I stumbled through Popcap games publishing condition. Why would any shareware developer wanna publish their games through other publishers? Why dont they just load their game up CNET or Tucscow?? [Edited by - CRAZY COCONUT COW on August 21, 2005 3:56:38 AM]

The way I see it is that by going through a publisher you may lose a portion of your sales to the publisher, but in the long run you'll sell more product then just uploading to Tucows and hoping people find it and buy it. The publisher will generally perform some level of marketing on your product which will enhance your sales. The idea is that by paying money to the publisher, you will sell more of your product, and in the long run make more profit.

Right. The big sites got huge traffic. No way you can attract that many people to your website by simply putting your demo on download.com.

But you can buy an ad on gamespy, gamespot, fileplanet and so on.. Depends how much you can pay and on your research.. If you would have FPS, you would be better off on planetquake, fileplanet.. You can do it yourself too. Find buddy in college from marketing class and try to make marketing strategy. I would use both ways - publisher and my own website.