FingerBakery Blog

Majicdave on Twitter wrote today about a sales email he got from Apperang, a site which pays users to download their apps. Because the site I am about to launch is related to app marketing, I have looked into Apperang as well as a couple of other sites who pay for downloads. Here is my view on how unethical this stuff is:

On a couple of sites I’m not linking, you pay for reviews. I think most people who are paying people to review an app want the review to be good. I am pretty sure both places I have seen offer this service also allow the developer a method to stop the review from going up at all, which basically clinches that they aren’t just selling reviews, they are selling GOOD reviews. Just the fact that the users they are paying for the reviews KNOW that the developers may nix a negative review is probably enough to make almost every review overwhelmingly positive. This is a pretty annoying corruption of the usefulness of the App Store.

On Apperang, you pay for downloads. I don’t think this is in itself unethical, if the intent is not actually to game the charts. I signed up as an Apperang user to see what apps were up for download, and while I don’t recall them all, one of them was Mytown which I understand is a very very popular app with millions of users. The information the Apperang salesman gave me on how many downloads they could provide makes me think that Mytown definitely isn’t using them to just move up in the charts – they don’t need it and this wouldn’t help much. I think Mytown just said “cool, another way to market our game” and used it. To me that doesn’t seem unethical at all, and I don’t think Apperang advertise their product as “game the charts!” at all or even mention that.

The interesting thing to me about Apperang is that when I looked into it, it is owned by W3i Mobile Solutions, who it looks like have been doing this as a business model for quite some time, paying people to install programs on platforms other than iPhone (I think Windows and Flash apps mostly?). So, I don’t think they started Apperang as a way to game the charts, I think it is more intended for developers who want to increase their userbase for other reasons (money of course! via advertising or maybe IAP).

That of course doesn’t mean some developers can’t use it to try and game their way up the charts, but I have a feeling (and hopefully this will make anyone who thinks I am being a shill for Apperang here realize I am not!) that just using them to drive pure downloads would not be profitable. The cost of getting a game up the chart and having it stay there long enough to make a big difference would, I think, not make sense.

I think their service probably works best for free apps that make money from advertising. For one thing, it’s way cheaper to hire them to promote a free app: for a paid app you need to pay them their fee PLUS the cost of the app.

So, for a 99 cents app, if they are charging 20 cents as their fee, you pay them $1.19, they give their users 99 cents to install the apps, and you get 70 cents back from Apple. So you have paid 49 cents to get someone using your app.

For a free app, you just pay them the 20 cents. Not only is it 40% of the other price, but your actual cash outlay is 6x smaller, so you if available cash is an issue you can get 6 times the downloads without having to wait for Apple to pay you back.

I think one of the most worrying things about the whole idea of people buying their way up the charts is that it will become some really widespread thing and corrupt the integrity of the App Store. I don’t think that’ll happen. For one thing, I just don’t think there are enough people out there who are going to sit there and install apps for 20 cents, especially if there are less than 20 available to get paid for (as I think there were when I looked at Apperang). If you raise the price, more people will get involved and install stuff, but then the cost to the developer becomes more prohibitive and it becomes even more of a question of whether gaming the rankings like this is even profitable (again, I feel very strongly it isn’t).

The good news for anyone worried right now is that from all the info the salespeople for the various services have told me, there just aren’t near enough people installing stuff on their devices to give anyone a chance to buy their way in. Maybe in a year if they have thousands of people installing stuff for money it’ll be different.

Sorry if any of this post is rambling, I wrote it quite fast so I’d be done it in time to go see Inception tonight!