Folks ask this once in a while on the Business of Software boards: exactly how important are download sites to a uISV’s promotion strategy?
Confirmed Installs By Download Location in March 2008:
Any questions?
(OK, it isn’t quite that cut and dried. I’d still recommend doing submission via Robosoft for the SEO benefits of the backlinks it will get, particularly for a new uISV. However, in terms of driving downloads, download sites are all but worthless. It is easy to figure out why if you watch users looking for software: rather than going to www.download.com and searching for it, they just Google it to start out with.)
I have the good fortune to be on a fast, fast, fast Japanese connection and as a result don’t typically wait too long to view webpages. This makes me forget sometimes that the rest of the world doesn’t get nigh-instantaneous page loads, which means I don’t often design with this factor in mind. However, somebody pointed out that the new sidebar buttons were loading last for them, and as my front page can potentially take 4 seconds to load (longer than a significant portion of visitors stay!) I didn’t want that.
Its time for a little spring cleaning and I’m (finally) clearing out the cobwebs around here. As a result, I’ll be moving my blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress installation, changing the theme a bit, and reorganizing things substantially. Your old bookmarks and links will continue to function because WordPress is redirecting the old URL to here, but I’d suggest you update them to https://www.kalzumeus.com anyhow.
