We get this question from time to time. Here’s how we explain the difference between a full service e-commerce solution like FastSpring and cheaper e-commerce solutions which often sit on top of systems like PayPal or your own merchant account and which are often not specialized for a specific industry…

It is really the difference between paying little to use some technology vs. paying a little more but getting a real full service partner that handles order support, much of the setup, offers merchandising features to increase sales, and can help offload e-commerce related work so you can concentrate on the things you are uniquely qualified for related to building and developing your products and marketing to generate revenue.

You have to ask yourself — in saving a few percentage points in fees, how much % of revenue growth are you foregoing? For example, if you save 5% in fees but you would otherwise have grown your business by 10%, 15%, 20%+ as a result of working with a full service provider with product merchandising capabilities for optimizing order revenue and who enables you to focus on growing your business as opposed to dealing with e-commerce infrastructure issues, choosing the cheaper option has a huge opportunity cost, and you’ve focused on the wrong % figure. In life, there are a lot of good ways to save money by selecting the deepest discount service or cheapest product, and believe me, I’m happy to grab a bargain when it’s the right type of service to go cheap on. But when it comes to your e-commerce infrastructure and the potential to grow your business, the cheapest option is generally far from the best option, as you really get what you pay for in this business.

There are a number of things you’ll be able to do with FastSpring that you can’t do with other systems. Take a look at this link to see a few of them:
View Benefits Here

Additionally, some of the many advantages of using a service like FastSpring include:
- A higher level of customer service, including a senior-level Dedicated Account Manager who always responds within 24 hours, often just within 1-2 hours
- A platform architected from the ground up to be highly flexible, adaptable, and configurable to meet your needs today and as you grow
- An extremely easy-to-use, fast & clean user interface
- Branded and customizable order pages designed for you
- Software marketing guidance provided by software marketing gurus
- The opportunity to setup cross-sells, bundles, etc. in a number of ways to optimize revenue, plus full control of order pages ensuring you retain more of the order page revenue for yourself instead of for your e-commerce provider
- A fast, reliable, and secure global file distribution network utilizing Amazon.com’s S3 bandwidth service
- Advanced CD shipment support offering a painless method to sell and profit from backup CDs, plus advanced CD or DVD shipments, including custom packaging and contents
- Dynamically-generated visual sales reports with filters to drill down into details and build custom reports
- Automatic detection of each customer’s location so your order page is localized in the appropriate currency and language for most transactions
- Integration with various 3rd party tracking and analysis systems (Google Adwords, Google Analytics, ShareASale.com, etc.) to help you better understand where your visitors and customers are coming from, their demographics, your traffic trends, and to recruit new affiliate resellers

Services like FastSpring are inclusive of key e-commerce elements like the merchant account, gateway, chargeback handling (including handling the fee on behalf of vendors), etc. With the cheaper solutions, you often need to set those parts up yourself and pay for them separately. The cost to have those elements in place is typically 2.5-4%+ when you consider paying chargeback and other fees on top of the merchant account transactional costs (especially if you do a decent # of international transactions), which is in addition to the fees charged by some of these services which sit on top of your own merchant account.

There’s lots more to it, but hopefully this is enough information to start from when making this type of evaluation of different types of services.

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Here’s an interesting tidbit from Grokdotcom related to using images of people on websites and on products. See article

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This article was written by Jason Foodman, CEO of SwiftCD, a FastSpring technology partner.

Selling software online today is tougher than ever. Many of the things that worked three, or even one year ago don’t work today. For example, advertising online has changed immensely both in terms of its usage, value and effectiveness. I’d like to outline a few items the typical software author can try, with little or no investment (other than time) on his or her part, to add revenue each month. Note that no single idea presented here will double the size of your company - but each will contribute to growth and provide services/products some of your customers are looking for today, but not finding on your site.

BUNDLES are a ‘no brainer’. If you have multiple products (and many of us do), the first thing I recommend is to create a bundle (typically of three or more products). A bundle is a great way to generate individual sales at higher price points, and move more total units of your individual products. This works especially well if your products are somewhat complementary to one another, and you have one or two that are very popular and one or more that are less known. The basic idea here is to combine products into a single offering at a discounted price, so purchasing the products individually would cost more than the bundle price. One way this can work very well is if you have a product that sells very well and another that sells very little. Normally the less-popular product is heavily discounted. And keep in mind the bundle concept also works as an upsell. Say Product X is very popular and Product Y, which sells for $20, sells very little. On your order page for Product X you could give customers the option to add Product Y for only $9.95. Whatever you get from those extra sales is ‘gravy’. And don’t be afraid of extra support or partial refunds – yes, those things can happen but the added revenue will more than make up for the added headache. The good news is that most of the registration services can handle bundles as part of their core service (defining a bundle and then automatically dispensing License Keys for each product in the bundle, for example). I’ve seen time and time again where a bundle will outsell in gross dollars one or even most of the products. If you don’t offer a bundle today, try it, you’ve got nothing to lose! (Note: the only caveat I’ve seen to offering a bundle is that you’ll want to make sure your registration service can provide partial refunds - these may come in handy from time to time). (FastSpring Note: FastSpring supports partial refunds.)

