Update: We were just sent this official statement about the “pay for coverage” policy. I'm publishing the statement with no edits of any kind.
Cormac here from MacTrast. Glenn has filled me in on the discussion between you both.
Yes. We charge a fee to cover apps. We receive 100's of enquires per month from developers to have their apps covered. App reviews tend to be consume a lot of time. A single review could take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours to complete.
Reviews account for a small portion of our traffic too. Our main writing staff cover Apple rumours and “how-to” guides.
The vast majority of reviews published on MacTrast are covered by a small team of writers who specifically cover reviews. They receive $40 of the $50 charged for reviews to compensate for their time in reviewing the app.
In return, the app developer gets featured on our site, on our Twitter, on Facebook, and in other sources.
Paid reviews do not at all guarantee a positive review either. I have the threats to prove it!
We can't possibly fulfil the volume of enquires for apps to be reviewed. It would be counter intuitive for us to operate like that.
Because of this, I decided to introduce a charge. Plenty of app developers are happy to pay for the coverage. Others are not. I'd love to be able to cover more apps on MacTrast than any other Apple news site, but it's possible for us. We also have to compensate our reviewers who take the time to review the apps.
I hope this shines a bit of light on the logic of why we decided to charge for apps.