Firstly, Chris Stewart has given me permission to post in here!
We are just about to release a new website called fuelmyapp - an iphone app review service. The site will enable fast efficient marketing of your app and also will reach many many users with high authority online as many will be tweeting and blogging.
We have hundreds and once launched, thousands of quality iphone users willing to try out app's, in return, they'll give a review in the App Store. We are launching officially later this week and will be inviting our hundreds of pre-registered users in later today. I also own a blog community with over 20,000 quality bloggers (fuelmyblog.com) and will be inviting them in too.
We are launching to the public this week in various mainstream tech publications. If you are interested in getting guaranteed reviews for your apps, please visit http://www.fuelmyapp.com and sign up to get your app's reviewed at our special introductory price and be featured as part of our launch next week.
On the one hand I think it's a great idea and reviews are definitely a good way to convince potential customers. On the other hand, paying for them doesn't feel exactly right, does it?
Just had a look through the site again, this surely has to be against some of Apples T&C's basically your site will enable sellers to climb the charts by paying users to buy their apps.
The end result making the top 100 charts false.
Developers who use this service would also get their money back per sale minus apple's commission per sale.
It certainly is an interesting idea but how legal is it?
Aaron
Last edited by bluemonkey; 09-13-2009 at 10:47 AM.
Just had a look through the site again, this surely has to be against some of Apples T&C's basically your site will enable sellers to climb the charts by paying users to buy their apps.
The end result making the top 100 charts false.
Developers who use this service would also get their money back per sale minus apple's commission per sale.
It certainly is an interesting idea but how legal is it?
Aaron
There's a scaled rate based on the number of reviews you want, but the reviewers would also need to purchase the app to review it. I don't think that's included in the price calculations - at least not that I saw.
Simply register using the form on the left, make sure you add your iTunes nickname and PayPal email address*. Once you have confirmed your email address, you'll be able to sign-in and select an application to keep. You'll need to pay for the application as per normal, now for the clever part, as soon as you have tried out the app and reviewed it in the iTunes AppStore, we'll automatically refund that amount to your PayPal account via the email address you registered.
So whats to stop a developer releasing a new app 59p say in the uk business category then registering on this website and making £59.00 available for reviewers to buy apps, this would get the developer 100 sales and most likely to the no 1 spot in the UK, the developer would then receive £36 of this back via iPhone sales and then benefit from being on the number 1 spot and this would help the sales a lot.
Is it just me over thinking things or is this site violating some form of apple T&C's or even assisting developers break the rules?
So whats to stop a developer releasing a new app 59p say in the uk business category then registering on this website and making £59.00 available for reviewers to buy apps, this would get the developer 100 sales and most likely to the no 1 spot in the UK, the developer would then receive £36 of this back via iPhone sales and then benefit from being on the number 1 spot and this would help the sales a lot.
Is it just me over thinking things or is this site violating some form of apple T&C's or even assisting developers break the rules?
Aaron
That's an interesting point. I'm no laywer though and can't say for sure. If I'm not mistaken, big companies do things like that all the time. They pay customers to get their products and receive some sorta review/word spreading in exchange. So, I think this type of marketing is not new at all.
I'd really be interested in some professional opinion on this. On the other hand, even if your app is #1 no one is forced to buy it. It just seems to be human nature to get what everyone else already has That's why I believe that you can hardly lose by investing in this type of marketing.
I just haven't done it yet, because I'm not fully convinced, that it's "the right thing" to do.
Yep it would be interesting to know the legal rights of this website to offer such a service.
A search on google for "mturk iphone bribe" will show you many interesting articles about a developer who tried to pay for reviews.
Getting to no1 does enhance sales as it is much easier for users to find your apps.
I guess it would make sense to explain why we started the site, simply, we kept paying for app's with no reviews that were simply a waste of money. This way, we get to see a load of reviews based on many different users true opinions, remember we are not asking them to write anything positive, and the user has to buy the app in advance, when the review is published, we pay them back the cost of that app. The review isn't a bribe nor sponsored as, they do not have to give a positive review, just honest.
Thanks for all the feedback so far, it is certainly food for thought and I'd appreciate you guys keeping the conversation going on here, we'll look into legalities tomorrow and post back. We certainly are not looking to game the marketplace. Of the hundreds of iphone users we have spoken to, only literally a handful even knew that they could review the app, many never ever visited itunes and bought all app's from their phone.
We are hoping the site helps marketing for developers and helps users try more app's without having to waste money, we are going to add a recommendation system soon that allows users the chance to tell their friends about app's they recommend.
It is a good idea but i feel your site will be abused developers will stump up the cash to pay people to buy their apps and not really care about the reviews by doing so this will push their apps to the top of the charts and will increase sales.
The normal process is to give out promotion codes for users to test out the apps and leave a review if they wish.
Even though your service does not force users to leave a positive feedback you are still bribing users to buy a particular application to aid falsifying the apps natural chart ranking, by stating if they review the app in anyway they would get a refund, I doubt many users would ignore this opportunity.
New Site To Guarantee Reviews In App Store
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