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DP Directory, Inc.
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Subscribe Now to Al Harberg's Software Marketing Newsletter, the best way for software developers to get free, usable marketing information. We'll never use your email address for anything besides sending you this twice-monthly newsletter.
It's All About Marketing
As a software developer, you need to concentrate on making long-term profits. Identify the most profitable use of your time, and direct your energies accordingly. Build a rock-solid reputation in your segment of the software development industry, and profits will follow. (1) If you focus only on sales, you might miss out on profits. Sales are nice. But by focusing on sales instead of profits, it's easy to make serious mistakes. - Advertising can increase sales. But if you're spending too much on advertising, profits will suffer. You need to measure the results of your adword, banner, magazine, direct mail, and other advertising campaigns. Unless your ads generate more revenue than they cost, move your advertising budget to another outlet. - Try to measure the sales results of your advertising campaigns. It's much easier to measure the effectiveness of some advertising outlets than others. Don't dismiss an advertising or promotional idea because it's hard to measure. But challenge the metrics and assumptions of the salesperson who is trying to sell you an ad campaign. - Don't offer free lifetime upgrades to your software. Many developers think that a lifetime upgrade guarantee will bring in more sales. Buyers are cynical. They don't expect your business to survive forever, or even very far into next week. They've been burned before by companies that promised free lifetime upgrades to their Widget software application, only to find that the program has now been upgraded to Widget Pro, and that Widget is no longer being enhanced. You're not going to get a lot of incremental sales by offering free lifetime upgrades. And by offering free lifetime upgrades, you're giving away a substantial income stream. It's much easier to sell an upgrade to an existing customer than to find a new customer to buy your software. Focus on profits. Examine the total lifetime value of each customer. If you can offer a meaningful, content-rich series of annual upgrades to each of your applications, you can generate a lifetime of income. (2) Stop focusing on downloads. Downloads are nice. Perhaps one or two people in 100 will buy your software, and that can lead to profits. But you can make a lot more money if you try to sell your software. - Encourage people to buy your software, not try it. Developers mistakenly think that ordinary computer users buy software the same way that they do. Ordinary users would never download, install, and experiment with four or five programs before choosing one. Most non-technical people buy software because they've read a review in a magazine or newspaper, or because they received a recommendation from a friend. They have a problem, and they want to buy a solution. Sell them your software. The words on your web site should be designed to close the sale. Make it easy for web site visitors to buy. - Use your trial version to sell your software. If your web site doesn't sell your software, encourage people to download. Shareware is a great secondary strategy. Turn your trial version into a sales machine. To find more ideas for increasing this type of sale, please read the "Closing the Sale - Creating a Series of Sales Screens for your Trial Version" article from my last newsletter, on http://www.dpdirectory.com/3news022.htm (3) Don't focus on raw web site visitor numbers. It's a mistake to buy badly-targeted traffic. - You can buy banner ads, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, and all sorts of click-based web traffic. Some of these will be profitable, and some won't be. But generating traffic - even targeted traffic - is not the same as creating profits. Start by buying an affordable sample of traffic, and measure the results. Only continue the advertising campaign if the results are profitable. - You can buy search engine keyword and key phrase traffic. Create unique landing pages for each keyword. Target, test, and measure the results. Buy keywords to generate sales, and not to generate downloads. - When calculating profits, factor in your support costs. If you increase sales, but you're selling to an audience that requires much more support than you normally provide, then sales may be up while profits may be down. While all sales may generate the same income, they don't necessarily generate the same level of profit. Keep track of the customers whose support demands are excessive. Identify them, and how they found you. Avoid them. Or find a way to sell them support contracts. (4) Don't focus on quick sales. Some developers are making money selling trendy software such as anti-spam applications and pop-up blockers. That doesn't mean that you should slap together an app in one of these hot categories, just to pick up a few quick dollars. - If you rush a program to market, and it hasn't been tested on enough combinations of hardware and operating systems, you're going to damage your reputation and your profits. - Long-term profits come from developing a reputation for quality software and customer service. Releasing a second-rate application into the marketplace hurts your brand. It generates some quick sales, but is not the best way to grow long-term profits. The bottom line - Focus on profits. Build the best quality applications. Provide the best customer support in the industry. Publicize your program widely and wisely. Your reputation will soar, your company will grow, and you'll be able to price your software above the commoditized me-too programs that fill the marketplace. Focus on profits.
While sending your press releases to computer editors is the most cost-effective way to market most software, it's also important to reach vertical market editors. For example, if you're selling a business application, you want the editors of business, banking, insurance, and financial publications to tell their readers about your software. If you're selling a game, be sure to reach the computer game-playing editors, as well as non-computer editors who reach your target audience. If you offer a multimedia application, be sure to email your press releases to the music, movie, and entertainment editors (magazine and newspaper), as well as to the lifestyle editors. Lifestyle editors write for non-computer publications that are targeted at groups such as kids, teens, women, and seniors. Don't send your press releases to editors and publications who are off-platform or off-target. It makes no sense to send a press release about a game to the editors of telecommunications magazines, programming journals, or network administration publications. You don't want to annoy the editors, and you don't want them contacting your ISP or web host with a spam complaint. Some developers believe that using an email press release service like mine might not be cost-effective because their software appeals to only a very small segment of software buyers. It may make sense to develop your own in-house list of editors for these specialized publications. Please send me a note, and I'd be happy to suggest a distribution list for your press releases, even if you have a highly specialized application. You may be surprised by the vertical publications that I have on my database.
Time Management Made Easy
Take Back Your Time -
by Jan Jasper (published by St. Martin's Griffin) The Big Picture - Few people plan their time. We make decisions based upon habit, other people's expectations, advertisements, and indecision caused by having too many choices. We squander our time because we don't make deliberate decisions about how to live our lives. The secret of effective time management is to clarify what matters most, so we can decide what to stop doing. By eliminating fuzzy priorities, and by learning to say "no", we can reduce stress and accomplish a lot more with our lives. What it Means for Software Developers - Neatness is not the same as organization. We can neatly save paper we don't need. We can be very orderly about visiting marginally useful Usenet groups every day. But true organization involves setting priorities and making conscious choices. You have to determine how you want to spend your time, and create a plan that ensures that you're doing the right things. The book has chapters on managing your desktop, creating folders, and managing a to-do list. You can identify and use your peak times to do the challenging parts of software development, and use your laid-back time to work on routine matters that have to get done, too. There are tips on managing your time at work, eliminating procrastination, dealing with the clutter associated with having too much stuff, and surviving information overload. For example, reading back-issues of this newsletter might be a better use of your time than monitoring newsgroups with marginal payback. The chapter on taming technology is one that software developers can skip with no danger of missing anything vital. But there are a lot of good insights in the chapters on managing a corporate office, a home office, travel time, and personal time. The Bottom Line - I found the book to be very useful. I needed to be reminded that it's easy to say "no", and that setting priorities is incredibly important. This 250-page book is an easy read, and reading it is a good use of your time. "Take Back Your Time - How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and Technology" was reviewed by Al Harberg. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this newsletter, send me a note. I'll remove your name immediately and permanently. To SUBSCRIBE to the email version of this newsletter, send me your name and email address. I'll only use your name and email address for this newsletter. I'll never spam you, or let other people have your name or email address. Please add al@dpdirectory.com to your anti-spam filter's friends-list. To REFER a FRIEND to this newsletter, click your email client's "forward" button. I thank you very much. And your developer friends will thank you, too. To SELL MORE SOFTWARE, bookmark this web site, and visit often. There's a lot of free, useful software marketing information on http://www.dpdirectory.com/.
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