CDs will generate extra revenue for you. Whether you have one or multiple products, offer your registered products and your demo(s) on CDs. Put every product on the CD, call it your Download Saver CD and offer that to your customers at a price point to cover the CD cost, and even make a dollar or two for yourself - you’ll be surprised, some percentage of customers will opt for CD delivery of your demos over downloading each one. And if your ecommerce service has CD delivery/backup-CDs, participate in that service. Each CD puts every one of your products into the hands of a potential customer, in many cases leading to subsequent purchases. SwiftCD.com, a company which I am affiliated with, provides an excellent service in this area. There are no sign up fees, no minimum quantities required, no dollars come out of your pocket, and you can change the CD contents anytime you wish (online). CDs can have dynamic contents, such as a registration code, so you can also offer delivery of pre-registered individual products via CD. Many of the popular registration services offer and integrate with SwiftCD services. If your registration service has a CD delivery program, participate, if not then request it. Incidentally, services like SwiftCD can also help you with on-demand hard-bound “real” manuals and ”retail ready” boxes. (FastSpring Note: FastSpring has integrated with SwiftCD.)

GUERILLA marketing was a popular term for quite some time, you don’t hear it used as much today but it remains a powerful marketing technique. The basic idea is to be creative, find places and ways to get your message out (and I’m not talking about buying up lots of banner impressions!). Think about places where your customers would be, things they would read, clubs they would belong to – and market to those locations. And think about how to creatively market, how can you reach those potential customers in a way other than a banner or popup? Or, for example–and this is really a grassroots guerilla approach–how can you reach your customers’ customers in such a way that they drive the need for your product to your customer? One general technique I’ve always found effective is to make it easy. Make it easy for one person to tell another person about your software (this is how “Tell A Friend” was born), make it easy for one person to ‘stumble on’ and get a copy of your software, make it easy to find, easy to understand and easy to purchase your software. Guerilla marketing means being creative, being patient, being aggressive, and if possible, measuring the results (to learn and be more effective). Tactics often include joining clubs, participating in related chat rooms, forums, newsgroups, newsletters, meetings, conferences, etc. Find common ground with your potential customer and exploit that commonality to build awareness. And have fun with it, the best guerilla marketing efforts are the ones that produce a good story. For more on guerilla marketing search the web (try www.clickz.com as a good starting point) or check out guerilla marketing related books by Jay Conrad Levinson or Michael Levine.

MERCHANDISING - Another no-lose service is to offer your product/company’s merchandise on your site. The most notable company out there in this space is CafePress.com, a company I have no affiliation with but have had good success with. The idea is similar to SwiftCD, no sign up fees or minimum quantities. Simply sign up online, upload your logos and you can offer T-shirts, mouse pads and mugs to your site visitors. You probably won’t sell a ton of shirts, but anyone who wants to pay $10 and walk around wearing a shirt with your company/product name on it, more power to them - don’t stop this person.

AFFILIATES are always a great thing–anyone willing to sell your program and share in the revenue (typical affiliate commissions are 30%-50%) is someone you want to empower to do so. There are a number of affiliate programs available today, including ShareASale, LinkShare, Commission Junction, and more. Furthermore, many of the popular registration services have built-in affiliate programs which simplify the setup and tracking you will need. You’ll want to make sure your program is well documented and easy to use to minimize support. One step beyond are co-brand situations, where someone puts their label/brand on your program. Take care when designing software to not hardcode strings which will make this difficult, it can be a lucrative and easy way to expand your market. Along the same lines is localization, offering versions of your software in various languages. Often with a localized program you can also do deals with distributors in that country (revenue share). One trick I’ve done numerous times over the years is offer a distributor in a county an exclusive and a higher percentage if they will translate the product (and updates) for you. Speaking of localization, some software companies have also localized their entire sites, either manually or using services like FreeTranslation.com. Of course, the proverbial “Catch 22”, what do you do when you offer your site in French and people e-mail in to you in French? (I’ve usually managed to get by with one of the online translation services, such as “Babel Fish”). (FastSpring Note: FastSpring has integrated with various affiliate programs, offers a separate affiliate tracking system, and order pages are presented to customers in various localized currencies and languages.)

