Thursday, January 24, 2008

Business Software News

1/24/2008 1:35:22 PM
Infusion Software Launches Reseller, Certified Consultant Program. From SalesCentric, CRM Air harvard hockey in Michigan. Epicor Announces Early Termination of Hart Scott Rodino Act. By Lynn Stevens Microsoft has entered the enterprise level CRM software market, and NuSoft Solutions thinks it will be so hot, the Troy based company opened. Providing Software as [...]
1/24/2008 12:02:25 PM
Una herramienta de indudable beneficio para cualquier equipo de ventas es la que nos encontramos en Simple Sales Tracking, porque es un CRM bastante intuitivo y donde podemos llevar un control total de todo lo que sucede en el área de ventas (sin importar que venda). En las pruebas que realizamos con él nos gustaron [...]
1/24/2008 10:17:16 AM
Inclind has launched two new websites this week. Kitty’s LTD Kitty’s Ltd. features distinctive gifts, folk-art, collectibles and high quality crafts. Many products are one-of-a-kind originals and limited edition handcrafted items by American artisans. Made in the USA is our specialty. Inspiring seasonal products are often created of vintage fabric with unique handwork, painting and craftsmanship. Specialty [...]
1/24/2008 9:11:49 AM
I found out in the Internet about this interesting shopping cart software which I want to introduce to people who want to setup shopping cart site in the Internet. They are an award winning shopping cart software by providing very secure and easily setup shopping cart software for the site. For those who wanted to [...]
1/24/2008 8:15:59 AM
It’s very difficult to code a shopping cart by yourself and even with the availability of shopping carts softwares and templates, it’s very difficult to customize your own shopping cart. I’m considering to try out shopping cart from Ashop because I’ve been quite pleased with what they have advertised on their website. I’ve already signed [...]
1/24/2008 8:05:07 AM
One renowned vendor seems to have contributed to the 2007 holiday shopping season. That would be Irvine, California, the United States (US)-based Epicor Software Corporation (Nasdaq: EPIC). With over 2,500 employees worldwide and with projected 2007 revenues of $414.5 million (not including the pending acquisition), Epicor is the global leader in the mid-market, serving over [...]
1/24/2008 7:43:12 AM
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a company-wide business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty. True CRM brings together information from all data sources within an organization (and where appropriate, from outside the organization) to give one, holistic view of each customer in real time. This allows customer [...]
1/24/2008 3:05:03 AM
Designation Analyst - Helpdesk Executive  Experience : 0 - 2 Years  Job Description : Good Customer handling and Helpdesk support experienceExcellent Oral and written communicationWilling to work in night shifts ( 24/7)Based on performance , down the line candidates will be moved to Software development  Education : UG - B.Sc - Computers, Maths;B.Tech/B.E. - Any Specialization;BCA - ComputersPG [...]
1/24/2008 1:30:27 AM
If you have some gray hair on your head, you will probably remember the days when companies used to employ telephone operators to handle customer service rather than stupid automated phone systems that leads the customer through tortuous corridors toward dead-ends or endless loops. Navigating through these complex mazes and reaching a live human being in [...]
1/24/2008 1:18:24 AM
Medical Billing process consists of interaction between a healthcare provider (like a consultant physician) and the insurance company who is the payer of the bill. It is the duty of the concerned doctor to maintain/update the patient record that has all patient information, state the nature of his illness, examination/ tests conducted, medication lists, diagnoses [...]

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The Business of Software

1/26/0008 9:11:45 PM
Anon for this: I'm working as a contractor and want to be able to attach a simple timesheet to my invoices.  Excel would work, but I was wondering of anyone knew of a free web app that would keep track of:
-Date
-Duration
-Description of work done
-Run a "report" for a given date range
1/25/0008 12:20:06 AM
wondering: Ok, I've noticed a phenomena of sorts with my ISV.

(as background, I usually sell a few copies of my $100 product per day, and field many inquiries also)

Whenever I add a product feature, or change the website (in even a small way), my sales suddenly come to a complete stop, and I don't even get emails asking questions.  Now this even happens with features that end up being very successful.  And it happens even when the website becomes easier to use and more informative because of enhancements.

Now, I'm scared to make any changes, even for the better, because it costs me money in the short term (although I probably make it back in the longer term).

Has anyone else noticed this with their business?

How do you approach this issue?
1/25/0008 12:51:41 AM
Fairlight: a few days ago, someone poste a link which enabled you to view your web site emulating different browser and OS, I've lost the link

Do you rememeber the name of this (cool) service ?
1/25/0008 1:10:26 AM
Doug: I'm wondering if anyone has experience adding OpenSSL to a project.  Specifically I'm adding it to a tiny HTTP server that I use, but I find the docs are very hard to follow.  I guess that's how you generate support income :) 
Or I'm just slow :(
1/25/0008 1:12:39 AM
A man with a question: Hi everyone,

I'm working on my premier product for my mISV and I'm trying to decide whether to have a beta release or not..

I've been back and forth on the issue for a while now; mostly, I think, because I'm trying to keep the product a "secret" until release.

Why, you ask? :)

Because I don't want any potential competitors to have the time to make something similar before I start selling the app. Having a month or two "heads up" and being able to study my beta release during that time, may give a potential competitor enough time to build something along the same lines.

This is probably strange to a lot of you, at least those of you with a product (or more) out already. But for me, this is my first time doing something like this; so I'm still learning.

This wouldn't be an issue if there was already direct competition for what I'm doing, but there isn't really. Anything else out there either isn't commercial and not as good as mine, or commercial and not in the same market (and still not as good as my product :)).

So, for everyone who has a product out there:

 - Do you think a beta test is necessary, or even just recommended (I'm guessing it is)?
 - What are your experiences with conducting beta tests?
 - Any tips for running/not running a beta test?
1/25/0008 1:36:52 AM
SCADA_Guy: Is there a difference between the SSL certificate I have issued for my site, and a signing certificate? I need to sign an applet, but I don't really want to pay for another certificate if I can use the SSL one.
1/25/0008 4:26:48 AM
Contractor: do you think the name of your company really matters?
1/25/0008 7:15:06 AM
welles: See Orson Kart's post towards the bottom of the thread here http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.581312.28 for reference.

I'm wondering if you can share your expriences with addressing the problem of selling software for a very competitive verb e.g "submarine washing".

I am struggling to come up with an approach where I can rank well for "submarine washing" though I'm on page 1 for "submaring washing software".

Would appreciate any insights.
1/25/0008 7:59:44 AM
Damn cashflow spreadsheet....: Just curious -- what sort of pre-tax margins do your companies have (here I'm thinking of operating margin = (revenue - expenses) / revenue), and how much revenue per employee do you earn?

Our margins now are 35%, ~225k per emp.
1/25/0008 9:13:15 AM
ES: hi,

I have a preventive maintenance and asset management system that I want to sell in terms of source and IP. Where would the best place be to do this?

I read previous posts and see there is general feeling that source won't sell because noone will pay enough for it. I don't want to get rich overnight, I am not talking thousands of dollars here since I know there is no immediate value to companies without customers. Just a few bucks to kickstart me to do something else.

There must be companies/programmers looking for products to kickstart their businesses, where do I find them?
1/25/0008 4:07:06 PM
Brian Williams: Ok, our company is a product available on download.com, we have about 3,000 downloads so far a pretty good conversion rate from Cnet.com. We have never done advertising. But we have put 300 bucks in our budget for February for test advertising. Which is the best to invest in PayPPD or Adwords?

When you use PPD Cnet.com places your app higher in the searches and you can buy keywords for that month, and you are only charged when a user completes a download.

Adwords, well you know how that works.

I was thinking that Putting the money in PPD would be better because you are paying for actual downloads rather than just page views.

Any Suggestions? Use Both?
1/25/0008 5:24:44 PM
Confused: I am planning to use Paypal's IPN to sell services to users of my site. Ideally a user would register on my site, try one of the services, and then purchase it through PayPal. I will wait for the confirmation on the purchase through IPN and will add credit to the user's row in the database. However, how do I identify which user to credit? If I made item_name/item_number unique per registered user, would this be enough to uniquely identify the user and prevent fraud?

Thanks.
1/25/0008 7:07:40 PM
midtown programmer: So, I am in this food joint in New York and they advertise the beverages like so:

Beverages – FREE REFILL
Small $1.59        Large $1.79

Is this the smartest price point ever or what? On one side you cater to those who understand you can drink all you can for only $1.59, but you know, just in case you get a greedy one, eyeballing the large cup, charge him $1.79. All willingly, no fine print whatsoever.


I wish I could do that with my software. The more you want it the more I charge.
1/25/0008 8:39:44 PM
Anon For This One: Hi,

Related to this topic I posted: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.586457.7


I have done consulting work for about 3 months now and just received my first payment for it. Right now I am just, by default, a sole proprietor using my legal name as my business name.

Can I register a fictitious name (DBA) now, even though I have already done business using my legal name as my business name, and even though I have already received one payment for the work? In other words, can I seamlessly (with the exception of the DBA paperwork) move from doing business under my legal name as the company name to the DBA?

Thanks.
1/25/0008 9:04:32 PM
MicroISV: About six months ago I noticed one competitor of mine was used my software product name as a keyword to bring up their Google Adwords adverts. They produce a similar software product to mine. My software product name is unique.

I downloaded the free trial of their software and was pleased to find out they made several mistakes that will put off potential buyers. I'm paranoid enough not to mention their most serious mistake in case they are reading this, but for one of their options they have about 6 different choices. This will just confuse users. There is no reason to have 6 different choices. I just don't have a choice - I have one method which works for all cases. I suspect they had a technical person made a decision that management didn't overrule and they weren't good another to find one method that actually works. So they have 6 different methods that the user has to choose from!!!

Plus their software is so slow as it is unusable.

Last m onth a company bought one copy of my software and emailed me to say they bought one copy of my competitor's software product previously, but they too found it too slow to be usable.

So all well and good. My attitude was that if they want to waste their money on a Google keyword the same as my software product it is up to them. Their money will get used up and if anybody tries my product out as well, they won't get a sale.

Well today a customer that purchased my software four months ago sent me an email saying she got a new computer and downloaded the software only to find the registration key I gave her months ago no longer works!!!!

She sent me a screenshot of this competitor's software product with an error method saying my registration key is invalid!!!!

Obviously she had just typed in the product name into Google and this competitor's website had come up as a paid Google Adwords advert. She downloaded the wrong software product .

So today I wrote a letter to

Google AdWords, Trademark Complaints 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043

telling them to stop this.

Two months ago I started up the application process with the USPTO to get my product name trademarked, but the process takes almost a year to complete.

My software product has been available on the Internet for 2.5 years.

I'm slightly annoyed as this makes my website and software look bad, because a competitor is trying to lure people searching for my product.
1/25/0008 9:34:12 PM
Evgeny: I need to create a client area where end users can buy products, download licences, download upgrades, etc.

There is a choice https://secure.domain.com or https://client.domain.com
What is better suits for this?
Could secure.domain.com be considered more secured by some users? :)

Thanks,
Evgeny
1/25/0008 11:16:40 PM
Anon For This One: Hello,

So I received my first check today from a client where I have done some software consulting work. My business is consulting and contracting. I am a sole proprietor working under my own name.

My question is it worth opening a business bank account and getting a business credit card -- or should I just continue to use my current personal bank account and credit cards like I did when I was a full time employee with a corporation?

Thanks.
1/24/0008 12:10:09 AM
Bored Bystander: Hey, local smart guys and small business brain trust, riddle me this. ;)

Where can I find good examples of designs for print collateral, such as brochures?

I have been turning up really poor results in web searches. I have no clue where to look. I have found a few places that do turnkey brochure designs.

Ideally someone here knows of a counterpart to http://www.oswd.org/ for print media.

I need this for myself, but I am also interested in a resource that I could use later for client projects for visualizing layouts and design approaches, too.

It would be ideal to latch onto a site that had some good examples of graphic concepts as real Word templates and documents. But I would even appreciate a gallery of specific examples that were just images and thumbnails. Just anything with variety.

Thank you!
1/24/0008 1:36:50 AM
desi(red): Is it prudent, or distracting to have the 'Hacker safe' and 'Verisign secured' logos on the buy-now page.

My opinion is that the 'hacker safe' logo by itself can cause some fear - it mentions hacker and reminds the prospective buyer that alls not well when buying on the web.
1/24/0008 1:53:24 AM
Someone: I just read GigaOm article about Wordpress raises $29m from its VC.

http://gigaom.com/2008/01/22/wordpresscom-creator-raises-29m/

How Matt get money from? How's the business model of his company and wordpress.com?
1/24/0008 2:01:36 AM
jagga: I'm new to the Flash scene.

Say I make a Flash-based calculator. It takes me a couple of weeks and a lot of long nights.

Worried about 2 things:
1)Copying: Can someone just embed the SWF file on their site, without acknowledging my efforts?

2)Decompiling: Can someone decompile the SWF and retrieve the underlying source?

Any solutions or first-hand experiences to deter the aforementioned situations would be appreciated.

Thnx.
1/24/0008 3:01:31 AM
Tony: Why do some companies explicitly display multiple-license packs along with single licenses on their order pages, in addition to just stating "volume discouts available" ?
1/24/0008 7:38:34 AM
devsoft: Hi there,

I'm in the way to finish my first serious product.

I'have already purchased a domain name and I'm trying to build up the website.

I have good knowledge in php/html/mysql but I have no time to create a custom site.

I'm looking for existing portal/solutions but I did not find anything that match my current need.

Features I need:

- Portal system with easy editing articles for administrator
- User administration with groups (registered, customer, beta-testers,...)
- Custom fields in user management (to add serial keys of products for instance)
- Integrated forum with private forums (depending on groups)
- Sections of the portal accessible only by one group (customer only pages for product updates)

I tried Joomla 1.5 with FireBoard plugin, it works well but private forums are not possible...
I tried phpBB with MX-Portal but phpBB is always spammed as hell and mx-portal i s buggy.

What do you guys use for your website? Which system is the most professional and less buggy out there?

I think I will stick to joomla/fireboard and hack the system but it will be a problem when updating joomla or fireboard.
1/24/0008 8:00:50 AM
NewbeISV: Finally! After a few previous attempts at developing a commercial software product some years ago I'm back with renewed motivation, increased technical proficiency and financial backing.

The product will be a tool for professional software developers. I do not want to disclose the exact nature of the product right now other than what the market is.

After having watched the open-source community, the blogosphere and the software community in general a while now, I wonder whether I should be completely open about the product and the development process (technical, marketing, sales, etc) as a way of creating buzz and knowledge about the product?

I could use blogging, read-only access to the project management tool and early iteration releases to increase the visibility of the project.

The question in this post is what do you think? Do you consider it too high a risk? Is it probable it will generate buzz and visibility? Any comments are welcome.
1/24/0008 8:14:18 AM
Anon for the basic question: Quick question. Am I right in assuming that a reinstall of Windows clears all user settings and wipes all data from My Docs and Application Data?
1/24/0008 12:27:38 PM
mISVfit: I have an 8MB video that was taking 200 seconds to download from my web host (which sucks, irrespective of my experience with S3).  I stuck the video on S3 and the thing downloaded in 15 seconds.  Using tracert, both hosts appear to be in Seattle.

