There’s no ‘organic’ on the App Store

It depends how many apps you're competing against. There's hardly any apps for development/coding, so if you publish something half-decent, your target audience <i>will</i> know about it. Of course that target audience will be much smaller than that for 'social games' or whatever. To publish a social game app, unless it falls into a readily identifiable niché, then it could languish in obscurity regardless of quality.

What I want to know is the cost to be in the top 100 if you purchase installs.

It's hard to find 'organic' in a lot of things. As soon as there is money to be made, someone will figure out how to exploit that 'organic'. Ask Google with their search results. It's the basis of advertising--he with the most money gets his product in front of the most eyeballs.<p>That said, I would love some organic in the App Store as well, but every scenario I can imagine to accomplish it, I can also imagine how to exploit.

Something I've been wondering about is why Angry Birds has under 100 reviews while Smurfs Village has over 1200, many of which are nonsense like one which was a 5-star review that said only "ok". I know some apps do a better job at encouraging reviews, but the sheer volume and garbage quality of many of the reviews makes me wonder if they're offering in-game rewards as payment.

Its 20-30k for paid apps. But often, if the app sucks - it won't stay on top very long.

Can anyone provide some background? How do you "purchase application installs"?

We have been contacted by these people who sell access to the 'Top' list.<p>Zero 'organic' is overstating it, but there definitely is a reason that there are terrible apps in the top paid lists.