Edgy Rebranding

I just read that 37Signals is changing their name to Basecamp. That seemed odd initially. I know them by 37Signals. Why give up all that brand juice? Sure I get that they want to rally behind their main product. Feels like a bold move.

They will most likely keep their URL. I guess what the are really saying is that their other products will slowly be phased out. Good thing they make a lot of revenue from their main product. The moral of the story is to try to gauge the future and choose your company name wisely.

Piracy Not Theft

I read an article a long time ago about piracy. It asked whether pirating some software is the same as stealing. The article itself was not enlightening. But there were a lot of comments on the article. There were a bunch of great ideas buried in those comments.

 

There was a thread about telling software developers to stop whining about piracy. Digital goods almost want to be free. Many people conduct illegal activities. Software piracy is not immune to this. Copyright in general is abused. So will software.

 

Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. The people who steal software were never going to actually buy the software. So there is no real missed opportunity for revenue. If that theft costs you some actual money, such as the cost for extra bandwidth for their downloads, maybe a developer has a beef. But this amount is probably going to be a lot less than the purchase price of the software.

 

The good thing is that not everyone know how to pirate software. You can put some safeguards and protection in there. None of that will be foolproof. But you might be able to make it hard enough to pirate software, so that it is easier for would be thieves to not do it or actually buy your software. This will be especially so if you prices are low.

Marketing Marketing Marketing

Microsoft had an initiative that rewarded new Windows 8 or Windows phone apps with a $100 bonus per app. Sounded like an easy way to earn $100. I planned to write 10 apps for a cool grand. Turned out I was burned out after nine apps. Three of them got rejected. I did get six Windows 8 apps in the Windows store.

The beauty was that the $100 bonus was in addition to any proceeds you make selling your apps. I figured I would get the bonus, then do some marketing for the apps. It took a long time to get my bonus. So I did not start the marketing early. What was the result? I sold no copies of my apps. Ouch.

Now I plan to stand up a web site that markets my apps. Just need to drive some traffic to my Windows app store entries. Just showing up and putting some apps in there does not get you sales. Microsoft manages the sales. They don’t seem to actively market the apps in there.

Publishing Your Own Books

Just read a good post about publishing your own books. Strangely enough the author highly encourages using Box Shot 3D software. That prouct seems real expensive at $199. There is a home version of Boxshot 4 that goes for $49. Apparently you should also farm out the design of the cover of your book. That can cost you a bunch more money. You should get an ISBN number for your book. It is even better if you are listed as the publisher. The best hacks described in the post revolve around creating a pricing war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can effectively get Amazon to lower their price while keeping their payment to you the same. Sweet. This is certainly worth a try right?

All About the Marketing

I was driving down the street in my neighborhood the other day. There were two girls on the side of the road. They must have been selling something. They tried to get my attention and successed. One girl was waving. The other one did a kind of backflip. Seemed like some gymnastics move. Impressive. You don't see that enthusiasm often.

So these girls get an A for grabbing my attention. Where they failed was their signage. They both had signs which they made by hand. However they must have been written on 8 1/2 by 11 paper. There is no way I can read anything on such small paper when I am driving by in a car.

I actually thought about stopping, but I had no clue what they were selling. I did not want to stop if what they were selling was of no value to me. I would have wasted precious time. My recommendation? Grab a big cardboard box and write "Carwash $5" in big letters so they guy in an airplane can see what is going down.

Marketing. It is really tough. Capture your customers' attention, and communicate clearly for a win.

Advertising Gamble

I was reading some trade press rag. Spotted this weird ad from InstallAware. There was a superhero with his head falling off. This was an ad for an installation development platform. The top reason listed for buying the program was that the industry leader copied their features!

Another weird feature of the ad was that there was no information on how to get more info. There was no URL listed. No phone numbers. Nothing. I guess they figure I would Google them if I was interest. I did Google them.

I was happy that their web site was very transparent about how my costs would be computed. Factors such as using the competitors product, having previos versions of their product, and assorted options were all clearly marked.

Now this is some pricey software. Pricey as is in the cheapest version with no frills costs over $1000. If you add some bells and whistles like support, roving licenses, and consutling, the total bill might come out to $20k or so. Very gutsy advertising for such an expensive proposition.

The Value of Marketing

I was recently reading the transcript from a speech by Patrick McKenzie. It was a talk he gave at the MicroConf 2012 convention. He talks about a lot of things. But mainly he describes how he has gone on to do consulting for people who sell over the web. Previously his weekly consulting rate was $20k to $25k a week. But I think the price has gone up.

That's not the real kicker. He did so well for one customer that the CEO was talking about hiring him on full time for around $750k a year. Here is the shocker. He turned it down. LOLwut? Does he love working for himself? Maybe he wants to give all companies a chance to receive his advice. Or perhaps there is only so much he can do for any given company before the returns flatten out.

Whatever the reason, this seems odd on the surface. Wouldn't every developer love making $750k a year? I sure would. From a sheer economic perspective, Patrick has a good thing going with his consulting gigs. He appears to be making more and more money per week with that. Maybe this is not so crazy after all.

All I know is that you have to love a guy who can make money marketing a program called Bingo Card Creator.