Download.com - last changes in Games section

[Andy]

Hi guys!
If your games are listed at Download.com you should take a look at their new layouts...
What do you think?

PS I've sent them a request to refund the submissions for all of our three games there.

Thanks for your opinion,

[cliffski]

its been clear to me for maybe a year that download.com is a waste of time. I paid once for a listing there, but generally now I forget about them even existing.
Poor layout, extortionate listing fees and crap traffic (quality wise) anyway.

[Andy]

Latest layout isn't poor anymore. But it devoted to whatever different but not to equal listing for every paying participant.

[tolik]

Seems they have started to distribute games from some major content provider.

[Jack Norton]

I was "lucky" to have UBM featured in frontpage for 2 days, quite a lot of downloads.
However if your game isn't in that position...is bad value for money

[Davaris]

I agree with you. Download.com's RPG section is full of patches and addons for 2 AAA titles, I think they did it to block out the other games. The users have to be savy enough to find the file filter links to get rid of them.

So what do you guys do to promote your games if Download.com is a bust?

[Jack Norton]

I use PR services and a few ads
You just need to find the right ones but you may get surprising results, spending less than the $79 of download.com and getting more downloads/sales

[Andy]

Yes Jack,

I can get this that you can find good place to advertise your specific games. I also suppose that Davaris can find specific places to push their RPG games as well.

But our ones - they are casual. That's why D.com gets and brings our audience specifically. And that's why I'm so dissapointed.
Saying honestly - I got no any idea where to move now without D.com income. It will require amount of additional efforts to find new good places.

PS We'll survive by anyway...

[Davaris]

I use PR services

Jack Norton: Could you give me the names of the companies that do your PR? I know of several companies from the ASP that do something similar, but I'd like to look at as many as possible before I decide who to go with.

[terin]

Jack (Ceslo) uses my service (www.vgsmart.com) as one (if not the only) release service.

:-)

[Andy]

What if he wasn't planning to disclose this Joseph?..

[HunterSD]

That's a good point - client confidentiality and all that. Except anyone with a good memory will know that anyway - Terin posted the press release of Goal Keeper on these very forums....

[Jack Norton]

Terin posted the press release of Goal Keeper on these very forums....

Hehe yes exactly. I have no intention to keep it confidential at all, since I did UBM and GK PR with him (was his first customer).
FOR ME, they worked well: of course that doesn't mean they'll work for anyone and with any kind of game.
Let's say that: those $50 spent for Terin PR have higher chances to get return (sales) than the $79 spent on download.com, unless you get lucky and your game is featured in frontpage but is very difficult...

[stevenmanschot]

I saw that download.com is using somewhat simular approach to ranking as google with their adwords. That is, you have to bid for the ranking and amount of money you want to pay per download. With a highly saturated market for shareware games it means using download.com for getting exposure is quickly becoming too expensive.

[Jack Norton]

With a highly saturated market for shareware games it means using download.com for getting exposure is quickly becoming too expensive.

I agree. But if is true, all people should stop advertising (no one can advertise for long if they lose money) and the whole download.com new system would collapse... and I bet that this won't happen.
Why? I don't know...

[stevenmanschot]

Why? I don't know...

Boiled frog soup syndrome and uncertainity I presume. I haven't dealed with download.com (yet) because they don't accept LoveChess as an entry. In a matter of fact a lot of regular used channels for selling shareware games are unavailable for us. So we had to find other means to promote our game, like promoting the game in your sig on fora , setting up a web blog (very, very good sales via this one), and getting mentioned in all kind of linkswarms and newsites. We have over 100.000 visits on our site now per month and more than 45.000 people downloaded the demo. So, without download.com the world doesn't fall apart.

[Jack Norton]

well your theme is particular... lot of people search for sex-related thing on internet I saw your ad with google adwords I think

[stevenmanschot]

We used adwords untill they weren't cost effective any more, which was pretty fast when there were enough regualar links pointing to us and even more so the blog was starting to get some traffic.

ot of people search for sex on the internet

Yes, and the amount of sex related sites dwarfes the amount of shareware game related sites. It's an extremely difficult part of the internet to get usefull traffic from, that's why we created the blog, to attract traffic of people we think are at least interested and willing to buy our game.

But, coming back to the topic of this thread, it seems that download.com has implemented a pay per download scheme which, if succesfull, will probably be copied very fast by other download portals like tucows and zdnet.