At $0.18/GB/mo, and assuming my math is correct, that is nearly 700 downloads a month for a buck.

Think I need a kleenex.
1/24/0008 4:02:30 PM
Brian Williams: Does anyone use this as a payment processor? They have customizable payment pages, which i find attractive.
1/24/0008 4:59:14 PM
Jeff: Hi. I am currently developing a web-based software system and it is driven by a database (it's CRM software). I'd like to sell this software as a package that companies can install on their own servers. However, I'm not sure how I go about distributing a database and/or web server with the software and what kind of licensing issue I'll run into. Should I distribute a database with the site? Or should I require that the company already has a database system (and a web server)? Thanks.

Jeff
1/24/0008 7:24:05 PM
douglas: I just received a quote for a listing in an online business directory and am wondering if these things are worth it. The charge in £100 for a year. Is there a way to verify their alleged traffic?

Also do they contribute to google rankings at all.

Would be interested in hearing your experiences.

Regards
1/24/0008 7:57:10 PM
: I have a higher-end product that works with niche network hardware products in the A/V space and customers often request full installation services.  I've worked with a few third-party companies to do installations and maintenance; however, they're specific to certain regions and its always difficult when a new customer from a different region requests installation services.  Is there anyone else in a similar situation?  Are there any companies on a national (U.S.) basis that help customer with A/V and network installations that anyone has worked with?  How do other people handle installation requests?
1/24/0008 10:28:44 PM
Away with the fairies: Where should I price my product? I currently sell for $99 I have 5 major competitors who sell between $99 and $299+. My product currently isn't as comprehensive as my competition but it is easier to use. Would you be at $79 or $89? I'm guessing with $10 in it customers would simply go for the one they prefer. Any thoughts appreciated.
1/24/0008 11:20:27 PM
Jerome: I got a call from a reseller who wants to resell my product, but think that the price is too low, and he can sell it for more. (priced at 39.99).

So, what do I do in this case? Just create another version, and call it "Pro" and increase the price?

What else should I "take care" while working with a ReSeller?

Thanks
1/23/0008 12:05:57 AM
genius: I am so tired right now somehow after my last job,
and I want to take a break, a long one, 6 months to a year perhaps. But I know how whimppy that sound. How bad would that be to not being software development for half a year then return? Would that look like a bad record?
1/23/0008 12:07:45 AM
genius: 1. that recuiters like to meet potential candidates in person to discuss opportunities?

2. that they like to ask for references first?


seems like these recuiters want to make sure people are who they say they are or something, at least that's what I got, especially they represent large recuriting firm.
1/23/0008 1:33:22 AM
Lewis: If you got hundreds or thousands of SPAM everyday and did have a solution about it, you should give GMail a try.

It works amazing! Now, I have 400+ messages in SPAM folder every day. It saves a lot of my time.

What you need to do is:
1)Forward all messages from your original email account, e.g. a@mydomain.com, to gmail account
2)Get these emails from Gmail directly via POP or IMAP; Or, forward all messages from Gmail to another account, e.g. b@mydoain.com

Very simple and very efficient.
1/23/0008 1:33:33 AM
Anon for this: I've had an unusually slow couple of days, complete contrast to last week. I sell to corporates mainly, any reason for the slow down? Any one else seen a dip the last few days? I know a couple of days is nothing but I was doing a $1000 a day last week and this week $200 a day! Ouch!
1/23/0008 1:48:23 AM
Paul Young: Here's the situation: We're in the "two guys in the garage" stage, and we want to bring on another programmer.

Finding good programmers is hard enough, but we're in a rural area, so that means any programmers we hire will either have to move here or work remotely.

Bringing on a remote employee seems like the logical choice, but my only concern with that is leadership. They say leadership is a function of 2 things: accountability and ensuring that the employee is working to their fullest potential. I'm not sure how I would enforce that without the person being in the same building.

Does anyone have any experience with this? What are your thoughts?
1/23/0008 2:11:46 AM
George: I'm considering converting my english only product to other languages, inparticular German, French and Swedish. What does this involve? Is it just a matter of converting the menus and buttons labels to another language or does the code need to be engineered to run on a French version of Windows etc (fogive my ignorance).

Thanks
1/23/0008 4:00:36 AM
Jungle products: Hi

I would to develop/maintain/host solutions (websites) that gathers to real state properties in an 3rd world country. A site similar to Realtor.com and others. Currently, there is no realtor site at all and this country is booming. My background is comp eng. and doing master now in soft eng, on the back of my current employer in USA, i will be finished by fall 08. So now i am preparing the terrain for this project and would like to start on it soon. I will also be going on a trip by summer for a thorough market research.

What platforms or IDE, tools should i look at that offer rich content and flexibility, scalability...Should i use j2ee based appls or .Net ?

Thanks

Thanks
1/23/0008 6:21:15 PM
CRM: I was wondering if it would be helpful to discuss methods of evaluating niche markets, at least, I know it'd be helpful for me to get my head around it!

When I first started my product, I didn't really consider much in the way of marketing.  Now that I'm dreaming of new products, I don't want to make the same mistake twice ;-)

Some thoughts I had:
 - Do you think that niching by platform is a good idea?  (target Vista specifically, Mac, or Web for example)
 - If you started with a mass market product, say a web browser (just picking this one because surely no one would make an mISV with this product), would it be effective to add some specific features for an industry and target it this way?  For example, a web browser for coffee lovers with integration to coffeegeek.com (or starbucks or something).
 - How competitive are the keywords?
 - How much per click for AdWords?
 - How many good/com petitive product search results are there on the front page of Google?
 - Are the big boys in on it?
 - Is someone in on it?
 - If someone is in on it, what kind of competitor analysis can we do?  Like: platform, delivery method (eg: SaaS), strengths, weaknesses, hints at future direction, how many customers, how long have they been around?  Anything else?

I'm thinking some kind of spreadsheet with scoring or something for each category would be helpful.

I know people have suggested to "do what you know", but I think we can research other markets for opportunities as sometimes what we know may not be what will make us money.

What does everyone think?  Anyone want to share?
1/23/0008 8:13:33 PM
Chuck Rival: I'm looking for an online payment processing solution.  I want to keep customers on my site during payment instead of sending them off to PayPal or Google Checkout etc.

For Canadian ISVs it appears the PayPal's Website Payments Pro is not available in the Great White North:

http://www.paypaldeveloper.com/pdn/board/message?board.id=canada&thread.id=3&view=by_date_ascending&page=11

I have seen recommendations for http://psigate.com and http://www.collectivepos.com both of which are in the range of CDN$200 set up, $50/mo., 2.5%+$.10 transaction costs.

Does anyone have any experience with these or other providers that they would like to share here?

Thanks
1/23/0008 8:16:32 PM
Don Dickinson: looking for some advice for (i think) on an unusual situation.

the 12-man company i work for is looking to sell off a piece of its business .. about 1/3 of the clients based on revenue. they are willing to sell this 1/3 of the business to three current employees (myself & two others). the end result would be the three of us leaving the company and forming a new company to service those clients. we would be purchasing the client list and rights to the software the clients would use.

the question is, how do i determine a purchase price of those clients. we would be receiving the clients, their contracts (they'd start paying us the monthly software fee), and a split license to the software. the software license enables us to use and modify the software and for the original company to do the same. basically, a fork in the code: we do what we want with our copy, they with theirs. we'd purchase our own servers (the software is on-line hosted at an isp), mainta in our own office/phones, etc.

any advice is appreciated.

tia,
don
1/23/0008 8:38:22 PM
mISVfit: Why do web designers/developers insist on disabling the Back Button with redirects etc?  There aren't many things that make me run screaming from a web site that does this.
1/22/0008 1:48:31 AM
Jon: A good friend of mine's tech company has some problems with getting paid by a customer. For a company in Spain, it's difficult to force a Florida company to pay if they decide not to. My friend's thinking of hiring a lawyer over there to send some initial letters and then possibly sue. We're talking about $100k in outstanding payments here.

My friend has an offer from a Florida lawyer firm to start the whole process for an initial $10k, but I think one should be able to start with much less ($10k just for the 2 or 3 initial, serious letters from a local lawyer firm? That's nuts even in the US, the Land of Lawyer Opportunity).

I'll be happy for any suggestions, especially recommendations for serious & affordable law service in Florida.
1/22/0008 2:28:21 AM
Philipp Schumann: There was this interesting thread a few days ago:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.584418.22

Someone wanted to sell his 29.99 bookmarking shareware business for $10k.

This reminded me of my own shareware experiment about two years back. I don't really invest time or effort in the product, to be honest (I just wanted to hack a SuDoku generator/solver back in the day), and I've never actively marketed it. So although I'm not terribly desparate to liquidate and sell out (hosting and domain name costs are negligible), I thought someone might be interested and it might be a fun transaction for both parties.

Since I have no idea how to "value" this thing I won't be the one to name a price first, but maybe someone is interested in "taking over" what I have to offer. This is a finished, polished product that just totally lacks any m arketing other than PAD submissions. Maybe nice for someone's portfolio of shareware /casual games. Financially totally low-profile, unless you think you can grow it.

SuDoku Pro
http://www.sudoku-pro.com
Written in C# / .NET 2.0
Released in November 2005

Retail price:
PayPal $ 12.90 (€ 10.90 / £ 7.90)
share-it $ 15.90 (€ 12.90 / £ 9.90)
(Pricing never really changed since product launch.)

Sales in 2005: about 40
Sales in 2006: 400-600
Sales in 2007: about 100
2008 so far: 4 so far.  :D

Add to that sales of commercial licenses of about EUR 150-250 per year in those two years. (Enquiries regarding commercial use occurred every 2-3 months, often getting nowhere but maybe I just lack a special talent here.)

Figures recalled off the top of my head, exact details can be obtained from my two processors PayPal and share-it. This will take some effort so I'm waiting whether anyone is "in principle" interested based on those ballpark figures.

Support:
There is really only one display bug left which occurs under Vista Aero. So far I've sent customers a screenshot with the appropriate compatibility settings and it worked for them and myself. If you want to turn this into a business, you want to have this fixed which should take between between 4 and 8 hours, outsource if you like.

Website / Product Languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch.

Those customers I managed to acquire despite not actively marketing the product at all are enthusiastic throughout.
1/22/0008 2:39:43 AM
genius: Is there a formula to calculate hourly consulting rate based on annual income?

thanks
1/22/0008 3:38:35 AM
The lost soul: consulting developers?

monster
careerbuilder


what else?

thanks!
1/22/0008 4:06:09 AM
Joannes Vermorel: I am currently starting to write job descriptions, looking to hire developers in a near future.

Joel has a nice guide about interviewing
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

but I am currently thinking about the job description itself (the step before the actual interview). Somehow, this job description acts a movie trailer for your own company. I suspect that poor job description will deter good candidates.

For now, I try to stick with 1-page job description that includes
1. Company description
2. Mission statements
3. Candidate profile

What would you suggest to emphasize most?
- technologies/practice being used in the company.
- how nice and talented is your current team.
- skill required from the candidates.
- ...

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Joannès
1/22/0008 6:45:48 AM
Atul: I have been unable to find a phone number where vendors can call ShareIt - they only seem to offer support through email and its extremely lousy consisting of boilerplate replies like "accounting department is still working on the issue' and such.

I have been trying to get the payment of approx $600 released from them for past 3 months! The customer has already sent rhe check to SHareIt USA and it HAS BEEN CASHED, but ShareIt Germany's "accounting department is still working on the issue". Its driving me crazy!!!

If anybody knows their phone number, I will be very thankful!
1/22/0008 11:43:29 AM
my name is here: Evidentally yahoo is going to be laying off a few thousand workers:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/tip-yahoo-layoff-list-created-15002500-cuts-possible.html

A while back I decided to try yahoo's search marketing and was surprised that it seemed to provide pretty good results, with CTRs at about 2 percent, which was higher than I was getting from google.

But some days, I was getting nothing. So, taking a look, it seems like they sometimes just...decide to not run the ads. Seems mostly random. It isn't just me--there are other advertisers, like Amazon.com, for the same keywords, that only show up sporadically. 9/10ths of the time...no advertisements at all show up.

So...before firing people, maybe they should fix their strange ad policies.
1/22/0008 1:06:50 PM
Alexey Suhih: Our small company is located in San Diego, CA.

Now we are looking to cooperate with someone who has some design and strategy experience and skills.

What I really need is to help promote our software called VueChat (http://www.vuechat.com/)

In a nutshell - tt's new software which allows interactive Customer Service features along with text/video chat rooms for chat and talks, for various communities.

The server is running on Linux and can run on Windows, Solaris, etc. We host the server and everyone is free to download and join, one can create personal/private rooms.

We expect a number of users in future who pays for private rooms, this will make some revenue. The client (a program like MSN) is a small .NET application, free to download.

So I may need some help and advice in the following areas:

 - design (software & website re-design, if need ed);
 - marketing;

The funds are very limited though...

Please suggest if finding a VC is the only option for me?
 
Please tell me what you think. Thanks!
1/22/0008 1:50:56 PM
: I'm a guy that knows his limitations and building good user interfaces is just something I'm terrible at. I have a very complex app that needs a to be simple to interact with. Dumbed down via the GUI so to speak.

I've already decided I need a person dedicated to the sole task of UI development but my concern is whether or not a really good programmer can also build a really good UI. Should I outsource the design? Hire a designer and a programmer? What are others experiences on this topic? What did you guys do and what worked?

Also, what about outsourcing? I don't necessarily want to outsource the UI development but what about outsourcing the design?
1/22/0008 2:19:18 PM
Oliver Kiel: Hi, I'm designing a new website that will use some ajax (not a lot) and of course be styled with css.  My question is, how much effort should I put into making it work perfectly for IE 6?
My current plan is to build it with FF 2, IE 7, Opera  and Safari in mind and then just making sure it isn't totally horrible in IE 6. Is that wise?
Wikipedia tells me IE 6 still has 35% market share. The target audience will probably be primarily college aged people, so my guess is that the IE 6 market share in that group is a little smaller. Thanks.
1/22/0008 7:27:19 PM
anon: I was given a contract once that said if i sued and won against a contract company they are not responsible for legal fees. The only reason I could ever think to sue a contract company would be if they don't pay me. So this tells me they want the option to not pay me because it becomes prohibitively expensive for me to get paid.

Anyone else have opinions on this? Why else would I sue them?
1/22/0008 7:31:01 PM
Business Owner: are there any other alternatives to paypal? Just curious
1/22/0008 8:44:53 PM
Girish: lyteRAD the primary product is out in the open and available for download. Even though my mISV journey has just begun, that elusive milestone is a big relief. BoS has been a big influence on me, so big thanks to everybody.

Now some questions on marketing.

I believe my target audience is the non-developer crowd and the tool is best suited for individuals and small business owners. Any thoughts on the best way to reach them?

SEO is something I'm still working on, but otherwise is it a good idea to have a product reviewed on some popular blog?

Whats your success rate with mailing lists?

I would like to know how folks are marketing their products. Being a novice at marketing, any pointers/links must read material is welcome.

