Apple By Ryan Whitwam Jan. 12, 2014 1:30 pm
Apple is famous for maintaining tight control over its app ecosystem, but that hasn’t stopped people from running scams and being generally shady. One of the more popular scams these days might explain why you sometimes see strange apps that seem out of place near the top of the charts. It all starts with a big price hike.
A developer who wants to get some recognition merely has to increase the price of his or her app by a huge margin. An app that is free or $0.99 often jumps to $999.99 — the maximum allowed on the App Store. The developer wires some cash, usually a few thousand, to an associate who buys copies of the app until all the funds are depleted. Apple takes its usual 30% cut, but the developer gets the rest back.
So why basically hand Apple several thousand dollars of your own money? Because the top paid charts aren’t organized by the number of sales, but by the amount of money earned. So for a few thousand dollars, a developer can essentially buy a top spot on the App Store charts. A total transfer of $10,000 costs the developer $3,000 in fees, but that can take an app from obscurity to the top 20 list.
When the app has hit its peak, the developer changes the price back to a few bucks and people will buy it thinking it has earned its spot on the charts by being a genuinely good app. The return on investment depends on how many sales are made before the app sinks back down to the depths, but developers keep doing it, so it must work.
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A developer who wants to get some recognition merely has to increase the price of his or her app by a huge margin. An app that is free or $0.99 often jumps to $999.99 — the maximum allowed on the App Store. The developer wires some cash, usually a few thousand, to an associate who buys copies of the app until all the funds are depleted. Apple takes its usual 30% cut, but the developer gets the rest back.
So why basically hand Apple several thousand dollars of your own money? Because the top paid charts aren’t organized by the number of sales, but by the amount of money earned. So for a few thousand dollars, a developer can essentially buy a top spot on the App Store charts. A total transfer of $10,000 costs the developer $3,000 in fees, but that can take an app from obscurity to the top 20 list.
When the app has hit its peak, the developer changes the price back to a few bucks and people will buy it thinking it has earned its spot on the charts by being a genuinely good app. The return on investment depends on how many sales are made before the app sinks back down to the depths, but developers keep doing it, so it must work.
More...
