Unavoidable shareware repositories for Mac

I am in the process of releasing Fonts Manager trial package and need to place it in the major shareware repositories for Mac users.

I started with :

  • MacUpdate
  • HackStore
  • CNet
  • Softonic

I am surely missing important ones. All suggestions will be appreciated.

I always submit to iUseThis but I think it’s popularity has significantly dropped.
You might also want to check out prMac

In my experience their is only one repository for Mac apps that truly generate visits (and sales): MU.
If you update an app and it is mentioned at MU sales go fast up as long it is displayed on the first page.
All others do NIL, ZERO, Nothing for sales. I mostly get none or rarely a couple forwards links from those sites.

I know it is a different story for Windows apps though.

Just my 2 cents though.

I know Mac Update works : I get sales from it. But I don’t want to neglect anything.

In my experience, CNET is also a very visible site. Once you submit, be sure to check all permissions to allow them to follow your releases. MacUpdate often posts my update releases before I can get to telling them about it.

I miss VersionTracker. :frowning:

Me too.

The smaller sites will often find your listing on the bigger sites and add them to their databases automatically.

At one point there was a huge list of download sites, now it’s basically MacUpdate, then c|net.

Also, about softonic. I hate the site and know people who have worked there that makes me hate it even more (even without going into publicly known issues like their pushing for adware and wrapping applications into their own installers) but I recognize they have made an astounding job SEO-Wise since they always pop up in the first positions when searching for software.

I have apps listed in softonic, but I didn’t add them myself (and I don’t agree with how they’re listed but I don’t care enough about softonic to do something about it). I don’t get significant metrics from them.

Is your experience that softonic (especially for mac) works well? Macupdate is a given but I wonder if it’s worth trying softonic at all.

I have downloaded stuff from Softonic in the past. They did not bundle adware then.

The thing is, as much as I loathe some of these places, they are a necessary evil to market out of the MAS. Which lately has somewhat receded it seems. I also believe there are people who will not buy without a trial. I know many repositories have questionable policies, but frankly who am I to criticize sites that have thousands or even dozen of thousand visits a day ?

I have created a Pad file at http://appvisor.com/ which will propagate automatically for repositories to list Fonts Manager, so chances are most places will list it automatically. But I rather control the few top one.

About AppVisor, their online Pad file editor is awesome. But also, they have a submission service which carries the sometimes very annoying task of peddling the app with repositories. For $200 a year, they will submit 4 cycles a year to 600 repositories.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

[quote=273231:@Michel Bujardet]About AppVisor, their online Pad file editor is awesome. But also, they have a submission service which carries the sometimes very annoying task of peddling the app with repositories. For $200 a year, they will submit 4 cycles a year to 600 repositories.

[/quote]

Nice. I didn’t know about AppVisor. Even though I’ve known about PAD files for almost two decades. I see there is even a new spec. I’ve got reading material for this afternoon, sweet.

The nice thing about Pad 4.00 is that you no longer need to maintain a file within the archive, or to have the pad file on your site. It is on the official Pad Repository where they can fetched.

I have to admit that I did not use Pad files before for Mac, but this time, I want all chances to be on my side.

@Michel Bujardet Maybe you would want to take a look also to Softpedia

Javier

[quote=273282:@Javier Menéndez]@Michel Bujardet Maybe you would want to take a look also to Softpedia

Javier[/quote]

That’s right. I forgot about it. Thanks.

[quote=273079:@Tim Parnell]I always submit to iUseThis but I think it’s popularity has significantly dropped.
You might also want to check out prMac[/quote]

I discovered Bryan at prMac as a knowledgeable and very nice person who gave me precious advice. It helped me improve my communication.