Thx
1/21/0008 12:39:15 AM
Jerome: After reading few posts about SaaS and watching Rick's video link posted here a few days ago, I am now thinking of making a SaaS version of my product. I have been a developer for a while, so I do have taste of php, asp.net and Java. Have heard a lot of Ruby, but don't want to go that route.

Out of these three, I don't want to go PHP route, as its a language and for anything solid on the backend, I will have to start looking for frameworks.

So, can you guys help me in deciding between Java & .NET purely for SaaS application (no desktop component at all):

1. For me, the development time will be faster in .NET.

2. I can find many good libraries for backend work in apache projects if I go with Java.

I found many threads here on java v/s .net for desktop applications, but not much on the hosted side.

Thanks
1/21/0008 2:51:41 AM
Gili: I'm considering starting a business selling a Tivo accessory. I'd be selling it online for starters with the hope of selling it to Tivo in the future to be bundled with their system.

I had two questions:

1) How hot is Tivo among the non-nerd population? It didn't seem to pick up like say the iPod did. If the customer base is too small I'd need to reconsider my business model.

2) How likely are customers to spend money on add-ons after spending a whopping $250 on the main TV box and a wireless network adapter? My initial feeling is that regardless of my idea or pricing many might decide they have already spent too much.

Take the iPhone for example: lots of killer functionality there but the price was simply too high for mainstream adoption.

What are your thoughts?
1/21/0008 3:53:40 AM
The Dot Net Preacher: So I get an email from Nico Westerdale about a new program he's got going at Bits du Jour ( http://www.bitsdujour.com/ ), and I check it out. This is very cool, and if you've got any content sites, you'll want to have a very serious look.

In any event, you can basically syndicate BDJ software deals out onto your own sites now! I thought this was absolutely fantastic, so I interviewed Nico about it. You can get the interview here: http://tinyurl.com/34mbpz

I'm not big on ads and have not even considered trying to monetize the .NET Preacher Show with ads (on site or in the podcast), but this really seems to have some true value for people, so I put it up real quick and will be keeping it there. (So buy your software from me now! Just kidding!)

Seriously check out this new program, because it's looks very cool!
1/21/0008 3:33:48 PM
smallISV trying to sell SaaS: I just read the news from TechCrunch:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/18/37signals-down-looks-like-rackspace-is-to-blame-again/

1. What can we learn from that? (It looks like 37signals is the one to blame, not Rackspace)

2. We're going to sell SaaS late this year. What do we need to do to have 99.999 (near 100%) availability?

3. Do you know any website providing good information on load balancing, fail over, and other things related to "100% availability"?

4. What is FogBugz's availibility? Is it already 99.999?

Thanks. Sorry for my bad english.
1/21/0008 7:32:34 PM
Brian Williams: I want to integrate 2checkout into my website, I want the customer to think that i am accepting the payment, is this possible? if so how?
1/21/0008 7:42:45 PM
Adwords Dude: Stumbled upon this site (no relationship)

http://www.spyfu.com

Its short on details about how it gets its data and there is clearly some guesswork going on here but thought it could be interesting to some.

Any other sites that you use to figure out what your competitors are up to re: Adwords?
1/21/0008 8:24:37 PM
Ribie: Hi Guys,

anyone here use a ribbon control in their app?
is it good? bad? userfriendly for new users?

I'm thinking of implementing a ribbon control and rearranging the whole interface of my app.

I see so many options to buy from different developers..  I dont know where to start..

Which is the best and most usable ribbon control?

Is it compatable with .Net 2.0 xp and vista?

Is it a good idea to upgrade the interface using ribbon control?

my app is a designer app of some sort.  so I think having the features exposed on the ribbon control whould make it more userfriendly.

Please advise.
1/21/0008 9:51:08 PM
Anon: This is going to be a long but hopefully interesting post, so thanks for your time!

I sell a $300+ niche B2B product targeted at business analysts and engineers working in various industries. It's a try-before-you-buy app, and most customers come from Google search + the word of mouth. Academic sales make ~20% of profits.

The IDEA is to cooperate with book authors who write popular books on this particular domain. The goals are:
1. Have my product and site mentioned in the books
2. Have the free trial shipped on the CDs bundled with the books (with some other content which usually comes with them, like free accompanying worksheets etc.)

Pros:
- technical books of this kind remain actual for years even if the new edition is out (I guess 5+ years and even 10+ years for most successful books)
- people tend to trust the printed word (this is esp. true for technical books)
- thanks to Amazon some books (esp. the expensive o nes) change hands many times
- people share books with their colleagues/fellow students
- I can mention the books on my site which should make my company/product more credible
- some of the books can be a good addition to my product (along with the help file & online tutorials)

Cons:
I imagine it's going to be hard to have book authors interested. OK, it's easy to offer them a free license. Maybe an expiring coupon code for book readers? I am getting some very positive feedback about the product so even the 30-day trial would be a valuable addition (it's almost fully functional so it can be very helpful to understand the book contents).

One of my customers (working for a large defense company) has contributed a chapter or two to one of such books, and he says it would be nice to have an accompanying product, so I guess there's some potential in this idea.

What do you think? Any ideas?
1/20/0008 2:43:37 AM
Mike: Hello,

I want to create softwares that i will later sell, but the problem is I need to create softwares that people are willing to pay for, how do i go about finding ideas on softwares people are ready to buy, the one i have in mind has been saturated by lot's of software developers. Please advice or point me to any useful website?

Thanks.
1/20/0008 8:42:05 AM
Jon Skinner: After a long time in development, I've finally gotten 1.0 out the door, and my mISV off the ground.

I'm a keen reader of BoS, and I'd like to thank all the contributors here for their informative and inspirational posts - thanks guys!
1/20/0008 2:32:57 PM
Edwin: Hi guys,

shareit provided a way to execute JavaScript when a customer closing a order. How I set it up in 3 steps described below:

1. In the link on my homepage to shareit purchase page, added a parameter "affiliate=DEFAULT", the ID here correspond to the affiliate ID in step 2.

2. In the shareit control panel, under Partner Management menu, there is a option called 'Affiliates with notification via HTML code', I set DEFAULT as the affiliate ID;

3. added the html code as following:






My question is, I don't have a landing page and all visitors from the adwords system are redirected to the home page, thus redirecting to shareit's purchase page with the same URL (all with the parameter "affiliate=DEFAULT"). with my setting above, can the AdWords  JS code distinguish if the buyer is clicking through the adwords or other visitors from other referrer?

Edwin.

Thanks in advance.
1/20/0008 3:35:44 PM
Victor Noagbodji: Hi,

I don't know much about these things; I'm trying to gather as much information possible so that my uISV doesn't fail. I want to know if a Paypal account, or a Moneybrooker account, for example, can replace a real merchant account while being legal as well. I'm not talking about US only; as a matter of fact, because I can't legally open one here, in US, I will use an account from my home country. The problem I'm facing is that, even a little transfer from there can take 15 days, not counting days-off.

Thanks.
1/20/0008 5:31:17 PM
ePayments: Looks like HSBC has a sale on.

Called them up about setting up my merchant account for my web store and they are waiving the set up charge of £200.

Now you can take the missus out for that night on the town.

All the best
1/20/0008 8:53:16 PM
Anonymouse: Earlier this week I gave huge discount on my software, but just for one day. I've been advertising this promotion for three weeks before on the front page of my website, download page, various blogs and associated websites.

I did not alter any of my Google Adwords keywords or adverts.

Anyway on the day of the promotion traffic to my website, downloads and sales went up by well over an order of magnitude.

I have Google Analytics on my website with downloads and successful purchases marked up as goals.

Anyway after the promotion, I logged into Google Adwords and about 40 of my keywords were marked as inactive. To make them active again I would have to raise the price by 30%.

Is this purely a coincidence?
1/20/0008 9:26:30 PM
Jeroen V: Hi guys,

I have a product which is at the moment growing very fast  in a new market and is becoming very popular.
I had an idea to write to HW vendors and have a chat about bundling it  together with their hw.

I'm small and my product is free but it would have added value to their HW.
I also have good reviews on different websites and also with several references to some big companies, so I can prove that it's not 'air' that I am 'selling'.

My idea on this is: In the worst case scenario I can get a no...

Does anyone have any experience with this or have comments on this idea on what (not) to do or how (not) to.
Maybe some of you will say I'm nuts or I'm dreaming too much.
But still I would like to try.
Another thing is, should I ask the vendor a fee per license?
Or just bundle it for free... This has the advantage that it gets distributed much more than now.
But would a big fish partner with a microISV?

And maybe a later version could become shareware. Although this version would remain free but the new version would then be the pro version, which customers can upgrade to.

So...I'm waiting for you guys to either give me a positive or shatter my dream ;-)

Thanks and have a good weekend,
Jeroen
1/20/0008 9:43:01 PM
Brian Williams: I was surfing the net and i came across

http://www.sitepal.com/

It is a speaking Avatar that explains your product to customers, do you think this would just bug the hell out of them or do you think you could gain sells this way?
1/20/0008 10:35:01 PM
stuck between day job and microISV: I have been getting 3 sales a day from quite some time. Not enough to quit my day job. What else can I do to improve this number?

-> already uploaded on download sites, I am not seeing any traffic from them
-> already running adwords
-> already adding one new blog entry per week for SEO.

Even after doing all of this, its not increasing, and I think I am stuck at a point where I cannot kill this, and I cannot go to it full time.

What are the marketing ways which I have completely missed here?
1/19/0008 12:45:57 AM
Developer #13: I'm in the very preliminary stages of putting together a business plan for myself. In addition to selling online (download or CD), I have identified some potential outlets that are retail locations. However, I have no idea how retail works. Can anyone enlighten me a little?

Let's say the product costs $99. Would a store buy so many copies for some % of that price and then keep the difference? If so, what is the typical %?

What about some type of consignment arrangement where I put so many pieces on the shelf, and if they sell, I get a % and the store gets a %? What would typical %s be in that instance?

These stores would probably be independently owned/operated but some operate under a franchise name. Think along the lines of a Hallmark store or a museum gift shop.
1/19/0008 2:15:07 AM
Anon: I own a small software company and we have 2 QA guys who lately haven't been doing much. I was thinking about laying them off but they are really good and already trained and i really don't want to let them get away.

I was thinking about putting up a website that allows mISV owners a way to do offsite QA testing. QA works at night so it could be done overnight.

Here is how it would work...A mISV owner would pay for the service, fill out a form stating what he wants tested and submits it, i can forward this to my testers when they get in that night and they can have the QA form in his mail box along with any suggestions buy both testers.

Would mISVs be interested in this? If so how much do you guys think its worth?
1/19/0008 3:09:00 AM
The lost soul: To all the brothers and sisters out there:

I know I am going to sound very amature, but as the state I am in right now I desparately need some advice.

I have just left my last full time job recently, and in short, it was a hard felt departure and some bridges burned also. Being young and inexperienced in harsh thing like this, I found myself hesitant in finding another full time development position where new relationship is to be built, etc, etc, etc. I am considering doing a short term contract job next perhaps to buy myself some time getting over this unpleasant feeling, as well as taking time to think about any long term subjects such as: where to live, apartment or house? Do I want to settle down in this region or not? And I don't even know if this is even logical thinking right now because my own internal feeling is taking over the control.

Anyways, if I am thinking to take contracting job, I am wondering about the following:

1. How is the work load like? If it is usually highly demanding I wonder if it is even worth the effort since I am looking to take some leisure time to sort other things out.

2. Is that true contractors are treated very bad in the work environment, always being pushed, etc?

3. Do contractors easily get kicked out? (I myself consider as a very capable developer except kinda naive when it comes to dealing with human relations)

4. What kind of impact would switching to contracting make in overall outlook of my career? Would I be considered as short term only "material" if in the future I decide to switch back to full time development position?

5. Overall, am I even making logical sense thinking taking contracting job?

I feel so imature being at this not so young age, my late 20th, as if for the first time life's hard time has fallen on me. My weakness if that once I start work, I forget and not willing to handle my perso nal affairs, don't know if it is because I never feel like settle anywhere.

I really, really appreciate anyone's advice and suggestions, I sound pretty weak, but I know this is the time I really need to be strong, and take actions not keep talking.

Thanks,
1/19/0008 3:30:21 AM
Mark McLaren: About 18 months ago I bought my .co.uk domain through RegisterFly.com.  I've heard they are having problems, so am looking to switch to another provider.  GoDaddy are saying they can't help because it's a uk domain. 

Has anyone done this?  Can anyone recommend a provider to switch to?
1/19/0008 4:08:31 AM
Guest this time: Hello,

I would like to provide a mini password protected website to our customers where they can get access to customer specific stuff like their license keys, invoices, or not-public documents.

Are there any web applications for this purpose, e.g. we use Wordpress and a CMS system, but I am looking for something easier to use.

Thanks in advance,

MDE
1/19/0008 4:11:45 AM
FalseSpam: Hello,

recently we have been experiencing that our support response mails to support questions ,sent to our support@ourcompany.com address, are stuck in spam filters (at least in two different servers).

Is there a way to improve this situation so that our perfectly legid emails do not get blocked by the spam filter. ?
1/19/0008 5:06:09 AM
Floyd Price: In the recent post about "Shareware project for sale" somebody brought up an interesting point about the investment of time we put into our products, and if we should include this in our ROI calculations.

Now obviously our time is worth something? lets call it X for now, lets say you spend 200 hours building your software and you business from scratch while working in you normal full time job, would you be billing you own company (X * 200), with the intention of pulling that investment back out of your company when it starts to break into profit?

I spent a lot of time building Code Spaces which i have written off! what i mean is i have accepted that if i was still consulting i would charge a client £50 per hour but for every hour i spent on Code Spaces I will get £0.

Ultimately you could argue that I'm going to get that money back through future salary and dividends that i take out of Code Spaces but should i account for this in a wa y that reflects the paying off of these hours?
1/19/0008 7:26:08 AM
Tim Haughton: Whilst looking around for payment processors, I looked at Plimus. On their pricing page, they had this line:

"If you can find an advertised rate better than ours we will match it or beat it!"

As can be seen from Google's cache of the page. I emailed them and asked if they would match the fees charged by Google  Checkout, but received no response. I checked again on the website before attempting to call them, but the line has disappeared. Shock!

Has anyone successfully taken Plimus up on a price promise?
1/19/0008 10:58:55 AM
Neil D: Hi,

I just wanted to let you know that I've started organising Business of Software 2008. I'm running this year's conference with Joel. It should be a cool event. Last year's went down very well with attendees. You can find out more at:

http://www.businessofsoftware.org

I hope to see some of you there.

- Neil
1/19/0008 11:50:33 AM
gr8y: I want to make a rich web application. Ajax is out of question (too many horror stories).

I want to choose 1 platform and stick with it. Requirements are:


1. Widespread install base (I guess Silverlight's already out!)

2. RAD. Need to write an app from inception fast.

3. Has a lot of third-party/free code available on the net.


BTW I'm a C++ Win32 developer, and I would definitely prefer Silverlight *if* it had a higher install base.


I'M ESPECIALLY LOOKING FOR INSIGHTS ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE IMPLEMENTING ONE OR MORE OF THE AFOREMENTIONED TECHNOLOGIES. Yea, I just yelled.
1/19/0008 5:10:41 PM
MicroISV: Two years ago I wrote a software copy protection system. I chose a system that would require no server side software and that would only take a couple of days to implement (part-time).

