This is a great post.

Though, as someone who has produced a fair number of hits (and flops), I think hits are almost impossible to reverse engineer & duplicate.

My first (and crappiest) iPhone app was released a few weeks ago and continues to get almost 5k downloads per day, and has hit #1 in several countries. I have since released "better" apps but they have largely flopped, by comparison.

Same deal with websites. I've had some that are huge (millions of monthly visitors) and some that are ghost towns.

I have a YouTube video of me playing the drums that has over 5 million views -- then videos that are largely the same or better that have hardly any views.

List goes on. I think talent, luck and frequency are the biggest factors.

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.

I love the quote "What it really is about is systematically reducing your dependence on luck"

Its good to look at your idea objectively. But its hard to answer most of the questions in the App Quiz. They boil down to "will it be a big win?" and that's what we're trying to figure out.