COUPONS and incentives are worth trying. A clever implementation I saw recently had a popup coupon on the site that activated in such a way that it appeared to be random or unique to my visit, as if I had won something or stumbled on a special deal. The author reported to me moderate success with that tactic, if nothing else it seemed to push a few who were on the edge over the top to register. Upgrades probably fall into this area, for major upgrades to your product (example: 2.0 -> 3.0) it’s not unreasonable to ask for an upgrade fee from your existing users. Some users balk at this, most understand. (FastSpring Note: FastSpring supports coupons and discounting.)

WEB SITE SEO is real. Make your site clear, SEO (Search Engine Optimized) and use good grammar. Lack of clarity and poor explanations hold back numerous sites and products I’ve encountered. People should be able to see from your home page exactly what you do, what you have to offer, and choose to Download or Purchase…don’t overcrowd the page with huge amounts of text, keep it simple (one of the oldest Software engineering concepts, KISS). Speaking of your site, optimize your site for search engines! I’m not an expert in this area but I’ve seen the results time and time again. (FastSpring Note: FastSpring order pages are search engine optimized, and FastSpring has partnerships with SEO agencies which vendors can utilize.)

MAILING LISTS are still effective. We all agree that spam is a major problem (and seems to be getting worse), but don’t let that turn you off from having a mailing list. Give your customers the option to sign up for an Announcement list and use that list strategically (and carefully!). Don’t clog your newsletters and announcements with advertising, tell people about your product updates, some tips for using your products, what’s coming next, special offers, and on occasion partner products you think they might find interesting (that relate to your product line and hopefully where you are an affiliate!).

SITE LICENSES/VOLUME PURCHASING are almost always worth offering. Again, you’ve got nothing to lose and occasionally you might get surprised. If you don’t even offer it, chances are nobody will take the time to write you and request it. If you offer site licenses and volume discounts, at least you can be sure to capture anyone who was interested and ready to purchase more than one copy. (FastSpring Note: FastSpring supports site licenses and volume discounts.)

THINK ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER and tune your pitch, pricing and distribution to match. It’s not uncommon for some products to have mass consumer appeal, revenue driven almost entirely by corporate sales, or vice-versa. I’ve seen time and time again where technologists and programmers develop and release software, not realizing that they themselves are NOT the typical user of their software, the ‘average consumer’ or business.

ASK QUESTIONS. If you want to grow your business you should think about how effective your website is, how good your product is, how well the product is priced, what are the strongest benefits of your product, etc. There is no better person to ask this to than your customers, yet very few people take the time to get real feedback. A common technique is to survey, offer your users (potentially in the newsletter mentioned earlier!) the chance to take a simple survey about their experience with your company and products.

You can also ask at least one question on your order form, often this is ‘How did you hear about us?’. Even more interesting may be finding ways to query those who arrived but didn’t purchase. What kept them from purchasing your product, was it the description, the price, the complexity, the language, etc. You need to find out and you won’t without asking. (FastSpring Note: FastSpring supports order page surveying.)

PARTNER. I can’t say this enough. Find companies who have products that don’t compete with your products but have synergy with your audience, and vice-versa. Offer their products to your users, your products to their users, swap space in your newsletters, chain installers (if you’re really brave), find ways to capitalize on your traffic by bartering it with someone else’s traffic. A good place to start looking is on your favorite file download site — put in general terms that describe your product and look at other products in the category that don’t directly compete.

Each of these are relatively simply ideas that will require only a small amount of time (and little or nothing out of your pocketbook) to implement. If you do want to invest not only time but money into your business, consider attending your nearest software/shareware related trade show, you will be amazed how much you learn, how many people you meet and how worthwhile the trip is. Have fun and Good Luck!

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How can one negotiate getting acquired, but not disclose sensitive information?

This is a tough one.

I’ve been involved in a number of acquisitions involving software - Sanity Software by Broderbund, GoToMyPC by Citrix, and Picasa by Google. I’ve also been involved in a number of potential acquisitions that did not pan out.

One step is to get a non-disclosure agreement in place. However, that only has so much value. At the end of the day, an NDA is just a piece of paper, and one that is difficult to enforce, especially since it’s so hard to prove that someone used the information you provided to perform such and such. Not to mention the cost of attempting to enforce.

