I listed my new software on download.com, and was surprised to get only 115 downloads in the first two days.

Its my understanding that the first days of listing are really hot due to the fact that people tend to frequent the "whats new" page. Some of the others on this list have 50,000 downloads or more after just a few hours.

Does anyone have any advice for this situation, perhaps how to get more individuals to download?

It says 369 downloads now, on their site at least. Their download numbers don't update real-time, iirc... Were you counting from their stats or yours?

Those 50,000's you see did NOT get that in a few hours. Those are old games being updated to be bumped back to the top of the what's new list. They keep their download count when they do that. You can't see how long they've *really* been on the site.... but if it doesn't say 1.0 next to it, don't compare it with you!

I never considered those as upgrades. Good Point. I could have sworn I read somewhere at download.com that upgrades werent published on that list. Oh well

I had a freind in the business (although he doesn't frequent these forums) tell me that his first day of live listing with a similar game was 40,000 downloads, which gradually tapered off over two months to his current count of 54,000

The way Ive always understood the inner workings of download.com is software is typically downloaded like crazy during the first two days, and then not much at all.

I dont see why he would lie to me. Does anyone agree with this statistic, or are counts that high after only one day of listing realistic?

This is very "hit and miss".

If your game is featured in any way (esp. with a picture, e.g. on the front games page or even the front page) you can rack up downloads very quickly. If other people submit a lot of updates just after you (like those silly patches and mods that some companies are flooding it with), your game will be pushed off the first page quickly, which very much reduces downloads. Some games will contiuously generate small number of downloads. Others will do nothing. I would say that downloads for download.com are down (no pun intended) in general though, especially since their Pay-Per-Download campaigns (some casual downloaders might try those games first and never get to anything listed below them).

You can generate a good number of downloads on average if you submit several updates. But to predict how many downloads any particular update will bring is impossible. I've had them range from 70,000 to just over 1000.

Two additional notes:

1. Some people used to drive their homepage downloads to download.com to increase #s. Keep that in mind (although I don't think its done anymore, given that their signup process might scare away some potential downloaders).

2. The numbers listed on download.com don't really tell you much. Always rely on your own stats for real # of downloads (unless they host it for you - in which case you really can't know anything)

A lot of people won't download the game through download.com but instead will go from download.com to your site and download it there directly.