App Store payola, and what it means for the app ecosystem

Bastian —

Reviewing apps that don't exist could potentially hurt my credibility. But I'm willing to make an exception in this instance for 5 promo codes and a $10 iTunes gift card. (I'll throw in a free 5 star iTunes review when your app does go live — expires in 6 months)

You Sir are a liar ;)
The domain is till up for grabs (unless your registrar is really slow).

And here I was getting my hopes up.
Well since you offer to do reviews on a domains you don't own I demand you review my iPhone App that doesn't exist! Whats the going rate for that?

Glad to see this site doesn't do it.

I tend to stay away from all apps until a week or so after it is released. That way I can get through the fake garbage and review most of the Apps

How do some apps get 5 stars when the point of it isn't available yet? Like people rating the CBS app 5 stars when the tournament was NOT EVEN ON YET.

There are so many app store review sites around now, so it's hard to figure out which is dodgy or not especially if it's got a good Google rank. Is there some sorta "name-and-shame" list of payola sites?

"App Store REVIEW SITE payola, and what it means for the app ecosystem" FIFY

OATS sounds good, but if TUAW would do one simple thing with their app review process it would make me a lot happier: acknowledge all app review request emails with a reply so developers at least know that someone saw the request. I have submitted two apps for review (Vines and J's Job Jar) in the past year to tuawapprs@gmail.com and didn't get any reply whatsoever.

A simple form letter email "thanks for the submission" would at least let me know I didn't get trapped by a spam filter. Every other review site I have tried at least acknowledges the request.

The thing that I've found is that "grass roots" blogging -- sites that I didn't even contact, much less send a promo code to -- have had a bigger effect on sales than any of the specialised iPhone app review sites that have accepted free copies (but not cash). My guess is that the sites that are asking for money are similarly sized or smaller, so I wouldn't waste my $25.

I'd love to know what effect on sales a nice few words from TUAW or other big sites would have. Purely in the interests of science of course.

(Blatant plug: my apps are Yummy, still the only Delicious.com client to support Yahoo! ID logins, and www.cut, the neat little URL-shortening app.)

Likin the ads in the Comments!!!

TUAW never reviewed my app :'/

As a developer (TUAW reviewed my game Wordology here: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/16/six-fun-and-useful-iphone-apps/ ), I can say it's incredibly difficult to get any attention for your apps now a days. Especially if the app targets a niche (like my newest app Extensions: http://www.cerebralgardens.com/products/extensions ).

I have never paid for an expedited review, but if TUAW asked me to pay $25 to do a review this week, instead a month or two from now, I'd probably pay it. I wouldn't expect (or want) that payment to affect the rating of my app, as that would be cheating, but getting a jump in line, seems ok. It should be flagged in the review too though, that the developer did pay for an expedited review.

The review sites have to earn a living too. Better that some of link whoring articles that some sites publish to get ad views.

ditto for DropCopy: http://www.tuaw.com/tag/dropcopy/ - nice increase in sales, but also in inquiries. In fact we implemented a number of changes based on comments from TUAW readers; great symbiotic relationship.

In our experience, press from sites/blogs that have little traffic unsurprisingly yield very little.