Lifesaving resources for marketing your software product
- Before starting, find what your search keywords will be and check how much searched they are in Google adwords keyword tool.
- Start reading the Business of Software Forum (BOS). There you can get lots of ideas, and learn from experienced software creators and marketers.
- Read the “Joel On Software” blog, by Joel Spolsky. He’s a (very) clever guy and his insights about software are of great value. Don’t miss his famous article on pricing: Camel and Rubber Duckies.
- Join Microsoft BizSpark program (this is a no brainer, DO IT). You will get tons of free software plus visibility.
- Join the ASP. Private forums with real people who earns their living selling software.
- Watch Bob Parsons entrepreneurship videos at godaddy.com. The guy is cheap, sexist, opportunistic and lot of other things one must learn in order to success in business. If you don’t like the advice, at least the babes are cute!.
- Inno Setup, free installer for windows programs done in Delphi (excellent tool!)
- Making box shots for your software:
- http://www.boxshot.org/ (free)
- http://3d-pack.com/ (free)
- True Box Shot (paid, it’s very good, I bought it).
- Make an autorun CD menu with free AutoRun: http://dukelupus.pri.ee/autorun.php
- Submit your software to downloads sites automatically using Robosoft (paid, near US$ 90)
- Get a free account at OISV or a paid account at ASP and upload your PAD File.
- Make good landing pages for better SEO (specially for chasing the long tail searches). 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization
- Test your pages for keyword density, if your keyword density is too low, google will ignore you, if it’s too high, google will penalize you: http://www.ranks.nl/. Read about my encounter with Google Spam Penalty.
- If you are selling a downloadable product, make sure it’s virus free uploading it to VirusTotal.
- Submit your product to BitsDuJour. It’s a site that holds sales for software product. They are great people and have an excellent service.
- Submit your product to GiveAwayOfTheDay. Each day they give away a software product and a game. Great for feedback and exposure.
- When you launch your product (or before if you need beta testers, opinions and reviews), drop an email to Bob Walsh (bobwalsh@47hats.com), he’s generous and always promotes new products in his (very popular) site and newsletter “The MicroISV Digest”.
- Send a Free Press Release. Check the Avangate Top 50 Press Release Submission List.
- Read Blogs from real uISV (Micro Independent Software Vendors). People who make a living (or near) selling software:
- Patrick McKenzie: He sells Bingo Card Creator, he has his own ideas regarding marketing and SEO. He’s a fanatic of A/B testing, and the best of all, he publishes his sales numbers periodically. Beware, he is one of the most pedantic writers I have ever read, but his ideas are good…
- Andy Bryce: He sells Perfect Table Plan, “Create the best table seating plan in the least time”. I like his ideas and opinions.
- Like Patrick and Andy there are lot of software lone rangers that share their thoughts on a blog. You can read them all in Planet Micro ISV.
Lifesaving software and resources for the amateur web designer
- Consider using a CMS (Content Management System) tool for your website. The ability to create new content fast and to separate the content from the appearance has no price. I recommend Wordpress, there are plenty of templates, it’s free, it’s fast, has enormous SEO advantages, etc. etc. etc.
- If you choose Wordpress, there are a lot of templates (many of them free) that make your Wordpress page look like a site (and not only a blog). Check 20 Best Wordpress Templates for Small Business.
- Make and edit vectorial icons and images with Inkscape (free): http://www.inkscape.org/
- Use the excellent GNU and Creative Commons Licensed Icons from Wikimedia Commons, specially nice are: Crystal Clear Icons and Black Mac Style Icons, but check all of them!. Remember to read each type of license and give the authors credit.
- Edit photos and bitmaps with Paint.NET (free): http://www.getpaint.net/
- Easily make and test CSS style sheets with Stylizer, Free Basic version is better than any text editor:http://www.skybound.ca/default.aspx
- Choose nice color schemes with web color picker: http://www.allscoop.com/tools/Web-Colors/web-colors.php
- Excellent color combinations for sites: http://www.colorcombos.com/
- Test your website on multiple browsers: http://browsershots.org/
- Test your page’s keyword density (beware with Google’s spam penalty, keyword density must be under 5%, read more about Google’s penalties and SEO here) http://www.ranks.nl/
- Don’t miss this one: submit your page to the Open Directory, it’s free and it’s a very good link source:http://www.dmoz.org/
- Create stylish buttons with free button generator http://www.mycoolbutton.com
- Another free button generator: http://jirox.net/AsButtonGen/
- Create stripes for your website background using StripeGenerator
- Create tabbed menus using TabsGenerator
- Make reflections of pictures using ReflectionMaker
- Make fancy curved boxes using the JavaScript at: http://www.curvycorners.net
- Create beautiful ajax loader icons.
- See how you stand from a SEO viewpoint with webSiteGrader
- Sign for a StatCounter.com account. Free, easy to use usage statistics for your site.
- Sign for a googleAnalytics account. Free and more advanced (more hassle also).
- Once your site takes off, monitor what areas of your pages are getting user attention, use crazyegg.com (paid).