So I decided to get the software to display a short code that is representative of the computer it is run upon. Hard disk serial numbers and things like that.

A paying customer emails me with their short code and they get a matching registration key back. If their hardware or software configuation slightly changes, the software will keep on working. There is a tolerance for changes.

If the customer install the software on a new computer, I issue a new key for free.

I've sold just less than a thousand copies of my software - well more than 1 thousand if you count site licenses.

This simple system works well. However about 1% of customers don't like to read and they want their registration keys before they even send me their short codes. A co uple of customers got upset about the bother of one extra step.

Anyway I didn't nothing.

My software got more and more popular and sales went up. Big companies started using purchase orders to buy my software.

Being overtly sensitive and not a business person, I was aghast with buyers that didn't pass on my invoices to their accounts payble department. I was also aghast with one large UK bank that went through every trick in the book to delay paying me.

So I implemented registration keys that only work for a fixed number of days. This is also useful for people that want extensions of their trial period, which currently is 30 days.

A few months ago, I beefed up security a bit. Users could previously use the software for longer, if they put their clocks back. It wasn't much work to cut out that trick.

Anyway in the past 2 days, I have added in the last thing. Now I can generate registration keys that don't requi re customers to send me their short codes first. Yes, I've added Internet Activation. Each registration key can only activate a fixed number of copies of my software.

I'm pleased as now things are 1 step easier. I can dispense with customers immediately.

The only minus is I feel slightly guilty about spending 1 - 2 days on my copy protection system when I should be writing new software or adding new functionality!
1/19/0008 7:05:09 PM
Curious George: I'm going to redirect all my Google Adwords ads to a new landing page for one week to see if my conversion improves. Currently the land on a product page with many links and distractions. I'm going to cut through the crap and give a brief (large text) description and put two big buttons, one to download the other to buy now. Any suggestions or good examples? I'll let you know how I get on.
1/19/0008 7:17:42 PM
James: I think being an MS partner would help add confidence to our customers. Could a MS partner comment on how worth while it has been and time/costs associated with becoming one?

Many thanks
1/19/0008 8:31:41 PM
Cheeky Jones: I found this website while searching for a PDF Creater.

http://www.openofficesite.com/

Is it legal to sell open office software? and if so, do you think it is a bid market in it?

Im assuming you would have to do the support.
1/19/0008 10:33:26 PM
Alex: Hi, BoS people.

I'm switching my type of business and now I'm putting up for sale my project called Bookmark Base (http://www.BookmarkBase.com). It's a portable bookmark manager for Windows.

It's a stable, selling software which generates a small but stable revenue for more than a year.

I've created a descriptive document with project details, price and my contacts: http://www.bookmarkbase.com/BookmarkBaseForSale.pdf

I hope someone will find it interesting. Hope hearing you soon, and thanks for the knowledge I found here for last two years.
1/18/0008 1:24:39 AM
Neo: We have over a couple of hundred client url's that point to our servers just fine.

unfortunately for some of them, if you type the url in google search box, the search results bring back porn sites with a listed of links some of which are ours!!!

This is pissing off our clients and we don’t know what to do with it at this point.

Any insight will be much appreciated
1/18/0008 4:30:40 AM
smallISV trying to be objective: Folks, I read TechCrunch review on CogHead:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/14/coghead-20-built-on-adobe-flex-hosted-by-amazon/

I'm interested with the idea of "applications developed by end-user". But it looks like there are many things they need to consider. CogHead idea looks "too early" for me. It isn't suitable for 2008. I'm trying to be objective and would like to list the advantages and disadvantages of CogHead's "business users develop their own apps" solution.

Please help me to finish the list. Btw, please be objective.

ADVANTAGES
----------
1. Cheap?


DISADVANTAGES
-------------
1. Security (data hosted by 3rd party) -> I just realized all my small company emails was hosted by Google :-)

2. Reliability (internet connection)

Regards,

smallIS V
1/18/0008 5:44:16 AM
Meadow: I got an email from a consultant asking for a free copy. How do you guys respond to such requests.

----------------------------------------------
I am a consultant, Looking for an not for resale copy that I may use to test out as a solution for a number of clients and ongoing evaluation.
----------------------------------------------

So far, I am thinking of sending a key, but just wanted to check how do you guys respond to such emails.
1/18/0008 7:35:36 AM
Mark Gladding: When you install the default Google Analytics script on each page in your site you will start to receive statistics on page views. But how do you track clicks on file links (e.g. to collect download stats) or external links? If you read the Google documentation, all you need to do is add an onClick() Javascript event handler to the links you wish to track and have it call the appropriate analytics method (e.g. urchinTracker(link) or pageTracker._trackPageview(link) )

Now this could quickly become tedious if you have a lot of links that you need to track this way.

However I discovered this http://www.iqcontent.com/blog/2006/11/tracking-document-downloads-in-google-analytics neat little script that will automate all this for you. Simply add it to each page and it will add the appropriate onClick() handler to each link on the page.

C aveats

1. If you're using the new Analytics code, make sure you change the call from urchinTracker() to pageTracker._trackPageview() at the end of the taglinks.js script.

2. Don't use this script on a page where you have links that already have onClick() handlers installed, otherwise it when it replaces the onClick() handlers, you'll lose that previous functionality. Instead, manually add the appropriate Analytics call to the existing onClick() handler code.
1/18/0008 8:59:23 AM
no name: Let's say that one application is sold in 10-20 copys per/month.What would happen if the same aplication with diferent GUI (colors,buttons,buttons positions etc...) is published under diferent name and on diferent site?
How many of those 2 will be sold then,20-40 or what?Any guesses?
1/18/0008 1:21:21 PM
Private EyeSV: How do you admin your servers? Do you do it yourself from the start, or you you go with a full service host?
1/18/0008 6:31:57 PM
Floyd Price: Hey guys, I just thought I would let you all know that the Timeline Component that I posted on RentACoder has been delivered and is viewable at http://www.codespaces.com/blog/pages/timeline

I have made the component Open Source as promised, and although it has some minor bugs the project in my mind is a complete success.

I will of course write up my Outsource experiences and post them the blog at a later dat,
1/18/0008 7:24:49 PM
Kevin McFarland: I'm renewing domain names and here is something new that pops up Network Sol's site during renewal process:

"Did you know? Registering a domain name for a longer term helps to increase your search engine ranking. Why it works: search engines perceive domain names registered for five years or longer to be more legitimate than domain names registered for a shorter term, and therefore rank them more highly."

True or false?
1/18/0008 9:13:44 PM
John Howell: Hope this will not turn out to be a too long post.

I am very small ISV, selling to a niche market. One big competitor with an inferior product, but much better marketing.

The other day I got approached by a manager, who was working for one of my clients. His new company is looking for a product like mine and they know that mine is superior for their needs. The company is well established and is making good money. They are MUCH bigger than me.

Anyway, they still need many enhancements and changes for which they are willing to pay. Thing is, my application will become the most critical part of their whole enterprise. So they are concerned that if my company dies, they are left with an unmaintainable application. No surprise here.

So they started tossing ideas around, like going into a partnership with me (getting a minority or even majority share). Basically they want to make sure that in the investment will be secure. I can understan d that, but I am very concerned to lose my independency.

One suggestion was that we start for 6 months or so working on the changes and if after this period we part ways, they get to keep the source code. I did not decline yet, but I don't think I will accept that. What happens if I want to continue, but they don't?

So does any of you guys have a constructive idea on how to keep both parties hapy?
1/18/0008 11:32:34 PM
Brian Williams: I'm thinking about adding a module in my software that will send users to a web page after uninstall to collect information as to why they installed the program, do you think this would frustrate users? Or is this an essential tool to collect information?
1/18/0008 11:53:22 PM
farmboy: For those of you who provide printed manuals, what suggestions do you have for software that's better/simpler than Word for producing 4-20 page manuals?
1/17/0008 1:25:40 AM
John: Maybe this is more of a rant than a question, but my salesperson simply doesn't think logically and I'm baffled how he gets through life. Or are all sales people completely illogical?

The guy -- he's a nice guy and gets the job done -- but if he "feels" something is true, then to him it IS true. If he "feels" the customer's budget will get approved, then he tells me their budget WAS approved and the purchase order is on the way. And the half the time the budget doesn't get approved and no purchase order comes, he says "I don't know what happened." I remind him he told me their budget was approved and he says "I thought it would be."

Then I say okay, that's good but how about just tell me the ones who TELL you the funding was approved and their  purchase order is on the way. Just those so I have a heads up. He says he understands and I clarify it again and quiz him and he understands. Just the ones who EXPLICITY INFORM HIM the purchase order is on t he way. That's all I want, okay?

Then again the same thing. The customer says they like our system and will request it in the budget and he immediately reports it as purchase order on the way. I quiz him -- and they TOLD you the purchase order is on the way, right? He says no, but he "knows" it will be. Around and around we go.

Is he just insane? How can people say something is true based on their "feeling it may be true?" I don't have quotas, there is no pressure to meet his forecasts (which are useless anyway), I let him do his thing completely (I'm actually not as condescending as it sounds above), he knows I'm happy with him otherwise, purchase orders do come in and he gets the job done. But he just is incapable of knowing actual "truth" as supported by facts and it's maddening.

Or is that just how some people are? He's my first sales guy so maybe that's just how non-tech people operate through life? As in, I feel I'm going to hit the lo ttery this week, therefore I have hit the lottery and I'm going to start spending it now?

Maybe my question is, are there actual logical salespeople out there?
1/17/0008 1:39:50 AM
Brian Williams: I have software, currently i don't use reg keys, what is a good system to distribute, manage and create reg keys.
1/17/0008 1:42:17 AM
Joel Marcey: Hi,

For all who celebrate the Gregorian Calendar, a happy 2008. This is my first post of the year, I think.

Anyway, I have a MacBook Pro, 15" screen, Intel 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo laptop. It is my primary machine.

I already have Rain Design iLap for when I use the laptop on the couch.

I am now looking for a setup for my desk. I want a wireless keyboard and mouse. And also a laptop stand to raise the height of the monitor when I am sitting at the desk for ergonomic reasons

I run both Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista via BootCamp -- with Vista dominating my work lately.

So does anyone have any recommendations for:

Wireless keyboard (currently my front runner is the Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard)

Wireless Mouse (don't have a front runner yet)

Laptop Stand (currently my front runner is the Rain Design mStand -- and, I know I should get an external monitor or 2, that is in the plans , but I need an ergonomic stop gap for a while)

Thanks.
1/17/0008 2:06:42 AM
Chris Thompson: Just wondering what everyone thinks of the following site.

http://www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk/

I love it.

Requires flash btw.
1/17/0008 3:17:59 AM
Cheeky Jones: I worked at a medium sized software company for about a  year, About 6 months in i saw a problem that could be solved, we manually did a process every day that took about 20-30 minutes. So i wrote a application that could do this process automatically saving the company 20-30 minutes a day with each employee.

After it was completed, i presented it to the company and it was heavily complimented and the "Big Wigs" started talking about even selling to customers! About a week later at a company function i received an award for my work and a bonus check. A week later i was taken into the office and fired, my manager saying that i did not complete my time cards correctly last week.

I have to add that time cards are one of those things that no one in the entire company does correctly and anyone could be fired at any time for this. Does anyone know of any reason why they would have fired me, something to do with the application or probably not?
1/17/0008 3:39:23 AM
Saurabh: I wrote about my Bits Du Jour promotion last Saturday and I think some of you are sick of people promoting their own Bits Du Jour promotion here on this forum.

I did not get any sales from people first visiting this forum and then buying from Bits Du Jour, so the purpose of this post if not to promote my promotion on macZOT.

I read about macZOT in Ellen's article on 47hats. So, I thought I would give them a try. They handle the promotion a little differently, i.e. you have to write your own copy and they do the order processing.

So far, what I have seen impresses me. If you have tried Bits Du Jour before, and if your product works on Mac, I would highly recommend trying macZOT.

My search in these forums did not return any hits for macZOT.

Thanks
1/17/0008 3:51:51 AM
Tim Haughton: After seeing some questions about 'when should you delay sending serial number' etc, I was thinking...

1) User pays by whatever method
2) They are instantly sent serial
3) Serial unlocks the software for 30/45/60 days
4) After 30/45/60 days, software says it needs to activate, it then dials home to confirm its license.

If there's a request for a refund, or a chargeback, or whatever, you simply remove the serial/hardware combo from the customer db, so it won't activate.

Does this fit a shareware model? Of is it too heavyweight?
1/17/0008 5:42:39 AM
Meadow: I got my first order with echeck, for past month, all orders have been instant payment from paypal. This is something new to me.

The PayPal email says "Pending eCheck Payment Received". The paypal email also says

"If you are shipping an item, please do not ship your item until the funds have cleared into your PayPal account. You will be notified by email when the funds have cleared into your PayPal balance."

***************

What do you do in such cases? Send the key or hold on for 4 days?

Thanks
1/17/0008 8:22:47 AM
Meadow: I have been selling the product as 30 day trial and download to buy ratio is low (about 5%). I am thinking of changing it to 30 day money back guarantee instead of 30 day trial.

Any insights from experienced people here that which one works better?

I am not planning to change the way the product works, if someone takes the pains to go to the "download" page and download it first, they will still be able to try it. I am just planning to remove the "try now" from the web site.

I will report the results after a few days from my experience.

Thanks
1/17/0008 8:24:16 AM
Sergi Papaseit: Say you're working on one project which deserves your full attention. After a couple of weeks  of happy development a new, potentially interesting/fun idea pops up, unrequested and without knocking, because it knows it'll always be welcome.

What do you guys do with it? Do you then start working on both projects? Do you park your idea somewhere it can be found and picked up later on? If so, what system do you use to jot down new ideas? Anything more high-tech than a notepad?

Thanks
1/17/0008 8:43:28 AM
atza: It seems that with b2b software you can set prices much larger then for desktop applications.
Can someone tell what exactly b2b applications are?
Few examples would be great.
1/17/0008 9:23:06 AM
.: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/790-congratulations-to-mike-domek-and-ticketsnow

it seem like ticketnow is build for sale type of business. do you plan to sell your microisv when it reach a critical mass?
1/17/0008 2:16:43 PM
Joe Knapp: $6.47 for software :
http://www.bitsdujour.com/index.aspx?page=index.aspx%3freview%3d233
Is there no limit how low we will go?
1/17/0008 7:09:04 PM
Nico Westerdale: Anyone know of any research, or care to hazzard a guess, as to how many ISVs are out there?
1/17/0008 8:23:11 PM
Andy Brice: A harddisk failed within my 1-year Dell warranty. Dell have offered to replace it. But they want me to give them the old disk. If they can't repair it they will destroy it. If they can repair it they will low level format it and send it out to another customer. This raises various issues about data security.

On the one hand:
-the hardidsk is broken
-my Vista user account is password protected
-passwords etc on the disk are encrypted
-Dell are a reputable company
-there probably aren't many people out there with the knowledge and inclination to do much with my source code

On the other hand:
-it contains the source for my app and keygen and all my customer licence records
-there is no guarantee it will get to Dell - the courier could lose/steal it
-there is no guarantee that all the people working for Dell are honest - harddisks must be a goldmine for crooks

I have decided to destroy the disk myself, even if that means I have to pay for the replacement. A new disk will cost me £70. But I figure that is a price worth paying not to entrust the disk to anyone else. What would you do?

