Shareware Author Tips - Download Sites

(this article is part of a series)

In my first article I made mention of promoting your website. Mainly I just linked to an article that would apply to any webmaster. Before anything else - go back and check it out.

Now, as a shareware author - you have something unique working in your favor - download sites.

There are roughly 700 active sites out there that simply offer links to various downloads. Most of them will list your software for free.

While getting listed is a good thing - I would seriously hesitate before paying any of them money. One of them, (we'll call them TuBulls) won't list anything which doesn't meet very specific criteria. If you pay them money, they'll gladly tell you exactly what they don't like about your product. Don't waste your time or cash.

Some of them are freeware only. Others specialize in certain languages, education, games, etc. At the end of the day - there are about 350 sites that are "general interest" and will list just about anything.

I'd guess that about 4 to 7% of the SpamButcher spam email blocker software's downloads and maybe 3 to 5% sales are due to these sites.

If that doesn't sound like a lot, take a look at this article. Also, if you don't have any other source of traffic, they could make up 100% of your sales.

Having your site linked to by various download sites can also help improve the amount of traffic you get from search engines to some extent. It's hard to quantify this, but it could certainly be responsible for another few percent of sales.

The trick is getting listed in them all (or at least a large portion of them). If it takes 15 minutes each - you could be looking at a month worth of work hours. Fortunately, there are some shortcuts.

Most sites will take submissions via a standardized XML file format - PAD. You just need to create the file - then you can submit that same information to the various sites.

This still means a lot of work. Again, there's a shortcut. Various products can help you automate submitting your PAD file to these sites.

The one I've used is called Robosoft. They have a free trial version - that may last long enough to get your initial submissions done. I ultimately ended up buying a copy for $99 and have found it well worth it.

Submitting to several hundred sites with Robosoft takes about two hours. Most of the process is automated after the initial setup. The amount of actual work you have to do in addition to setting up your PAD file is pretty minor.

Alternately - you can hire a third-party to handle submitting to the same sites for a fee ranging from about $100 up to several hundred dollars. I've done this once - but found that I much preferred the control that using a tool like Robosoft provided. When you turn promotional efforts over to a third-party, it's hard to verify what work (if any) was actually done.

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