Agree with you on "talent, luck"... One thing that definitely help small company or individual developer is to get one big site to cover the app. It's definitel

Agree with you on "talent, luck"... One thing that definitely help small company or individual developer is to get one big site to cover the app. It's definitely boost the initial launch of the app and can keep the momentum going for a few weeks. Obviously getting featured by Apple is the biggest jackpot a company/developer can get. In fact in order to get a good coverage from well known blogger is to release an app that most likely strike the writer because you are filling one of his need. But you better provide a good & solid app to get a good review. So whenever one of my app is getting close to its release date, I start scanning the various well known blog sites and see if I can find one (or many) blogger(s) that may have a greater interest than just a random one.