What is Apple's policy on buying and reviewing your own app? [closed]

Question

What is Apple's policy on buying and reviewing your own app? Do they allow it, or discourage it, or is it in the fine print of dev agreement that I shouldn't do that?

I know that for Android apps you can't purchase your own app, they actually prevent the purchase from completing.

Answer 1

Who cares what the Apple policy is. It is unethical.

Furthermore, if you do this and it conflicts with many other reviews your astroturfing will stick out like a sore thumb and people will grow to distrust you. Once lost, it's incredibly hard to regain a customers trust - do not treat it so lightly.

Answer 2

You can buy your own app, that's not a problem, You can even review your own app. But why would you want to do either?

Answer 3

Sometimes a few positive ratings can mean the difference between attracting organic growth and fizzling out. From my experience with various app developers, I have seen no evidence that Apple manages self-ratings, so you can go ahead and do it technically without disclosure. However there is a risk of violating the trust of your customers, and likely very little reward.

My recommendation, to steer clear of the ethical black area, is to ask your network of contacts to rate your app: friends, family, previous co-workers, etc. Tell them you worked really hard on it, and ask them to download the app, and write a genuine review / rating based on what they think. There's obviously some bias in your favor, assuming they like you as a person, but I wouldn't consider it unethical unless you're asking them to lie.

Answer 4

Some developers do that in order to be on top of the chart.

For example, you can look at MacPhun LLC on the apple store, product name Color Splash, introduced Sept 21st 2011 at 10pm ET, Sept 22nd 2011 at 10am ET, the product has 60 5 stars user review. It is now among the top 15 best sellers overall. Might be a 70$ investment, that they will make back in a few hours.