First of all, is this standard practice in the App world? I had seen reports that this is common on domain registrar / hosting review sites but had no idea iPhone app review sites were working on payola also.
Second of all, is this a worthwhile investment? This is my first app and as an independent developer I don't have an advertising budget to speak of, but positive reviews seem to be really valuable for gaining exposure, and this site ranks high on Google searches (this was actually one of the selling points they mentioned). Maybe $50 is a small amount compared to how much traffic this might bring? On the other hand, I don't want to do business with a site that is dishonest to its readers, and there are other review sites out there that may run a review without asking for cash in return.
Thanks in advance for your advice!
If I told that I paid $50 to a review site and it brought me $5000 . Will you ask anybody if you should pay $50 to bring in $5000 ?
Big Corporation pay celebrities money to give favourable reviews and endorsments all the time . Nike will only pay Tiger Woods Millions to give a good endorsement . They would be fools to give Tiger Millions to give his honest opinion . Its business .. The only way you will make money from your products or service is to get good reviews . If you are asking people for reviews and they are giving you bad reviews you will never make money .. This is part of marketing .. Your number one goal in buisness should be to make money .. If you will lose the $50 then its not a good investment but if you will make money then thats pretty much all that matters .. THERE IS NO CRIME BEING COMMITED. Its just business ..
The difference is that there is no pretense of it being an unbiased opinion. The kinds of review sites that offer paid placement generally rely on deceiving the reader into thinking the review is honest.
By the way, could you tell me the name of your product or service? I'd like to know so that I can be sure never to trust any reviews of it.
It's dishonest to offer "reviews" that are nothing more than advertising. It's not criminal, but it's not ethical. It's much like hiring people to be your references when getting a new job. You might be a kick ass employee, but if you really were why would you have to hire people to talk well about you?
http://www.moveahead1.com/articles/article_details.asp?id=33 http://sethgodin.typepad.com/all_marketers_are_liars/
There is too much stuff to learn in business but creating a product is one thing and Marketing a product is a totally different ball game ..
And so it goes. No wonder Americans, if not humans in general, more and more despise "Big Corporation".
Here's a novel idea: make a good, honest product. It will get good reviews without costing you an additional dime. Give value for value. Be honest instead of paying for lies.
You'll sleep better at night, and be able to look children and dogs in the eye.
The only way to really get good sales of your app if you're not on the front page of the app store in any way is to promote it elsewhere, and typically the best places to go to are the big Mac/iPhone/tech websites with promo codes. TUAW reviewed Colloquy (well...more like Colloquy's built-in browser, it was a very odd review: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/22/first-look-mobile-colloquy/) and sales almost doubled the couple of days right after the review.
If the $50 review site in question is the site I think it is, the only reason why we haven't paid is because we've gotten reviews out of higher-traffic sites for free and can't justify paying for a review from a site that we can't even trust any longer for good reviews. It's one thing to charge everyone a flat fee, but another to tell developers they're just going to sit on the review until later unless they cough up a fee. Sure, it's their choice to do so and if they can profit that way, good for them..and there are developers who will pay and perhaps find it worthwhile, but we just don't see that happening for our app.
We've gotten more money from iTunes affiliate links to the application on our page (http://mobile.colloquy.info) than in sales from most of the iPhone-specific review sites that we could see. We've also probably made more sales promoting ourselves and providing support on Twitter.
(Also, for what it's worth this site in question seems to be super slow if you don't pay up $50 or pay for advertising, it's been a little over two weeks with nothing whatsoever. the promo code we sent will probably expire before they review, heh.)
1. I love your program.
2. I just bought your iPhone application because you guys deserve at least that much from me.
Edit: whoops, I was talking about the OP's game! But, I also love your IRC client. I didn't know it was available for the iPhone, I'll have to check that out...
thanks though!
Thanks!
http://www.mobileorchard.com/9-places-to-publicize-your-ipho...
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/04/web-hostings-dirty-laun...
If not, then you are making a big assumption and could hurt someone's business by blasting all over the internet "just how morally corrupt this person is".
At the very minimum, this website is probably deceiving their readers by publishing these so-called "positive" reviews.
Sure it's legal. All kinds of things are legal. Some legal things are harmful and dishonest, and should be exposed.
It goes both ways, Belkin caught tons of flack for soliciting positive reviews on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Instead, ask your friends to review it on Apple's site. Promote it yourself. Advertise on Google and set the ads to show on the same sites you are talking about.
Ethics only becomes an issue where you're paying someone to be dishonest about your product.
Everyone is going to have their own opinion on this. No one is right or wrong, this is just my point of view. I hope it helps.
If not, then what you want to do is "pull a dreamhost" with a post on your own web site. Then post that here, and on reddit and on slashdot etc -- the resulting traffic may be more than this site could give you, and your conscience will certainly be clearer.
You'll get more exposure for your app than a mere blog post on a 3rd rate blog(gotta be 3rd rate if they only want $50 for a positive post). And who knows, you might get some of those big name blogs to cover your story as an example of how their particular blog is so much better than others that charge money for good stories.
Can you ask them what kind of traffic they are bringing in -- and how much of the traffic leaves the site on the way to iTunes? If they can answer that question for you (and providing proof would be a bonus!), it would be an easier question to answer.
(I'd apply a formula like: 50 visitors on average go thru to iTunes after reading a link. 10% buy. That's 5 buyers. If your app is $10, you end up breaking even.)
How many blogs have you sent your info to? 10? You should be sending it to 100.
I publish a tech blog. We're small but publish on Google News. Hit us up. Can't guarantee we'll review it. If we do and it stinks we'll say so. If we do and it's awesome, we'll say so.
So long as your not paying for them to give you a positive review (it's a leap of faith I guess) then it's hardly a huge misdemeanor.
Joe consumer probably doesn't give a crap if some iPhone app site charges $50, but other tech journalists, and hardcore/cutting-edge users definitely care, and those are the people who drive that site's pagerank and reputability through linking to and discussing it.
Does anyone read their reviews? Do you look at their reviews when thinking about buying an app?
I usually find the answer to be no to both these questions.
Then don't give them an incentive to be.