Are there any good real time disk encryption or other tools to avoid this sort of issue?
1/17/0008 10:34:07 PM
MicroISV: Yesterday a customer bought one copy of my software.

The details on how to activate the software are included on:

1) The first dialog that comes up when you run the product
2) In several places on my website

Also the software product runs for free for 30 days without activation.

After the customer bought my product I sent an email to her saying how she can activate the software.

As it happens she says the email got filtered into her junk folder (this was some hours later).

As I'm paranoid 1 hour later I sent her another instruction email from a different company email address. **** That one arrived and she confirmed it arrived. ****

Several hours later she sent me an email saying she has also bought SOFTWARE_PRODUCT_XXX which is from a competitor of mine.

Then she sends me another email saying she had to wait 48 hours to get a registration key and feels she is being ripped off. This i s still within hours of my sending her the emails.

She asks for a refund. I immediately give it to her, after checking that is what she really wants.

It seems the 48 hours she had to wait for the registration key, was not for my registration key but for a the key of a competitor of mine.

I asked her to apologise for sending me an email saying I ripped her off. She said she got confused between my software product and a competitor's just because we both use share-it as a payment processor.

Anyway I got a slightly snooty email from her saying she won't apologise as customers as always right and that she has spent 10 years in IT customer relations. She said I was unprofessional to ask her for an apology.

Today I found out I was charged 10 US dollars for share-it in order to generate a refund for this woman.

I can only think this woman isn't a customer because she hasn't paid me anything.
1/17/0008 10:52:58 PM
Al: Hi,

I am thinking of developing a web project for my ISV. This is basically a website for a vertical market, i will be selling to small businesses.

I will build a base product, customizations will be required for each client.

I am wondering how the support model would work in such situations.

these businesses will not be in a position to host the site. So i will have to find a hosting company that i can recommend.

here's the question what should i be responsible for in the support agreement. in a situation like this, would they report problems to me and then i speak to the hosting company? or can i have an agreement where i will just be responsible for functional issues, bug fixes etc and the client will deal directly with the hosting company. I don't really want to be in a situation where i have to provide 24 hour support for the website, maybe this unavoidable selling this type of product????

any help or su ggestions on further reading in this area would be greatly appreciated

thanks,
Al.
1/16/0008 12:12:49 AM
SinCor: Hello,

First things first: I have a full time job as a programmer, I have almost perfect flex hours (have to make my 40 hour week whenever I want - I can work on the weekends for about 20 hours, the remaining hours are for the week days, you get the idea). Currently, I'm doing my Masters Degree in Computer Science, actually this is the "project" with #1 priority, the full time job is to support my finances. Since I have a long-term plans to develop software tools as an mISV owner, I've been thinking that doing MS degree and the course projects (research and development at the same time) have a lot in common with the first major phase of developing the product by an mISV - I mean when you know what needs to be done, but often you don't know how because you don't have the experience in certain specifics, etc. I know that when the product is about to be polished and "prepared" to be sold, the marketing and sell things are completely different thing...

The m ain problem for me (currently about MS degree, later it can become similar problem for my mISV plan) is organizing the work process.

Things I've done already:

* Set up a home server machine with source control server for centralized repository of the source code.
* Played with some wiki software, finally decided to use MediaWiki for knowledge/information management and repository (per project I keep various information - code snippets, install instructions and HOW-TOs, links, documents, math formulas, etc).
* Same as for the wiki, decided to try and stick with a web based project management software for organizing projects, tasks, bugs/issues/tickets, time tracking) (I chose dotProject).
* Done with experimenting and playing with IDEs, tools, etc. The set up is done already for Windows and Linux.

Here are my main questions and concerns:

* What system/methodology for project management do you use? By system, I mean th e system of creating the project plan, some planning, agility, techniques? For example, if you decide to develop some piece of software that is relatively outside of your current competencies, how do you approach the development? How do you schedule and organize the initial needed R&D (playing with technology, APIs, libraries, etc)?

* (In the spirit of the Joel's article "Painless Software Schedules") What is your way/methodology of coming with the tasks in a certain project, then breaking the tasks into smaller ones? What about estimations? In order to do the estimations properly, Steve McConnell for example (and Joel also) suggests that the past projects history are the best source for future projects/tasks estimations. What about the case when there is no such history data (I suspect that this is the most common case)?

* About the schedule on a short-term basis: how do you arrange what tasks for each day have to be done? Do you re-arrange the tasks o n the previous day for the next one, or do you schedule for a week in advance (or maybe month(s))?
1/16/0008 12:33:01 AM
Mr. Analogy: I read 4 hour workweek a few  months ago. Had some good ideas.

I definitely would like to off load some of the day to day work that we have like:

- Followup on Accounts Receivable (mentioned in recent thread here)
- Updates to the website
-Internet Research ("Find me the top 5 MP3 Players with these criteria")

Basically, there ain't enough of me to go around.

My concern (and my wife's) is that the management overhead to this might not be worth the effort.

I.e., if you pass off a 1 hour project you might spend 20 minutes explaining, correcting, etc.

Anyone tried this?
If so, what results? Any thoughts?

Anyone found any good books on this?
1/16/0008 1:12:40 AM
codyhess: At http://jottit.com/ one can begin using their web page creation service without registering--after creating a page, you're given an option to "Pick a password" and "Claim this site".

The advantage I see to this interface is fewer clicks and thus hopefully fewer bounces and more users.  The disadvantage I see is that it may be confusing to users and development is more of a trick.

I'm developing web apps, and I'm happy to put the effort into allowing unregistered users to test the service if it's a good idea, but I'm not sure it is.
1/16/0008 2:44:30 AM
: I have finaly got an idea for a product that I could use to start my mISV. At work we have just finished a server consolidation. We searched for a tool that would help us automate some simple taks. Most of the tools we found were too complicated and expensive. I believe I could writa a tool that we needed in two months.

I don't want to spend two months coding just to find out that my application is too basic for everybody else or the features are not what other people need.

How can I find out if there are other people in a need of a tool I want to write and how much they are willing to pay?
1/16/0008 2:47:40 AM
Sunil Tanna: Check your email for invoice(s) from them. There may be extra, errorneous charges against your account:

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/01/15/billing-issues/
1/16/0008 2:57:57 AM
blue: I am searching around for an explanation for a dramatic slow down in sales I have experienced over the past week or so. I was wondering first whether any others here have experienced anything similar, and if so, whether it might be related to all the recent talk of a recession in the US.

(In situtations like these one grasps from any straw in sight.)
1/16/0008 5:33:44 AM
anonymous: In another post someone recently said B2B was easier than B2C in terms of getting sales. Where can I find more information on this in the context of the software market.
1/16/0008 8:04:50 AM
Viktor: If product price is $ 29.95 and if something about one year of development with 2 programmers is needed to complete first release that is a rought cost of let say 60k dollars. That means that 2k copies needs to be sold.
With some average marketing of 2-3k per month how much time it's necessary to start earning on the product. Also in calculation it's necessary to tell that extra programmer is needed in selling period in order to improve product.

Note: Program is mainstream; not for specific audience but for anyone who use computer.

Thank you.
1/16/0008 10:00:36 AM
atza: Is anybody using this,i misstakenly created this for one of my products and few people payed for that service.
It seems that this can be instant way to add few more $$ to your account with any purchase
Maybe i'm missing out,is ther any negative expirience with that?
1/16/0008 1:04:21 PM
Private EyeSV: For purchase orders, I've had a few problems when buyers didn't forward the paperwork to accounts payable in a timely manner.

A large payment is due in 7 days, and I'm thinking about sending a friendly reminder. I don't want to come across as desperate and tactless, but I like getting paid on time.

For those of you who take purchase orders, how do you handle these situations?
1/16/0008 6:53:01 PM
Takito: I've been selling a B2B product for $300. The competition charges from under $280 and up to $600 (I have 4 competitors). My product is the best offer in terms of features and ease of use.

In October 2007 I have started a blog and announced that the new version would be available soon. The sales raised by 250% that month. Then, I released a new version and increased the price to $450. The sales dropped to the old level. So, I am considering to change the price back to $300 or maybe $350-400 next month.

Yes, I know, the perceived value thing... Anyway, is it possible that the competing products are overpriced?
1/16/0008 6:59:20 PM
Lateral Coder: I am thinking of the following product to clean/validate US postal addresses

1-A .Net class library that can lookup city and state for each zip code in the U.S
2-Can extract zip code, city, state and street address from a single string
3-Can lookup the standard postal service abbreviations for business words

Component would ship with an embedded database and data updates would be provided on a regular basis, although zip codes and abbreviations don’t change much.

The component also would allow importing (zip+4) data from other third parties.

I know there are many address cleaning products out there, but I have not seen a stand alone .net component.
1/16/0008 8:29:00 PM
Michael Johnson: Study: $90 wine tastes better than the same wine at $10

http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html?tag=newsmap


Thought this incredibly apropos to JOS.

Mike
1/16/0008 8:52:42 PM
BISoftware: Hi All,

I've created a website at http://www.businesssoftwareresource.com/ which is meant to give an overview of business software offerings from various companies. The one thing I would really like, however, is comments from customers who have actually used these products. Were they as easy to use as promised? If not, why not? As well, how did you find their support and services when you actually ran into trouble? Were you helped immediately, or were you shuffled off from department to department? If you would like to share your experiences with others, I'd love to hear from you. Your privacy will be completely respected, if you wish. You can e-mail me at info@businesssoftwareresource.com with any information you might like to share. Thanks!
1/16/0008 9:53:43 PM
isv-me: Does anyone here run a mISV business in Poland and is willing to share experiences?

I live in Poland and I have a full time programming job (8hrs. a day) but i still have quite a lot of free time in the evenings and was thinking I might start a little something on my own, but I have no idea how to start my own business. I was reading some online guides about starting a company in Polaand, but I'd prefer to hear about some real experiences.

For example what type of company you choose
* Sp. z o. o. (LLC)
* Sp. cywilna (????)
and why?

What taxes are you paying? Is it true that you have to pay ZUS even if you don't make any profit?
1/15/0008 12:17:48 AM
mISVfit: I have a product that I plan to price at $39.95 for a single user but it's targeted at corporate enterprises which would likely buy a site or volume license.

Some ISVs publish their volume discount as part of their pricing (e.g.  1-9 $39.95, 10-99 $29.95, 100-999 $19.95 etc. - the pricing structure is not the issue here, these are simply examples) while others use the old "contact us for info on volume discounts".

I'm leaning towards the former because it seems more open, it implies consistent and fair pricing and the lower prices for large volume purchase may attract more sales, if not interest.

What do you think?

mISVfit
1/15/0008 3:51:14 AM
anonymous: I'm considering starting a joint venture in the photosharing market. I realize that the market is now occupied by some major players (namely PhotoBucket.com) so I'm trying to come up with a niche or vertical related to photosharing.

Any advice or ideas?
1/15/0008 4:14:04 AM
anonymouse: For those of you who work with resellers like Software House International and Software Spectrum/Insight (i.e.,resellers who have big corporate/government customers but who don't actively promote your software), what discounts do you provide to them?

Since the resellers act as a mere pass-through agent, where they take order/payment but leave everything else up to the software vendor, it seems that a discount shouldn't be very large.  However, assuming that some customers must purchase through one of these types of companies, these are "free" sales one wouldn't otherwise obtain, so some discount seems in order.  However, I'm not sure that a higher discount would correlate to more sales. 

Anyone willing to share their experiences/discounts/volume discounts?

Below are some good threads on the reseller topic in general, but I thought I'd ask specifically about this one type of reseller:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.236074.13
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.415121.13
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.579844
1/15/0008 4:17:02 AM
atza: Few times i found sites selling software for apsurdly high prices,for example script for pad download site:
http://my.filecart.com/ed.php
I'd like to know if they sell any of those software
1/15/0008 4:26:24 AM
no name: I have 7 products in range 20-70$
No one is killer but all are selling in 5-10 copys per month
1/15/0008 5:02:33 AM
anon for this one: Ok.. so I tried a submission software when I originally launched my product in the 3rd quarter of last year. I was able to submit to about 2-3 sites and rest of them failed (it may have been because of a bad PAD file, but the errors on the screen reported that "a problem was encountered and yyyy team has been informed about this").

This weekend I registered the software again, created a PAD file, tried to upload it on asp.net's PAD repository and they prompted some errors with the pad. Corrected those errors, and retired submissions using the software. This time I was able to submit to about 300 sites.

This morning I got an email from the CEO of this submission software, that I have tried their product twice. I explained these facts and suggested I will buy the product once my trial period expires on Jan 19th, and they responded saying they have blacklisted my company and product.
1/15/0008 5:24:54 AM
silvermonkey: The impression I get from reading these forums is that the software industry is a turbulent place. Because of this do programmers ever turn to unions? Are unionised programmers common?
1/15/0008 8:16:17 AM
no name: Is it usefull to resubmit software to download sites on regular basis?
Which download site generate most downloads for you?
For me number 1 is freedownloadscenter
1/15/0008 4:15:58 PM
Yest Another EE with an MBA: Question for those of you in mid to senior level management.  I was wondering how much luck you have promoting good/great leads to engineering managers?

Do you find that most good leads tend to also make good managers?  Or do you find that leads and managers are completely different animals?
1/15/0008 6:26:12 PM
DiffEngineX: DiffEngineX will be featured on Bits du Jour on Monday 14th January 2008. DiffEngineX compares Excel workbooks and any data that can be imported into Excel.

Excel has a feature called "Compare Side by Side" or "View Side by side", but this feature doesn't actually tell you the differences between two Excel workbooks - rather it is just synchronous scrolling.

Excel also has a track changes facility, but this is only good if you have remembered to turn it on. If you are comparing data (such as database tables, comma separated value files) that have been modified outside of Excel, track changes is of no help. At some point you may need something more sophisticated and with more options.

This is where DiffEngineX comes in. It finds the differences between two Excel workbooks. It normally sells between 59 and 79 USD, but on Bits du Jour it will sell at 23.60 USD regardless of whether for business or home use.

95% of purchases are to busi nesses. Only about 5% of purchases are to individuals. This is why I'm curious to see if sales will really go up on Bits du Jour. To a business 59 or 79 USD is nothing. I wonder if individuals will jump to buy this at the much cheaper price.

The Bits du Jour product page for DiffEngineX is

http://www.bitsdujour.com/index.aspx?page=index.aspx%3freview%3d303

The day after the Bits du Jour promotion I'll make another post in this thread saying just how much sales have gone up.
1/14/0008 2:43:49 AM
Shane Witbeck: There's an interesting article in the NY Times about the PlentyOfFish and Craigs list sites. The article explains that  the sites have little or no customer service functions because they're either automated (not needed) or fellow site users do the work of hand-holding.

I thought I'd share the article here since a lot of you recommend spending the time and effort to promote a good customer service experience to your customers. I agree but also find it interesting that these large sites have been able to all but eliminate customer service and still be very successful.

