The sad reality is that you can have thousands of users and no reviews if you don't do that stuff. And because the (apple) app store wipes reviews every update,

The sad reality is that you can have thousands of users and no reviews if you don't do that stuff. And because the (apple) app store wipes reviews every update, it also encourages devs to never update, lest they go and nag all their users again. All around difficult situation for apps, especially if you go about it as a solo dev. Also sad that the most effective way to get a bunch of 5 stars is to say in your app: Have a free X item if you rate us 5 stars! <link to app store>, nevermind that there's no way of actually verifying that they left you any feedback, nonetheless plenty of people actually do it.