It's no mystery that getting noticed in an endless sea of 100,000 apps populating Apple's wildly popular App Store has quickly become the biggest challenge facing iPhone developers once they hurdle over Apple's internal approval processes. According to Pinch Media, an app appearing on a top 100 list in the App Store, increases new users by an average of 2.3x, with even greater gains resulting from an appearance in the top 25 or top 10 list.
A new venture, Ignition Mobile Corporation, is offering a fresh path for developers to increase average daily downloads by enticing iPhone users with free apps (through rebates) on a website called AppRebates. In exchange for getting money back on apps, users write an app review which must be completed within a specified time frame in order to qualify for a rebate. In the case of some apps a 50-cent bonus is also being paid out in the deal.
"To qualify for the rebate you will need to write a review and give the application a rating. You must write a review and not just simply rate the application. You will get your rebate back regardless if the feedback is positive or negative. Try to provide useful comments that will help the application developer improve their product." Source: AppRebates FAQ
The catch here is that members (reviewers) of AppRebates, are required to pay the full price for any paid app through iTunes, submit their review, then sit back and wait for a reimbursement from AppRebates. The cost for developers to participate in this newfangled "review campaign" is $1.00 per review after the first 20, according to an email solicitation forwarded to the iPhone Savior from an established developer targeted by the company.
"We are not an advertising network," company co-founder Francis Duong writes. "We take the guess work out from traditional CPM and CPC advertisements. We acquire users and reviews for our clients on a fixed cost per user basis in a direct accountable manner. We help our clients bootstrap and gather feedback to improve their apps."
AppRebates is not shy about promising developers "hundreds of reviews in a matter of days", through their "Featured and Rush campaigns" designed to boost app rankings in short order. Which some may consider worth the cost for apps listed over the typical $.99 selling price. One day after signing myself up as a reviewer, I received an email from the company, encouraging me to download this week's featured "free paid iPhone app" and post my review.
The current featured app is Bar Rush Unlimited ($1.99), launched on December 9th as a follow-up to Bar Rush ($.99). This newcomer already has some 93 reviews, with the majority of reviewers giving the app 5 star and 4 star ratings. It's impossible to tell how many of those positive ratings came from paid members of the rebate club, but I did notice that the bulk of four and five star reviewers offered only one sentence comments, like this one from iTunes_Surfer;
"I really like this game. It's enjoyable and addicted great job!" - iTunes_Surfer
Another insightful reviewer, who also appears to be missing a few brain cells, had this to say in his four star review;
"Very good, deep and addicting time management." - Grweng wrote.
I'm not quite sure what "addicting time management" means, but I would not call that kind of feedback useful to app creators. It only serves to taint the app, reinforcing a buyer beware approach as the result of such brief but sketchy reviews.
Roughly fifty developers already appear on the roster of AppRebates, with almost half of the apps filling up the games category. With the App Store predicted to bulk up to 300,000 apps by the end of 2011, the iPhone gold rush presents an unparalleled opportunity for savvy marketers to profit off thousands of developers desperate to see a reasonable return on their personal investments. That's when the snake oil salesmen move in, making grandiose promises behind an untested "pay-per-review" model that appears to leverage the App Store ratings system in a clever but self-serving way.
Chinese developer Molinker, Inc. chose a rather unscrupulous method to exploit Apple's ratings system by allegedly soliciting 5 star reviews to gain a lucrative boost in sales. That alleged ratings scam resulted in all 1,011 of Molinker's apps to be yanked down from the App Store by Apple. Molinker and its associated websites have since vanished from the web.
Although it's still too early to tell if an enterprise like AppRebates will be looked upon favorably by Apple and the larger community of iPhone developers, it seems certain that many devs will be lured in by the promise of instant exposure and hopes of gaining buzz among iPhone users. On the other side, reviewers will be lining up like giddy school girls looking to score fully subsidized "app crack" while they wait for a reimbursement from AppRebates through PayPal.
"You're going to have to dump thousands of dollars on paid reviews to ever reach the Top 100," one developer said under the agreement of anonymity. "This is a company looking to profit off of developers. The only ones that will benefit in the short term are the reviewers and the owners of AppRebates."
I reached out to Ignition Mobile's co-founder Francis Duong by phone, he asked me to call him back next week. But in the App Store business there is no next week. For iPhone apps it's all about the "right now". Mr. Duong should know that, his operation seems to depend on it.
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