yep. its true. from september 30, c-net will charge at least $99 to let you add your software to the list. i am quite livid at this. has anybody seen this? has it been discussed in this forum. what do you think guys? are u going to shell out that money to feature it there? and what happens when all popular sites start dancing to the same beat. will u be paying each site $$$ to list your software?

thoughts please.

Well... this has been discussed extensively on the ASP private newsgroups, and many different viewpoints popped up.

For me personally I believe it's a good thing. The main reason is that it will act as a filter for many poorer titles that can be listed on a whim, and give my titles more exposure. I'm also expecting that the 99$ filter will improve the experience for people surfing titles at download.com and improve the popularity of the site. Hoping against hope, they might even add some features and reasonable reviews to attract more visitors if the site becomes more profitable for them. Many people have argued that the loss of quality freeware and variety of title submissions will lead to a large downfall in the traffic to the site, but I kind of doubt that's the way it will go. I guess time will tell. But at the end of the day it's purely a business decision.

So... as to the question of whether or not I should pay? That's a no brainer. Something like Aargon received 50,000 downloads off of CNET and ZDNet alone in the last 18 months and I know with some certainty that that translates directly to more than the 99$ submission fee and, simply viewed as anoher advertising possibility, is a profitable even if I include the bandwidth, and other costs involved in submitting there.

Would I pay for 40 sites at 99$? Certainly... but only if the sites provided value. Sites with less traffic may be able to get away with charging less or may not be able to charge. A site that generates 1 download a month will get nothing from me, but on the other hand I wasn't getting much from them. The only loss is if I get 100 downloads from 100 sites, but I can't be bothered to submit to more than the 30-40 top sites. My bottom line doesn't seem to be affected much by ignoring the 120 or so odd sites that I use to submit to.

To me it's like any ad. I run the ad. If it sells games and I make more than the ad costs then I continue to run it. You might say... well gee 40 sites x99$ is a lot of money I could never afford that! But essentially in that case what you'd do is bootstrap yourself by starting with a few sites and when they pay for themselves use the extra cash to list at more. (I dont think there are that many sites that could really justify paid submissions these days anyway - maybe only cnet)

Personally the much more difficult thing for me to find is ads that actually work. I've certainly wasted 1000's of dollars on campaigns which I thought would make me money and didn't. But then if you don't try you'll never know will you? Sometimes you have to take risks. CNET falls into the happy category of a guaranteed return.