I was contacted by someone from a company called International Masters Publishers about including the free trial version of my screensaver in one of their 'free Cds'. Does anyone know anything about this kind of marketing and should i be apprehensive about doing this? The fact that THEY are approaching ME about it makes me nervous somehow. I guess i've seen this kind of thing before with the free Cds included in magazines. What's in it for them to do this, and can it possibly bite me in the ass? -alan [Edited by - spiralmonkey on May 4, 2006 11:48:44 AM]

It depends.

If you have a good product, perhaps they are just looking for stuff to fill their CD, so they can say "Over 1700 demos included!"

The closest I have to being approached like that is getting told that they are including the demo version already on the web site, and getting asked if I would provide additional materials, a small text blurb, and possibly a discount for their customers. This was from a very reputable and well-known magazine publisher, though.


A quick Google for the company you gave doesn't look promising. Assuming you meant "International" instead of "Internation", there seems to be only one of them. The search results seem to be a combination of annoying marketing and lawsuits. That's probably not a good sign for you.

You're right, that's a typo (fixed now).

Yes, i looked them up before and saw the lawsuit. They seem annoying to their target market. Regardless they may be a good route to get my product out there, though they told me this CD would only be marketed to Latvia and Estonia - not sure what kind of market there is for screensavers out there! However, i'm more interested if this ends up posing any danger to me and my business to associate with them. Is there any danger to publishers to be included on these CDs, or can it only be a good thing?