Hello to you all,

Does anyone of you have experiences outsourcing promotional services? I was checking the list on ASP:s site and there seems to be a few companies that provide this.

This is an area I'm interested in as well. Promotion for indies is a tricky business (one reason why Dexterity's business is going so well, I think). Any wisdom or experience would be helpful!

There are several that I know about through the ASP:

http://www.filedistributor.com
http://www.freelanceworks.com
http://www.sharewarepromotions.com

All have their positives and negatives.

I found FileDistributor.com to be the most effective, but it isn't cheap -- a full promotional package will cost well over $1000 per title. However, they offer a very full range of services.

Shareware Promotions I haven't used much, so I can't comment on their effectiveness, but other ASP members seemed to be pleased with them.

Freelance Works I found to be the weakest of the three and the priciest in terms of the actual service that's performed. Some people like it though because you just pay a monthly fee and get a report of what's been done. But for me it wasn't worth a couple hundred dollars a month just to have someone submit a product to 20-25 sites each month. I noticed little difference in sales during the six-month period I used this service. So many people swore by Freelance Works' effectiveness that I gave it a second chance for another six months, but again... no noticeable results. I think the problem is that this service just wasn't effective for our product line. It might work much better for non-game products. Even so, someone could do the "monthly" work of this service for themselves in about an hour, so unless you really, really hate doing your own marketing, I don't recommend this service.

Instead of an ongoing monthly promotional service like Freelance Works, I found FileDistributor.com more effective. You get a huge blast of promotion all at once instead of a little trickle spread out over time. A service like FileDistributor.com or Shareware Promotions will do in a few days or weeks what Freelance Works does in a year.

I have seen a direct and rapid sales increase after using FileDistributor.com. For Shareware Promotions, I've seen reports from other ASP members of good increases too -- in fact, on the Shareware Promotions web site, they have a chart showing one member's sales increase. For Freelance Works I don't recall ever hearing anyone report any specific sales increase that was attributed to the service. Most of the positive feedback I've heard about Freelance Works was of the kind, "I just pay a monthly fee, and all my marketing is handled." If anyone has gotten measurable results with this service, I'd love to hear about it.

There are other shareware promotional services springing up, but these three are the ones I hear about most often. A great one that recently shut down was Rich Holler's Author-Direct Distribution Service. While I relied heavily on 3rd-party promotional services in the first couple years, I eventually found that games are a different animal than other types of shareware and that we needed to keep most of our marketing work in-house. I don't know of any promotional services that effectively cover gaming sites, for instance. So game developers who rely on such services will miss out on a lot of potential coverage.

The best advice I can give is that if you use such a service, make sure you're getting your money's worth. Just because you pay $500 for marketing doesn't mean you're getting $500 of value for you. But on the other hand, don't be afraid to experiment. A service that is totally ineffective for one developer may produce outstanding results for another.

I do this on my own because I have more time then money :). Robosoft submision software is a great help for me.
AFAIK, author of Robosoft also do submiting to download sites if you like, I think it's $50.

Nedzad Orman
http://www.yupgames.com

Excellent stuff you guys. I'm a _complete_ newbie when it comes to this part of the business (which is one reason why I'm starting out with a couple smallish games). Any other pointers, lessons learned, etc., would be very much appreciated.

Steve, your response would fit in pretty well to a chapter on marketing. ;-)