Here's the article link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?ex=1357966800&en=ffde0f226ec76432&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
1/14/0008 4:19:55 AM
curious again: "Well I advertised for a Coder over at RentACoder and have accepted a bid, I expect to recieve the first version of the component next week and was wondering if you guys thought it would be worthwhile for me to write an article about the whole outsourcing via RentACoder experience? I have done this 4 times now on projects ranging from $200 - £2500 and have had 100% success on the projects (so far)."

So how did it go Floyd?
1/14/0008 8:28:17 AM
atza: Is worth to put those award images on site?We all know that they are fake awards but customers maybe like them?
1/14/0008 5:33:04 PM
AJ Pantoja: Corparations want your souls...these middle management cowards...who don't stand for anything except the 'bottom line'. The mISV philosophy is the only hope for reason and freedom. In the industrial revolution these 'coparate slaves' would be confined to a company because they could not afford the expensive buildings and machinery to escape...and the company would make sure that he would never get it...by paying him only enough daily to allow him to live and have the energy to return the next day...These corparate cowards waiting to devour the hope and freedom that this buisness gives use...these corparate cowards...now facing an army of freedom fighters...we must remember that every day is a fight against them....every day a fight for freedom....strenght and honor....for all else is dust and air..
1/14/0008 6:49:36 PM
James: There is a site called prevx.com, which tells pc users if a file is safe or not.

It's showing myexe's info page as:

********
"The most common objects with the name of myexe.EXE have yet to be classified as safe by our research department."

The filename myexe.EXE was first seen on Dec 30 2007.
The filename myexe.EXE refers to an object. It has file size of 1,898,345 bytes. This file has no vendor, product or version information specified in the file header."
********

What's the best way to remove this type of warning?

Thanks
1/14/0008 8:54:04 PM
Omega12: I sell b2b software and am just putting together a page announcing my beta program and am wondering, is offering licence discounts a valid incentive?

Cause I'm thinking the company gets the benefit of the discount and often times this does not make a big difference in the scheme of things.

Therefore what's in it for the people that do the work or the person that says lets run this software in beta for a month.

Would appreciate you input as to how to best pitch my beta program.
1/14/0008 9:12:55 PM
Lee: So I visit a hobbyist site/forum, and the owner of this site decides he would like a piece of software written. So he asks the forum members for the software, and guess what: not only do a dozen programmers volunteer to either write the whole thing and/or contribute to it, but one steps forward with a piece of software that is already near completion.

Several months worth of work, donated. The site owner will make money though.

How is it that programmers are so willing to work for free, and other professions aren't?
1/14/0008 9:56:23 PM
Anon for this one: Hi Board!

I am trying to write the EULA of my future product (a component for .NET developpers) and I have a fundamental question: What sould I include in this EULA?


All ideas are welcome!
1/13/0008 1:37:53 AM
Tom: We have a good B2B product with fair sales.

We also have 2-3 big competitors with much more money, employees and resources.

Our pricing is lower than our competitors' and the product is at least as good (we think it's better but let's assume that the products provide the same value).

Now - how do we beat the big guys? how do we win more sales when a customer consider our product and theirs? How do we attract more customers?
They always have more money to spend, more marketing and sales resources, more developers, they get more PR, their brand is stronger, etc.

Any ideas / comments / thoughts on how we can beat them?
1/13/0008 1:48:02 AM
anonforthis: I have been in business for a little over 6 months and have just hit the 200K mark of sales! i can't believe my product is doing so well. It is a 69.99 product! What a great demand, im thinking about getting a couple of employees to help...At this rate i will hit the 1 million mark before xmas this year, I just want to thank everyone on this forum with my startup, this was the best thing that happened to me was to find this forum!
1/13/0008 3:39:30 AM
anonThisTime: The general question: will Google penalize my site's page rank b/c I display a slightly different page based on the referral url from a Google query?

The example: Say I've got a site that contains everything to know about making pies.

The average user who just types in the url to the site will see a heading at the top of the homepage like "How to make the best pies".

Now say I want to tailor the site to users coming from search engine traffic.  For example, if someone reaches my site after having searched for "apple pie", I want the banner on the homepage to now read "How to make the best *apple* pies". 

Of course there'd be a slight variation for every type of pie I'd choose to cover, discretely targeting the page to the user's previous search on Google.

For some reason, this *almost* seems like cheating.  Would Google think so?  Is modifying the content of a page based on the referrer URL considere d bad practice, and will it affect the page ranking of my awesome pie site?

Thanks for your help fellow Business of Pies forum goers!
1/13/0008 3:40:26 AM
mISV: I sell a $300-450 scientific/engineering data analysis product and would like to publish a case study on my site. I have many happy customers but they refuse to provide any information on how they use my product. So I am thinking to offer a free license in exchange for a case study. Is this a good idea? Would this offer make my company look unprofessional?
1/13/0008 6:12:37 AM
Saurabh: We are promoting Bucket Explorer on Bits du Jour and so far I am impressed.

By 7:00 AM eastern, we have already received sales equivalent to our average daily sales for past 2 weeks.

If you were thinking about hosting static media files or your downloadable software on S3, or were just thinking about reliable on-line backups, today may be a good time to pick Bucket Explorer at discount via Bits du Jour.

http://www.bitsdujour.com/index.aspx?page=index.aspx%3freview%3d291
1/13/0008 8:58:04 AM
no name: hehehe..just kidding a little ;)
1/13/0008 9:31:21 AM
atza: Is it possible with shareit! and how to do that?
P.S. Don't say "ask shareit stuff"
1/13/0008 5:08:36 PM
Brian "Baby" Williams: I was having an argument with a fellow mISVer about the value  vs Price of Software.

Question: If a customer comes to you and says: "I will buy your software for X or i will go to a competitor" and you know for a fact that this customer is dead serious what is the minimum you will sell the software for? What percentage of the total sale price will you accept

My Contention: I will accept any value of the sale price because software is not like a tangible good, there are unlimited copies and 1% is better than nothing.

My Friend: He will never go below 75% of the sale price because he feels that customers have "perceived value" and if they pay a low price, they will have a low "perceived value" of your program and this will be spread through word-of-mouth. He gives the example of Tiffany & Co (International Jewelers) who will destroy their product rather than to sell it at a discount and ruin it's "perceived value".

What do you g uys think?
1/13/0008 8:09:18 PM
wondering: I've been searching for a certain ActiveX component to add to my software.  I wrote about 5 companies asking about their product, and none of  them answered the email.  None of them.  I ended up writing my own component, which is just as well.  But I was prepared to shell out up to $1000 USD for one of the SDK's I saw.  But they simply never answered my email, so there is NO WAY I was going to just buy it online.

OK, flash forward. I was purchasing an add on for X-Cart.  I wrote the guy a couple of days ago.  No reply.  I wrote him again saying I want to buy but won't unless he writes me back sometime.  The guy finally sent an email that in a snotty tone explained he tried to get to his emails "within 24 hours" but it was not always possible.

I'm amazed at this attitude.  Since I'm anonymous here, I can honestly tell you, I try to answer my emails within 15 minutes.  If it's a big fish, I will answer within one minute.  Yes, one minute.  Because I'm on my computer anyways, and sales is why we do this, right?

Can somebody explain the attitude?  Why are they in business if they don't want to respond to prospects?
1/13/0008 9:17:54 PM
Ethan: Hi

I know quite a few regulars here use PayPal as their primary payment processor. Does anyone know whether it is possible to have users go directly to the billing page that displays the credit card payment fields (rather than the normal PayPal page that just shows the "Don't have a PayPal account?...." link)?

Thanks

--
Ethan
Declan Software
1/13/0008 11:39:46 PM
Anon: I'm looking for an e-commerce package that we can customize the UI and manage products, discounts, orders, etc from a dashboard.

Any recommendations?
1/12/0008 12:13:15 AM
AnonForNow: We have many versions of our software (up to version 9 right now). Recently I noticed that an older version of camtasia was given away for free, and I wondered what the marketing value of doing that would be for my company.

Does anyone have an opinion (or has ever done it) regarding giving an older version of software away for free? Is there a marketing value to it, or, will it just mean those that would have purchased the latest version are now settling for the free version?

Here are my thoughts regarding how I would consider doing this, but I really have no idea what the right way is ..

1. No mention of it on the website - strictly download sites, blogs, etc mentioning it (to hopefully bring in users that otherwise would have never even considered making a purchase).

2. Use a version that is 3 versions old (and about 5 years old). It's nice, but 3 versions later, still a lot of benefit for someone to purchase the current version.< br />
3. Offer no support - offer it 'as is'.

Any other thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea?

Thanks in advance -
1/12/0008 1:12:56 AM
rick chapman: I guess it would be a good idea to provide a link to the survey, now wouldn't it!

http://www.softletter.com/survey/ceopay2008.htm

Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman, Managing Editor
Softletter
34 Sugar Hill Road
Killingworth, CT 06419
860/663-0552
rickchapman@softletter.com
1/12/0008 1:18:57 AM
rick chapman: Dear Colleague:

As you may know, Softletter, now in its 24th year of publication, publishes a series of surveys that examine every aspect of running a successful software business. This current survey covers Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation and asks only four questions.

We're looking for some fairly standard information--in particular, a comparison of “base salary” vs. “variable pay” (bonuses, commissions, etc.) for your most recent full year and for the previous year. We'll use this data to identify trends and current compensation benchmarks that you can use to see how your own salaries compare to pay levels at comparable companies. In addition, we compare salaries based on company development stages, an important factor that's rarely taken into account in other salary surveys.

This survey is combined with our analysis of the salaries of the 50 largest/most significant publicly-held software companies and pro vides a comprehensive snapshot of CEO compensation trends and levels.

Everyone who supplies data for this survey will receive a complimentary copy of the survey report in an upcoming issue of Softletter. Of course, all responses will be strictly confidential. We won't disclose or identify data about any individuals or about participating companies. Also note that we will be sending the summary results via E-mail; if you provide us with a non-working address you won't receive them. We're sorry, we don't have the time to deal with whitelist verification and suggest you add softgram@softletter.com and rickchapman@softletter.com to your approved recipients lists to ensure you receive the survey results.

Survey results will appear in our February 15 issue of Softletter.

Don't forget to push the Submit Survey button at the bottom of the question page, and then wait for the acknowledgement page.

Many thanks for your help!

Merri ll R. (Rick) Chapman, Managing Editor
Softletter
34 Sugar Hill Road
Killingworth, CT 06419
860/663-0552
rickchapman@softletter.com
1/12/0008 2:51:24 AM
mISV: Would you please recommend some good copywriting books to improve my skills?
1/12/0008 8:07:11 AM
Saurabh: Paypal has two options. In one I can specify shipping address is *required*, and in the second one I can choose not to ask for shipping address.

So far, I have been asking for only email address and its working fine. I am thinking that I may have to pay sales taxes in the state on NJ, so I may need to track who bought from NJ and who bought from outside NJ. This would mean that I will have to make shipping address a "required" field.

Is that a good idea to make it a required field? Can that affect sales?

Thanks
1/12/0008 8:17:01 AM
Edwin: Hi,

I have a newsletter for my software product, some 50% of the newsletter subscribers dose not confirm their subscriptions, from the e-mail addresses it seems that they are not fake e-mails, I think most of them forgot to confirm the subscriptions.I use PHPLIST and I'm considering making the user confirmed immediately, any side effect?
1/12/0008 9:36:33 AM
Vineeth Chemparathy: www.alloFactor.com]alloFactor is a free practice management software solution for medical practices. It is the only software a clinic would ever need as it supports all internal clinic functions including scheduling, registration, billing, EMR, reporting and all external interactions with payers including claim submission, ERA and eligibility verification. The software is built to allow communication with external agencies such as billing, transcription, appointment scheduling vendors. Since it has extensive functionality, website has free tutorials and free customer service to help customers become proficient with the system.
With an integrated database and automated workflow, alloFactor increases productivity, velocity and accuracy within the clinic. It is deployed as hosted solution eliminating the need to purchase expensive hardware or backup solutions. All communication is encrypted to protect patient information. alloFactor is unique in that it does not use a web b rowser; instead it has the familiar, intuitive Windows based interface. alloFactor automatically self-updates with the latest version, which are generally released every 2 weeks.  Since it is not browser based, alloFactor can directly interface with compatible desktop products such as scanners and mobile charge capture software.
alloFactor’s business model is truly unique – it does not charge for its software modules (except optional EMR module - $35/month), customer service and setup. However it supports itself by charging a small fee for each payer transaction, typically less than what you would pay your clearinghouse to submit claims electronically.
For more details go to www.alloFactor.com
1/12/0008 10:01:10 AM
Neil D: Hi,

I'm thinking of organizing Business of Software 2008. If you've got ideas for speakers could you please post them on my blog at:

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2008/01/business-of-s-1.html

Thanks,

Neil
1/12/0008 10:01:53 AM
atza: What press release exactly is?
Where to publishe them?
Is any measurable benefit of publishing them?
etc...?
Do you use them?
1/12/0008 10:08:42 AM
A regular here: I am considering selling something tangible as opposed to regular downloads in the hopes that it will increase both conversion rates, and in turn, sales figures.

I know some of you sell CDs too, can you recommend any vendor to go along with? Did you notice an increase in sales when you added the option for buyers? And... if you don't mind sharing some stats, what percentage of sales are CD sales vs downloads?

Thanks in advance for a fruitful discussion.
1/12/0008 10:50:22 AM
Porter: I have been pondering something that I have been running into recently.  Maybe it is just my situation, but it seems like maybe only 10%-20% of great programmers make good software designers or architects.  Yet maybe 50% of average programmers seem to be able to do acceptable design work (maybe not great, but acceptable) and another 10% are great designers.

What have others noticed?
1/12/0008 5:33:54 PM
Terrell: Just saw a post on the Google AdWords blog about Conversion Optimizer at
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/01/conversion-optimizer-increase-profits.html

Congratulation to BoS's own Patrick McKenzie and Bingo Card Creator.  Patrick be sure and let us know if you see a big spike in traffic to your blog.  More details are at http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/bingocard.html
1/12/0008 7:06:46 PM
: ...good Windows programmers?

How do you guys find good developers? Where do you advertise? Any suggestions for good sites to advertiese? Any place where you lurk looking for super stars? I know Joel has a job board. Will probably make use of it again, although the one time I tried it I came up empty.

Any suggestions?
1/11/0008 12:40:39 AM
Oliver: Stumbled on this:

http://www.3d-pack.com

Free web-app for making box shots. Would work nicely if you don't want to spend money on fancy software just to make 1 box shot.

No, I have no affiliation. [And I am not sure I would want to either since it seems to be an ad-supported web-app that uses lots of server resources. (Although thankfully, it seems the server resizes the pics, and the client-side SWF does the skewing. So there are no image skewing ops done on the server, but lots of upload bandwith usage.)]

But anyways, it's free to use and people are often asking about this kind of stuff.
1/11/0008 2:05:26 AM
AnyManager: Hello,

Will you guys recommend that our company hire fresh college graduates (Computer Science majors) and provide them training for few months in Software development related to our company work?

If yes, what are your suggestion we should take care that they must be taught (of course other than the stuffs we work in)? So far, we have only been hiring experienced people and there seems to be shortage of the specific skill we are looking for.

