Remember how I said I keep trying to write a blog post about bundleware, but I always get annoyed and it turns into rambling junk? (I mentioned this briefly in my previous blog post)
Well, I just received this email from Yazzle.net or something.
Dear Getpaint, [sic]
I represent Yazzle.net. My company is looking for new business partners to bundle our free bonus software. We want to pay you up to $0.80 for every download you bundle our bonus software with. We pay several of our partners over a thousand dollars a day. We offer products relevant to your site demographics. We believe that you can dramatically increase your revenue and simultaneously improve the experience of the visitors to your website.
Please give me a call at (phone number removed) to discuss or contact me at (removed) on aol instant messenger
Regards,
Joseph Ghartey
*Business Development
Yazzle.net
(contact details removed)
So apparently they’ll pay me "up to" $400,000 per month*. Err, tempting? But honestly, would I really want to do business with someone who thinks my name is "Getpaint?" Anyone who says they’ll pay "up to" a certain amount is probably just using that figure as a bait, and the real payout is probably 10% of that.** Although even $40,000/month is a nice figure.
When you download Paint.NET, you want and you get Paint.NET. I don’t think it’s appropriate to bundle Sudoku and ringtones, that’s just ridiculous to be honest. Plus, I refuse to do business with spyware/adware providers. I have more respect for weed dealers*** (well, as long as they’re like Nancy Botwin from Weeds on Showtime, anyway). If I ever bundle anything with Paint.NET it’ll have to be something that’s actually relevant and useful in the context of Paint.NET type stuff.
* Calculated from a rough average/estimate of 500,000 Paint.NET downloads per month.
** I have no facts to back this up, just good ol’ fashioned cynicism. I’d never heard of Yazzle.net before they e-mailed me.
*** This is not a pro-drug endorsement, I’m just trying to make a point. At least a weed dealer is providing something that the customer actually wants. Spyware/adware is usually snuck on to the user’s system without their honest consent.
paint.net blog 
They probably just take your domain name and assume that is your “company name”. I sometimes get email addressed to “Codeka” (usually from shady SEO companies “guaranteeing” to triple my traffic or something [mind you, 3 times zero is still zero, so it’s not hard :p])
I got something like that, they called me “rachel-story” offering to bundle their junk in exchange for cash. Nope, not going to happen. Besides, it violates the license I wrote which expressly forbids what we call adware or spyware to be included. In actuality, I brand my things “RaggieSoft” because in high school band they called me Raggie. Sorry, but my book will always be free as well as the front-end viewer I’m writing.
Likewise, the only thing I’d like to see bundled with Paint.NET are (if the author allows you to – although yes I do see the discussion on the forums) plugins. Kudos for rejecting this “offer”.
Let me guess: delete button?
Or did you decide to tell them how you feel (other than this blog entry)?
I agree with Mike. The only thing I want to see bundled with PDN are plugins/plugin-packs.
Good call, love the product because it’s clean 🙂
And a quick analysis:
-If they’d give you $40,000/month to install it, they must be getting *at least* $10 000 on top of that from somewhere
-Hence if you had said yes, they’d make an extra $120 000 this year
-Finding out your name would’ve cost (let’s be uber-generous) $6 in time
Conclusion, they either:
-don’t think “Dear Rick, We love your product, it’s what we use in house for the pictures on our website …” would make you $6/120k= .005% more likely to bundle their program
OR
-“we pay up to $0.80” means they pay a lot closer to nothing
Dave
You think Getpaint is bad, they just emailed me thinking my name is Sync 2play. 🙂 I wouldn’t do anywhere near $400k a month, but I’d likely do well into 5 figures. Unfortunately there seems to be plenty of negative press around Yazzle suggesting they might be affiliated with spyware or bundle spyware.