That's a good solution.

Another solution is to offer a few different top paid lists for each of the common selling price ranges. So have one at 0-4.99, another at 5-10, etc.... That way some of the more expensive ones are treated quasi fairly.

Also the ratings should be weighted towards the people that actually purchased the app.

Or they could just sort by revenue rather than sales.

aha, you outed the site in question :) which was the same one who offered the same deal to us..and they still haven't reviewed our app one month later. backlogged indeed that they can't catch up with so many other sites that do just fine?..

i took a closer look at the site and their traffic after an informative discussion with another hn reader via email, and i'm really wondering if any devs that paid for this found it worthwhile.

I'm not sure that's the case. Although it's likely that many of the app reviews on AppCraver were paid for, there's no way of telling that a particular one was. For example, there are a couple of negative reviews on the site which I imagine weren't paid for.

I think it all depends on the kind of app. If it's a silly little app that anyone could find amusing then sure. If it's a useful app that only a certain subset of iPhone users will find useful, then maybe not.

Yes. Thank you for pointing that out—that typo's been fixed.

Speaking of Apptism, I like that site a lot, except that I can't figure out what those little numbers in red circles mean. I'm sure they explain on their site somewhere, just haven't found it yet.