Let me know
AnyManager
1/11/0008 2:17:54 AM
no name: This forum is realy great,i'v been looking for something similar long time,but it is anoying that after clicking a link in post page is opened in the same window closing current topuic.It would be better to open links in new window/tab.
Does anybody agree with me?
1/11/0008 3:40:27 AM
Peter Mayer: Do you have an idea, how to organize payment processing for a web app? Are there payment service providers like in shareware business?
1/11/0008 3:42:57 AM
atza: Is it better to keep product pages clean of adds?
It generates some money but maybe customers see that as uprofessional and go away without buying product?
1/11/0008 4:02:02 AM
The apprentice: Hi guys,

I am looking for good books or articles about SEM/SEO. Which ones would you recommend? I am a beginner. Where is a good place to start?

Thank you in advance
1/11/0008 5:20:26 AM
: Hi,

Say I don't want to sell my product to certain industries, do I have the right to cancel the sale and not issue a license?

What if a competitor buys my product, can I legally cancel the sale?  What if they bought it and then 1 year later create the same product, do I still have to honor the license they purchased and provide support?
1/11/0008 5:38:49 AM
Chris Thompson: Great software and nick has now made it freeware.

see.
http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx


Oh and the Mac / CE versions are free too.
1/11/0008 12:24:35 PM
Kumaravel Somasundaram: Happy New Year to Everyone!

After few months of hard work, I have released DesignerVista Software for public.

DesignerVista is GUI design tool( GUI Mockup design or GUI Prototype design) for
Software Professionals, UI Designers, Analysts,Consultants, Usability Engineers and Project Managers.

Please visit http://www.designervista.com for more information about features, screenshots, demos.
You can download free 20-days trial version. Price is $24.99.

I really appreciate your comments. Thanks.

- Kumar
1/11/0008 4:20:53 PM
WhatsNext?: Once you develop your product and put it up for the public to see.  and you get a few sales telling you that there is a need or demand for your product..  whats the next step?

How do you take it to the next level so that you can sell a few hundred or few thousand copies per month on a B2C product?
1/11/0008 8:30:05 PM
Larry P: Any predictions on software trends for 2008 and beyond? What would be an upward market to get into?

Here are mine:

UP: Web 2.0 Real Apps
DOWN: Home user desktop apps (slow decline)

Overcrowed: Bookmarking sites, PDF market, ZIP market, MP3, MP4, Video converters, FTP

Potential: Web sharing, Biz Intelligence, Vista Utils, Mac Apps

All the best for 2008
1/11/0008 8:48:27 PM
Jon Chase: I'm looking to start a beta program for my product and I'd like to put up a forum for the participants and myself to use.  After the beta is over I'd like to keep the forum up indefinitely for any customer to user. 

I've looked at phpBB a bit...I've also seen Beast a lot lately.  They both seem good enough, but I wonder if I'm missing out on some hidden gem of software out there. 

I guess "free" isn't a requirement, but it'd have to be pretty good to pay for it:).

Any suggestions on good forum software?
1/11/0008 10:03:42 PM
OneMist8k: I got this link from Guy Kawasaki's website.  Do you know the "scoop" about entrepreneurship?  Take the quiz.  It is only a few questions (multiple choice, click on the choice for your answer selection)

I scored only 50%  Yikes....!

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/entrepreneurshipquiz.asp
1/10/0008 1:01:31 AM
Nico Westerdale: We're really happy to announce today our new daily deal affiliate web-stores! If you run a website that's aimed at software enthusiasts – and we're guessing most of you do - then we welcome you to take a look at our new program as we believe that you're going to find it very interesting, and lucrative.

First off, this isn't your standard affiliate system - what we're offering is the opportunity to integrate our daily deals into your website. And we really do mean integrate: your visitors stay on your site, the content is formatted seamlessly, and all the branding is done with your site's name. When the visitor makes a purchase they go to the vendor's shopping cart, and you get 50% of the commission we earn on every sale. Your visitors should enjoy reading our upbeat software reviews even if they don't purchase, and our notifications and comments board will make your site even more of a destination.

It's quick and easy to set up, totally customizabl e, and very low effort on your part. We deal with all the day-to-day running of the site and get all the deals for you.

Many of the software vendors that we work with originally found us through the Business of Software forum, so by hosting our deals, you’re not just generating revenue. You’re also helping to build and promote the shareware community as a whole.

Full details follow, and as ever please give us your feedback, we'd love to hear from you!

http://www.bitsdujour.com/index.aspx?page=partnerStoreInfo.aspx
1/10/0008 3:45:07 PM
TexasGuy: How do u do your taxes if you dont have a business setup for your mISV?

My misv has probably earned under 2,000 in the whole year of 2007..

all payments are through paypal..  does paypal send IRS a 1099?

How do you report this income? are you supposed to report it?

what happens if you don't report it?
1/10/0008 5:49:13 PM
anon: My business has been earning well over what I need to live for a while now and I've been letting it pile up in a 5% interest savings account.  How much should I accumulate there before moving it to something else, and what should that something else be?  I used to invest in stocks/mutual funds as an employee, but as a business owner (and with the market volatility these days) I'm reluctant to do that since I may need the money back on short order.  So... what do you guys do?  Thanks...
1/10/0008 7:30:43 PM
Henrik: This Slashdot discussion accuses NS of front-running; registering all domains searched on their whois. I don't know if this is real or a hoax, but the links seem fairly convincing:
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/01/08/1920215.shtml
1/10/0008 11:24:42 PM
: I mean shareware product,not Vista or something...
In my case it is some VST guitar simulation Aura-pro
1/10/0008 11:45:49 PM
anonforthis: Just got an e-mail from one of top two companies in my space; a billion dollar company that makes a direct competitor of my product:


“Hi,

I need a quote for 'ProductName'.  Can you also include in the quote any charges for tax and shipping?  This purchase will be shipped to our San Francisco office.  Hopefully we can get billed with terms of net 30?



What to make out of it? And what the heck “terms of net 30” means?

Thanks for your thoughts…
1/9/0008 3:07:36 AM
no name: I got an aplication for 70$...
Now it often pass 20 days without any order than in an hour 3 orders pops in inbox...
Does anybody have similar issue?
1/9/0008 3:38:21 AM
frustrated one: Are we software deveopers stupid or what?
It seems that so-called internet marketers makes tens of sales on daily basis regulary,is it  possible that they are smarter that we are-microISVs?
Or their testimonials and screennshots of inboxes filled with orders are all fake?
What i talking about is EBooks about everything,mainly:
SEO
Marketing
Money Succes
Fat loose,Diet
etc...
1/9/0008 3:59:36 AM
Atza: Is it working or not?Is there any who can talk about expiriencies?
Especialy "site licence" is an interesting thing if it works (which i seriously doubt)
An example het of what i'm talking about:
http://www.actualspy.com/buynow.html
1/9/0008 10:37:10 AM
(WES) Will Enter SaaS: Just wondering, I saw FogBugz.net and FogBugz.org wasn't owned by Joel. Salesforce.net and Salesforce.org wasn't owned by Salesforce, Inc.

Is it important to buy .net and .org domains (along with .com domain) before running a SaaS application?

Thanks.
1/9/0008 3:12:28 PM
Thanks for listening.: We just reached the 1000 user mark on the support forum. 95% of these users are automated registrations on phpbb from bots. Have used the captcha but no success :(

I guess its time to upgrade our phpbb board to version 3.0.
1/9/0008 6:15:22 PM
Marco Aurelio Ramirez Carrillo: Hi. I'm thinking to add a logo for my software "garage" company (mISV ???). But, I want my logo to look like an icon, similar to M$ and Apple Corporate logos.

Any idea?

Thanks.
1/9/0008 9:11:06 PM
Saurabh: Is anyone from this board attending NY Tech Meetup tomorrow?
http://newtech.meetup.com/1/calendar/6857422/
1/8/0008 12:11:54 AM
Bill K: I sell a $35 desktop app which has been selling moderately well, one license at a time, one customer at a time, for the past year. Today I received an email from a school in the US asking for a quote for all 700 of their PCs, with a p.s. suggesting that the budget is tight.

I have absolutely no idea how to come up with a figure for a site license like this. It's not a business product and I never imagined I'd ever be selling more than 1 or 2 copies to any user. The product requires little to no support, and there are never any installation problems. It's a simple desktop application.

Can anyone offer any insights into how to come up with a figure for an academic site license? Do I just make up a figure that I think they'll pay?
1/8/0008 2:18:44 AM
Chris Thompson: Hi,
Does anyone know of a shopping cart with a good API.
I want to link an order processing / stock system with a cart.

Just creating a simple xml file would do or reading data from a database.

Any Ideas?
1/8/0008 5:48:53 AM
Saurabh: I just got an email like this:

***************
Hello,

I just bought your Software but I need a Commercial Invoice for the german tax departments.

Could you send one please (including your Product and Company Name, Product Version and our corporate name and adress plus the amount of the transaction and taxes) :

Pdf would be OK.
***************

How do I handle such requests? Does this mean that I should have deducted German Taxes or can I just write in that invoice that "no taxes were deducted and the buyer should pay local taxes"?

Thats what we do in the state on NJ, i.e. pay sales taxes on Internet Purchases ourselves along with the personal tax returns at the end of the year.

Thanks
Saurabh
1/8/0008 9:03:33 AM
Joannes Vermorel: My uISV specializes in forecasting (through Web Services). I just completely rewritten the page "Power your applications with forecasting"
http://www.lokad.com/SoftwarePartners.ashx

The purpose of this page is to help Lokad finding partners among ERP, CRM, eCommerce... software editors.

The message is structured following
1. customer benefits (of integrating Lokad)
2. editor benefits
3. outlining integration process

I am a bit unsure if it does really appeal to people that way, might be too cold or too abstract.

I would be very interested on having some opinions here. Does this appeal to you?

Thanks in advance,
Joannès

Ps: I am also looking a good quote "Add feature to increase your price and sell more". But I haven't found anything good so far. Closest source that I have found would be the Joel post
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html
1/8/0008 11:56:09 AM
Web Developer: I just wanted you all to know of a recent experience I have had with ASPDOTNET storefront.  I had a client who wanted an eCommerce website built.  After much research I advised using aspdotnet storefront..a really WONDERFUL cart.  I ended up going through with the deal and implimented the cart for them with their own custom design.  However, this particular customer took nearly a year to get all their product information together and into the cart (they do retail as well). 

Well, it comes time to turn everything on, we put in the paypal pro information and...it doesn't work...the credit card processing is all rejected.  I had earlier advised the client to purchase the support package...because they will only be adding features...but they declined believing that the features they have...will be all they will ever need.  I paid (I think) $399 or thereabouts for the cart.  At that time, a year of support and upgrades would be $ 100/year.

Well, I give them a call...and it turns out that paypal has re-wrote their API two or three times since I purchased the cart over a year ago.  They said that the version I have will in no way work with paypal pro now...and that I would have to purchase TWO support contracts in order to download the updates that contain the API re-writes.  Thats pay for two years of support contracts...to bring it all current...one year for the first year (now expired) and the next year ( now nearley 1/3 through) to make it current to download.  Oh..and each year was $249...so yes...we just paid out more for the support contracts than we did for the software itself.

I guess my beef is ...

Why would a company not issue the patches to make the API changes for free or cheap?  By the time we got around to implimenting this it was broken...and cost us more than we paid for the software to get it to work?  They HAD to wrap these V ERY essential fixes into some very expensive "upgrades".  If this customer doesn't perpetually purchase a new support contract every year (at an ever increasing rate it appears)...then they will be OUT OF LUCK if their payment processor makes the slightest of changes.  They initially decided NOT to purchase the contract...because they didn't want/need new features.

Anyhow...so I guess it comes down to this warning....  Don't don't don't don't take their website price of (now) $695...as the actual cost  It will cost you much more than that if you don't want it to break when some third party makes a change.  You will need to pay that $695 (which is a 50% jump in one year) plus $249 just to get started.  Then $249 or more every year thereafter.  The "no monthly payments" thing should be changed to "No monthly payments except for the $20/month you will have to put back to pay for the forced upgrades"

Don't get me wrong...t hey have a great product...I will just never purchase nor recommend their product again...because of the perpetual FEE just to keep it working...
1/8/0008 1:29:05 PM
Peter Gadzinski: Looking to revamp my Adwords campaigns and I'd like to use a tool or process that makes it easier to be organized about developing the whole campaign from start to finish. In the past I would follow the process laid out by the web interface: create campaigns, create ad groups and upload my own generated lists of keywords.

Over the last few months I've thought of new ways to market. I would like to create ads with associated keyword phrases that address my product from different angles: features, competitive products, those looking for free stuff, directly the products themselves, etc.

For generating the keyword phrases I use, http://www.boxersoftware.com/thepermutator.htm, which I found good for generating all combinations of keywords into keyword phrases.

I find there is alot of playing around with the combination of keywords, keyword phrases and ads. Its tough to k eep all these factors in mind and come out with a satisfactory combination. Does anyone have a good process they use or a software tool?
1/8/0008 2:24:17 PM
ScottK: I just read a post on Web Worker Daily:
http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/01/06/amazon-quietly-launches-software-downloads/

Amazon is starting a software download service. Currently
only TurboTax is available. But there is an extensive
FAQ on the topic which leads me to believe that they will
be extending this service to more software titles.

http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=381910011
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200205020

Who knows, could be a valuable resource in the future.
1/8/0008 7:15:33 PM
Tim Haughton: "but there's an I in meatpie...and team is an anagram of meat." --Sean of the Dead

I've been wandering around a few micro ISV websites and have noticed the rarity of the singular pronoun 'I', with folks opting for the plural 'we'.

Any reason for that? As a micro ISV should I be celebrating my micro-ness, or should I be suggesting that there are more of me. If you catch my drift.
1/8/0008 7:48:46 PM
Bill: I'm considering a Mac product and I have a question for anyone who has sold Mac products and been listed on Apple.com.

1. How easy is it to be listed on Apple.com?
2. Have you ever been listed and not made money?

I should say that at this moment in time I'm not out to make a million but if my product is listed will I at least get my investment back (time, effort and small cash outlay for Mac etc).

Thanks
1/8/0008 9:44:19 PM
Mark Sicignano: I few posts ago, somebody asked about marketing online.

But my new years resolution is to find out how to do a better job marketing OFFLINE.

What does a uISV do, when you don't have a lot of money for print advertising (which is a big waste of money my experience so far, and I've sworn it off). 

My product, similar to bingo card creators, and wedding seating arrangement planning, and others talked about here, is not necessarily geared towards "techies" or other software developers.

Our market is "concerned parents who's kids spend too much time on the computer". But how do we get in front of the eyes of the parents who aren't technically savvy enough to realize that a product probably exists, that it can be found via google (and they know how to find it), and then to go through the simple process of downloading, try it for 14-days and purchasing online.

I think word of mouth works well for us, but I need to promote more of it. That and trying to get some coverage in traditional media (newspapers) by pitching stories to some reporters/editors.

What are the rest of you doing offline?
1/8/0008 11:54:48 PM
Sam the record man: Please share with me if you had any good experiences with outsourced companies and where I can find them
1/7/0008 12:04:57 AM
LittleISVMan: A few months ago I got an email from Google about a review showing my Adwords account was a business one and that I'm eligible for _another_ review in a month. Anyway I had that review and Google advised me of how much my EU sales tax refund will be. I'm still waiting for the cheque but Google advise me I should get it within a month.

