You’ve spent months planning, developing, and submitting your app. Now comes time to tell the world…so you’ve sent out a gajillion emails…filled out tons of website contact forms for app reviewers, magazines, and sites….posted the info on blogs and discussion forums….The first few days of launch you watch your inbox and wait…and wait…and wait…
No unread messages from app reviewers…no reviews…no responses to your posts…
Your app hasn’t hit the top ten in your category. No one seems to know your app exists. You lay your head on your keyboard, fearing that “Months of work….all for nothing…”
But wait…..
This magical email pops up in your inbox offering to make all your dreams come true by helping you promote your app! And it will only cost you $3 per review! But it will really be less, since you will get back 70% of your app costs!
So if you have $1,000 to spend, you can get at least three to four hundred instant awesome reviews of your app!
All your prayers have been answered! Now your app will fly up the charts, get noticed, and soon you’ll be swimming in money!
But it’s cheating.
Seriously, do you want your app to succeed by cheating? Or do you want you app to succeed because
a) it’s a great app
b) you’ve worked you ass off telling the world about it
Or is this app marketing game like the Tour De France? You’ve trained hard, prepared, have done all the work. You want to win because of your skill and that hard work and determination…but everyone else is doping.
So far, I’ve had six emails from these people offering me this great service…
One offered me the opportunity to have a paid review in their magazine. For just over $1,000, i could get a 1/6th of a page review that would be seen by XXXX subscribers/viewers/etc…But here’s the best part-I could write my own damn review! They would literally put in whatever I sent them as a review.
I’m sorry, but I’m not doing that. To me, it’s wrong to pay for reviews. You want to pay for an ad, fine…but make it clear it’s an ad. I want honest reviews of my apps. If there are problems or things I need to fix/change, I want to know about it.
If you don’t mind a quick read, here’s one of the few reviews I’ve been able to get so far, this was by Gilles Turnbull on Cult Of Mac.
It’s an honest review. Has lots of good to say about the concept and the content, that it has lots of good example images…but the design needs some work.
That’s fair. And I’m going to take that and make improvements in the update.
Fyi, there is an organization called O.A.T.S (Organization for App Testing Standards) who’s members agree to not pay for reviews. So in theory, they would be good honest places to get reviews. More info can be found on the website here.
WELL IF EVERYONE IS DOING IT….
Why not do it? Well…here’s one good reason:
According to their development guide, Apple doesn’t want cheaters either:
3.10 Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program
Talk about a waste of money that grand will be if you can’t sell your product.
One of these providers actually states in their email:
– Is our user reviewing service compatible with Apple’s rules?
Yes, it is totally within with Apple’s guidelines. All our reviewers are genuine iPhone users, who we found from Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums etc. We are asking them to only write honest reviews, just like all others in App Store, there is no reason our service is against Apple’s rules. We fully understand the quality of the review is very important to you, therefore we do emphasize all our reviewers must write high quality reviews, if you’d like to get a taste of the reviews, please visit XXXXX.
Read 3.10 above again…how does what they do not break the rules?
Here’s a great post by Marty Yawnick at LifeinLofi.com about how to spot a shill review if you were interested.
BOTTOM LINE
Well, whether to pay for reviews/downloads or not is a decision only you can make I’m afraid.
I know it’s tempting…my app hit #14 in the photography category…just 4 spots from top 10…and then it started slipping…and slipping…and slipping.
Had I paid for reviews, would my app have climbed back up? I don’t know, nor will I ever know.
“But Master Yoda, my apps aren’t selling like I thought they would….”
Listen to Yoda, you must…Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Hard to argue with a Muppet.
(YES, I am well aware that Yoda quote isn’t from Empire Strikes Back and it wasn’t Luke he said it to…but I’ve come to a personal decision to convince myself that there have only been 3 Star Wars movies made…)
Noel Chenier
PS-Help out a fellow developer! Download the free versions of my Photography Assignment Generator Apps and let me know what you think!
———————-
Photographer and teacher
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