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I sell a software which I registered with some download sites. They generate a lot of traffic in downloading and distributing the demo but don't generate much visitors or sales in relation to this. My conversion rate from google searches is better by far.

I did not find hard facts on this but some opinions on the net. Is there any hard data to the relevance of this sites for software sales? Or do you have a totally different experience?

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At least they dont cost and the backlinks ALSO IS PART OF YOUR GOOGLE NETWORK ;) So, they may providem ore than direct downloads. – NetTecture Oct 13 '11 at 7:15
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All Downlaod sites are not worthy to upload/add your products. So you need to better optimize your own website and product landing pages SEO friendly to get more dedicated traffic/leads/sales from natural SEO resources. Moreover, choose only credible download websites like Downlaods.CNET.Com, SoftPedia.Com, Download3k.Com etc because they have good traffics and Google also ranks their website pages in SERPs. – Usman Sarfraz Oct 13 '11 at 12:51

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Amenti - the primary reason for spreading software to download sites is purely for the SEO.

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Are you sure this still holds true? I was under the impression that Google is nowadays very good at ignoring such pages since all they do is linking content. – Amenti Oct 31 '11 at 9:56
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Every marketing channel (we call "profit machine") has to have it's own conversion numbers and prove it's own profitability.

Ignoring the SEO aspect of having your software on these sites, the question is... Have you got 1 sale from these free sites?

If yes... that's a good formula. Can you rely only on this channel? Well that depends on how much money your making and if that is good enough for you.

If you say "I don't know"... then you need to starting tracking traffic sources and conversions.

If you say "I can't track" or "it's too tough" or "I don't know"... I'll say ... better stop doing business on the web until you can. (OK harsh... but hopefully you get the idea).

In my book ... if you can't track it... you don't do it.

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Thanks for your answer. Since I know my conversion rate as I wrote I obviously track them. ;) There are conversions from this sites but they are really nothing in relation to the ones resulting out of Google searches. So mostly they generate much more traffic with lesser sales. That's what kept me wondering. – Amenti Nov 1 '11 at 7:49

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