Anyway from the size of the amount, it looks like they are refunding me for the sales tax I paid them for not just one year, but it looks like for two years.

I'm a bit surprised that they are refunding sales tax for what looks like TWO YEARS.

I'm wondering what is going on. Did they pay 1 year of sales tax for the Irish Government? Did Google ask the Irish Government for that sales tax back? Did Google not pay that sales tax for 2 years? Was Google hanging on to the money for 2 years?

This doesn't matter, but I'm just curious because from the size of it it looks like Google is refunding me more than 1 year's worth of sales tax.

From previous posts here it looks like other software publishers have had Google sales tax refunds before me. What have you found out about this? What is going on?

On a slight tangent, a couple of years ago I ended up paying quite a bit of money to an Indian screensaver website for showing my adverts via the Google Content Network. I was a bit annoyed as I sell business software. I'm slightly amused by the fact that a government could end up earning sales tax due to strange clicks on a website with nothing to do with my adverts!!! Well it looks like the Irish Government won't get that money after all - well it depends on just how far back Google date their refunds.
1/7/0008 12:07:07 AM
AdWords Noob: I just started using AdWords for my fairly low priced product ($25).  I get a decent click-through ratio (5%), and set a modest daily budget of $10.  So far this month I've sold two copies via AdWords, so $50 for $60 of AdWords or so.  Google tells me I am running through my budget early and should increase.  The question I have is, from your experience will my results scale?  So if I spend $20 a day, will I get twice as many sales, even more sales, or even less?  And if my budget is $5 a day, will I get half as many sales?
1/7/0008 1:02:15 AM
Ambitious: Hi Guys,

I am planning to start a tech consulting firm cum mISV, with a few 2.0 startup ideas I am developing with a friend of mine.

Though Adwords helps, what is the best way to markat a business online? What are the sure shot ways (both free and paid) in which one can get good visibility to generate visits to the website?

I really need a good head start in generating as much visits as possible.

I am more keen on getting the word out before seeing any sales ( though they would help :) ). Would love to hear your learned opinions.
1/7/0008 1:20:56 AM
Christian: Hi,

I have been reading this forum for some time and have gotten inspired enough to start development of an idea that has been brewing for some time. I have decided to implement my product in PHP and deliver parts of the business logic in a PHP extension.

I have just realized that it is going to be difficult to provide the PHP extension in binary form for every possible combination of OS and PHP version. It gets even more difficult since I am targeting business customers who may want to deploy onto the Zend platform. (I know support will be even more difficult...)

Is there anyone out there who delivers PHP extensions as part of the product? How do you handle this? Would it possibly be a solution to provide a compiled library for the platform and a couple of open files that need to be compiled at the clients site together with the library?

Is there some better way to handle this? Any other thoughts/words of wisdom?
1/7/0008 6:38:32 AM
Chris Thompson: After some thought and pressure from family I have decided to take goCRM in a new direction. I have rebranded the application to “MidnightRange- Small Business Manager” and created this site : http://midnightrange.com/
I ran goCRM with a partner and although he was a fantastic guy , he slowly started diverting his time to other business interests.
The goCRM site MAY stay up as it's hosted on a server out of my control but all my development time will be going directly into MidnightRange.  I developed 100 percent of the goCRM code.
Anyone that had a free version of goCRM (from this forum) mail me I will upgrade you to the new version of MidnightRange for free.
So what do you guys think of the site. It’s not 100 percent finished but its close.

Thanks
Christopher Thompson


PS I will be checking that you did have a free version. So please don’t just mail me on the hope I will give you a copy.
1/7/0008 9:11:00 AM
Benj: Having put the idea off for a few years, I'm hoping to jump into the uISV world now and I'm currently evaluating two ideas. 

The one that seems much more appealing and appropriate to a uISV project would require a small amount of integration work on the part of the customer.  (Essentially calling into some interface to send data to my application in real time.)

Is this requirement a show stopper for a one man company?  I would be happy to pick up some of this consulting work, and/or I could also provide documented interfaces such that some provider could integrate in short order.

Note the product is fairly big ticket item - ~$5000 and would be of somewhat strategic importance for the purchaser.

What are your thoughts?
1/7/0008 9:51:22 AM
Brian Williams: http://www.trialpay.com/, I have seen this before. does anyone here use this? If so, are they successful? I'm thinking about trying it.
1/7/0008 11:16:29 AM
Siti: Hi,

I see adwords placements / adsense ads on a site that I would like my ad to show up on.

When I do placement targeted ads and I put their website url that those ads are showing on.. it does not give me an option to place my ads on that site.  as in not available.

How can I get my adwords ads to show up on a specific page thats running google ads?

say..  www.mycompetitor.com/sitepage.html has adwords running.. and they show all other related prodcuts to mine but my google ads dont show up..  I have a compaign with placement targeted ads.. and have a compaign with Content Network enabled.  and I'm listed in postion 2-5. usually.

any ideas what I need to turn on.. or modify to show my ads on a specific site thats displaying google ads?  Is that something that can be controlled?
1/7/0008 1:33:12 PM
Randy Austin: I have been designing a software project for a vertical market I used to work in for the better part of the last 4 years. I have designed 45 screens or so, and I am nearly ready to send it to the programmers. However, before I do so I desperately need some feedback from some industry insiders to make sure that not only is this a viable product, but that my designs are clear and concise for the average user. My dilemma is that if I make some of these main screens available to a handful of people, am I risking loosing my IP, and my years of hard work, by someone stealing my idea, or am I being too paranoid. It's hard enough to get some honest feedback, let alone having your average Joe singing a Non-Compete.
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Randy
1/7/0008 2:28:45 PM
Joshua Volz: So, during the last 3.5 weeks my internet has been getting less and less responsive, and timing out more and more.  I have called the internet provider, to no avail.  I spent about 75 mins on the phone with them earlier today explaining that I had rebooted everything, changed phone cords, routers, computers and settings, and that the problem wasn't on my side.  I went through their script again anyway, and at least this time they asked me to do some diagnostic work (they had me check various IP addresses and ping some stuff).  I finally got them to open a ticket for me (they closed the one I got opened last week immediately with no resolution).  I'm still waiting for them to fix it. 

In short, be happy you have internet.  I am literally being prevented from doing about 4 various tasks that require the internet.  Be thankful.

Note:  you're thinking: how did he post this?  I am stealing wireless internet o n my laptop from one of my neighbors; I'm not even sure which one.  My laptop isn't prepared to do the things I need to do (lots of background code and programs would have to be installed).
1/7/0008 4:27:06 PM
Sweet: Is it profitable?
1/7/0008 5:15:54 PM
Floyd Price: Hey Guys,

If you noticed my recent post titled:
Any Flash Developers around here?

Well I advertised for a Coder over at RentACoder and have accepted a bid, I expect to recieve the first version of the component next week and was wondering if you guys thought it would be worthwhile for me to write an article about the whole outsourcing via RentACoder experience? I have done this 4 times now on projects ranging from $200 - £2500 and have had 100% success on the projects (so far).

I'm not a big fan of writing Articles so if you think its worth the effort let me know other wise i will keep my outsourcing experiences to myself ;-)
1/7/0008 9:25:49 PM
Tony Chang: I saw this article here:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/05/fox-business-network-tanks-in-the-ratings/

That says that Fox Business News channel has 6,000 viewers internationally during the entire day, and about twice that during prime time.

I was comparing that to how our company web page has far greater hits than that during the day.

But obviously Fox is able to sell X? of dollars of advertising and support a full time staff of hundreds of people on that X? ad revenue. X must be what, millions per month at least?

If TV networks have such low reach nationally but can charge a lot for ads, how come web sites don't make more $ for reaching for more viewers with their ads?
1/7/0008 10:33:04 PM
G Brown: Hi,

Anyone switched from $ to Euros and left the digits the same?  I.e. $39 change to 39 Euros? If so what sort of change did you see from your US customers?

It is more profitable for me to be paid in Euros at the moment.

Thanks
1/7/0008 10:43:43 PM
Neil D: I've finally gotten round to posting up some of the speakers' talks from Business of Software 2007. You can hear Alberto Savoia on crappy code, Eric Sink on marketing for geeks and Matt Mason on the Pirate's Dilemma.

The videos are on the Business of Software Facebook group at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7006257142

For those of you who aren't Facebook fans you can also find them interspersed on my blog at:

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org

At some point I'll put them on the web site too.

- Neil
1/7/0008 11:21:05 PM
Saurabh: I am starting a new thread on this, as the title of my previous thread was "trade shows" and as Bob corrected me, this MarketPro show is not a trade show but a Flea market.

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.578698.6

I did not like anything which I would buy from there, I thought I can get most of that stuff on ebay / Internet for lower price / same price. But a couple of thousand people go to these markets every week-end. There were vendors selling everything that you would find at BestBuy, including software like, XP, Vista, Virus Scanners etc.

Getting a Table as a vendor at these FleaMarkets is not expensive. I am planning to attend the next one and will report back.

I am planning to implement a "Refer a Friend" program. So, I plan to use the FleaMarket as an opportunity to market that refer a friend program and recruit some bargain hunter geeks as affiliates, instead of just concentrating on direct sales during the show.
1/6/0008 5:09:31 AM
mISV: I would like to build a network of regional resellers for my $300-450 product and wonder what's the standard reseller discount? I know affiliates want at least 30%, but in case of resellers sales leads will be coming from my site directly to them, so 30% is too much.

I've had some sales via resellers - they asked for a discount, I offered them 15%, and that worked fine. Wasn't that too much? What if I offered them less, or just no discount?
1/6/0008 6:11:31 AM
SinCor: I've been reading the discussions in Bussiness of Software about mISV owners and MS degree doers and one phrase bumps almost every time - someone says that he/she works on his MS courses/mISV project at night...what exactly does that mean? If one works full time job (9-5, often more, in almost all of the posts), what is his schedule/work flow after 5 o'clock after he leaves work?

I'm interested in concrete examples, because I believe that the experience of the others (i.e. their mistakes) is a source of wisdom and reality that cannot be skipped when one wants to push his own limits and to do well two or more major things at once.

So, what exactly do you do after work, how many hours do you relax and how, then how many hours do you work on exercises, courses (for the university students)/coding and marketing stuff for the mISV owners? How many hours did you get for sleep every night? How do you optimise and eliminate distractions (internet, errands, cooki ng, long commute, etc)?

It is clear that someone has to give/sacrifice something in order to succeed in this particular situation, so what are the examples in your lifestyles?

Thanks in advance
1/6/0008 5:30:23 PM
Andrey Butov: So I've talked about this with Bob last year, and I think I mentioned it to Ian once or twice, but we were all so busy at that time with new products releases etc., that nothing came of it.

Would anyone be interested in helping me (meaning Antair) put together a MicroISV panel discussion (a-la evening at adler) at some point in the hopefully not-to-distant future?

Not a whole conference type of thing - just choosing a panel of known uISV owners that people would consider 'successful', based on some parameters (years running the company, revenue, growth, employee count, whatever), putting a table in front of a conference room, putting a camera in the back, and having some moderator and aspiring audience uISV founders ask questions for an hour or two.

I don't really care where to have this, but I think it'd be a fairly valuable experience for the audience, viewers and panelists all in all.

I'm not sure how much something like this wou ld cost to set up, or even if we would charge for entry, but Antair would be willing to put up around 10k towards the endeavor if I get enough serious volunteers/panelists to join in and get this thing organized.

Yes, I mean you Bob, Ian, Patrick, Andy, Gavin, MrAnalogy (sorry if I missed any of the other old-timers around here).

Send me an e-mail if anyone is interested.
1/6/0008 6:49:24 PM
Anon: I have an idea that i am trying to implement. (I am in the US)
I am taking help of a "friend's company" in Sri Lanka with some of the technical work. Basically, using some of the resources there and paying for their salary.
My question is, should I NDA this company?
If yes, how to go about it? I don't yet have a legal entity setup.
1/6/0008 6:50:28 PM
I have started to like this: I am now getting addicated to those emails from Paypal with subject "Notification of Payment Received"...

Thanks for all the feedback / guidence guys.
1/6/0008 9:53:11 PM
Floyd Price: I'm about to post a project on RentaCoder or Elance for a Flash developer to develop a TimeLine component that i can use to replace the JavaScript timeline control i have on the Code Spaces Dashboard.

Before i start getting bids from people who i don;t know i though i would check here to see if any of you guys can recommend a good freelance developer for a few days of Flash development?

Cheers Guys.
1/5/0008 2:34:28 AM
Sunil Tanna: On this board: Gary the llama and llamacarboncopy

And (elsewhere) of course, we've all heard of Jeff "Yak" Minter
1/5/0008 2:50:40 AM
Vijay Patil: Hi,

As a small company (2-3 people) we plan to offer custom software (desktop and web) development and consultancy services to potential customers. I need to buy 1 or 2 desktop/workstation machines.

# My requirements are:

- Developer should be highly productive and enjoy using the desktops.

- Should be able develop software on MS Win XP (like to avoid Vista) and GNU/Linux OSs. S/w development tools include MS VS.NET, Eclipse, LAMP, Statistical Analysis tools. S/w development include hacking on some open source projects (Kernel, GCC, OpenOffice etc.)

- Should be able to develop software for multi-core (duo and quad) processors, 32 bit and 64 bit.

- Budget = Up to $1500 per machine (cost savings are welcome)

# Research done so far:

- Lenovo ThinkStation S10 (Intel Core 2 Duo/Quad)
- Lenovo ThinkStation D10 (Intel Xeon 64bit)
- Lenovo ThinkCenter M Series (Intel multi-core processo rs)
- Lenovo ThinkCenter A Series (AMD multi-core Processors)

- Dell Precision 690 (Intel Xeon 64bit)
- TODO: Try Dell Workstation adviser
- TODO: Ebay


Q. To save cost, should I consider buying some used/old/but-not-antique desktops with decent processors (unlikely to find used computers with multi-core processors), along with new ones? Any company wishing to upgrade hardware, giving away old hardware? I should be able to install GNU/Linux at least.

Q. Should I try building a workstations myself by ordering processors, motherboards etc. and install GNU/Linux. I have sufficient time. This might be cheaper (but hard) option.

Q. Should I just not worry about cost and go for best and coolest workstations to be highly productive? If yes, which one?

Anybody bought hardware recently for s/w development teams, how did you decide?

Thanks In Advance !

- Vijay
1/5/0008 2:32:55 PM
OP: Just wondering, is it good to have both .org and .com domains?

I'm thinking of Six Apart's MovableType. They have both http://movabletype.com and http://movabletype.org. Each has different content (and targeting different market). Is it a good strategy for them?

Thanks
1/5/0008 3:21:21 PM
Seeking Credit.: I had a bad experience with AMEX (no predefined limits is misleading), and my Visa offers little real reward. I have excellent credit and I always pay off each month (no rolling so far).  Is there a card you like over others for small business?
1/5/0008 4:47:10 PM
Anonymouse: What do you guys recommend, whether one should build separate  websites for different products or use just one umbrella website with different products having their own webpages.

My products don't belong to same category.

Thanks