Biggest FRAUD in the Top 25 Free Ranking

[walterkaman]

NOTE: If you are a developer for the app store, I STRONGLY encourage you to take the time and read through this experience that I had yesterday.


So yesterday I was looking at different ways to promote my new app (I've tried AdMob, but it turned out to be too expensive before) and I came across this ad network which guaranteed to get my app into the Top 25 in the app store at a relatively cheap price ($5000). This sounded very different from other ad networks, so I asked how he was promoting it and if has has done the same promotion for other developers. He then pointed me to the US App Store and literally WALKED DOWN the Top Free iPhone Apps rankings with me on the phone and named the following developers as current clients of theirs:

#4 - Tiny Pets
#5 - Social Girl
#6 - Fluff Friends
#10 - Pet Town
#12 - Crime City
#13 - VIP Poker
#16 - Sweet Shop
#19 - Top Girl

He said this developer called Crowdstar is quite aggressive and has both of their apps (Social Girl and Top Girl) in the Top 25.





I was totally SHOCKED when I heard that there were 8 apps on the Top 25 Free App store that were all promoted by them. At this point, I was pretty curious on how he's able to do that (I was told by an AdMob sales person before that it takes a lot of money and traffic to promote an app to the Top 10). That's when he let loose the BIGGEST FRAUD ever, he said he had outsourced someone to build him a bot farm and the bots will automatically download his clients' apps and drive up their rankings!!! He even told me that even though I might see my app climb up the app store, they aren't "REAL" at first until it gets to the top and that's when REAL HUMAN players will start seeing my app and play it.

This was getting quite crazy, on one hand, I really wanted downloads for my new app, but at the same time, this sounds like a HUGE FRAUD. I told the guy that I'll need to think more about it, but he then warned me that Apple already KNEW of this issue and has already taken action and banned a developer called Dream Cortex recently for botting. He said that's why he's charging me only $5000, it would have been more expensive before, but he's trying to get as many clients as possible before Apple stop the botting.

It's really disheartening to know that Apple is aware of this issue, but yet, they still allow these 8 apps on the app store to use bots. For all these time that I've been working hard at developing my app, I am very disappointed to know that these 8 other apps are getting insane exposure on the app store by paying a mere $5000.

This really needed to be looked into. I will be honest to everyone that I did considered paying that $5000 at one point, but I decided not to because deep down I really love developing apps on this platform and it saddens me to know that's the way to be successful on the App Store.