was around 7am). The catch was that it would cost me $5,000.
I debated whether I should do it or not. Eventually, I decided to do it, reasoning that this was a good opportunity to get my app in front of a lot of eyeballs. Here’s a video of the segment: September 23, 2019 - Breaking Tech, Entertainment & Health. The segment start 5 minutes, 8 seconds into the video.
As far as I could tell, the segment brought in absolutely 0 sales. I didn’t perceive any uptick in traffic. No indication at all that it had any effect.
As a side note, when you see products being features on shows and even the news, realize, that in a lot of cases, the segment is being paid for by the company producing that product.
No matter, what I did to promote my apps in the App Store, nothing seemed to have an effect. I pretty much lost interest in doing anything about it. Numerology kept chugging along, averaging around $200 a month or so. I let it sit there and do that for a few years.
Stay tuned for final part, part 6, where I talk about the current state of Numerology.