Many companies or individuals will pose as potential acquirers to get you excited and to then extract confidential information from you so as to empower their own pursuits. How does one disclose enough information to enable the potential acquirer to make an informed decision without disclosing so much that they’ve further enabled a competitor? There are other tactics as well, but really it comes down to a balancing act. Another tactic is to get a letter of intent (LOI) in place before disclosing more information. Typically a LOI is not binding so it is only so effective, but it requires a significant time investment by the potential acquirer and helps you become more comfortable with the situation and with the potential deal, or not. Not, meaning you work on an LOI only to find out you would never sell for their price/terms anyway, so the problem is solved.

But in terms of the balancing act, try to minimize the confidential information as much as you possibly can but still provide some decent information for the potential acquirer to do some evaluating of the opportunity. At the same time, don’t be paranoid. If you are asked for example how much revenue you generate, ask yourself if that’s really information that harms you to have known to this person. It may well not be harmful, yet it’s essential information for a potential acquirer. Or give ranges; rather than saying for example sales of $750K, say more than $500K, less than $2M, or something you’re more comfortable sharing that still has some value to the potential acquirer.

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If I build it, will they come? Let’s say they do come — will it matter?

A FastSpring client invested some time back in 2007 into making videos to post on YouTube which would demonstrate their product and hopefully drive traffic and sales to their website where users could buy the company’s software. They were extremely successful in generating interest in their primary video, “Kitty said what?”, which now has about 4 million views and was nominated for the 2007 YouTube awards last month.

But what can one expect to earn from a wildly successful video like Kitty said what? After all, most videos never make it bigtime, and their producers may assume they are missing out on riches if they had intended their videos to generate revenue. How many units of software do you think 4M views resulted in? Keep in mind, this is a uniquely synergistic situation in that the users who view the video and click a link to view the producer’s website (the link is posted at the end of the video and next to the video in the comments section) can actually use the software available for sale on the producer’s website to create their own similar videos.

Did 4M views result in 10,000 unit sales? 5,000? 500? More? Less? The answer is fewer than 250 units. (Note: The software company provided their permission for us to disclose their sales results related to this YouTube promotion.) Crazy, right? It’s definitely disappointing, but shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to veterans of marketing, given how many people you need to show your product message to in order to generate a sale. Let’s say perhaps 1% of those who view the YouTube video will visit the producer’s website. 1% isn’t so out of the ordinary when you think about click through rates for, say, banner ads which often perform far worse than that. And you have to remember, these aren’t users dying to pay for products, these are YouTubers looking to watch funny videos and be entertained. Given the type of users, if you assume 1/2 of 1% of those who visit the producer’s website actually buy something (which would not be an atypical visit to sale conversion rate for some products), you get close to the results mentioned.

So is there a way to make money creating popular videos on YouTube like people assume? Well, on the bright side, YouTube recently announced that videos can now have ads running inside and next to them and their producers will earn a fee for every video view/page impression. My guess is that this will become a more lucrative way to monetize popular videos, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

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We completed a Flash movie which walks you through the key features of SpringBoard, our e-commerce platform, explains some of the key benefits to using the system, and gives you a good sense for what it’s like to be a FastSpring customer managing your store. Feel free to check out the demo below.

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FastSpring Selected by NextUp™ to Power E-Commerce Store

NextUp cites FastSpring’s rapid-response customer service and its platform’s ease-of-use as critical to its decision

Santa Barbara, CA ( April 28, 2008 ) – FastSpring, offering a next-generation e-commerce payment and merchandising solution for companies that sell products online, announced that it has been selected by NextUp to power NextUp’s e-commerce store. NextUp provides award-winning Text to Speech software for consumers, business customers, educators, and those with visual or vocal impairment, or learning disabilities.

“We are pleased to formally announce our relationship with FastSpring,” said Rick Ellis, NextUp’s Vice President of Business Development. “When it comes to a higher level of customer service and a platform that is easy-to-use, nothing compares to FastSpring.”

“We, too, are excited to announce this relationship. NextUp is a leader in their industry, and we’re pleased to be their e-commerce provider,” said Dan Engel, Chief Executive Officer of FastSpring.

About NextUp

NextUp provides award-winning Text to Speech software for consumers, business customers, educators, and those with visual or vocal impairment, or learning disabilities. In addition to TextAloud, NextUp markets other innovative Windows software designed to save time and deliver vital information. NewsAloud™ is a talking personal “news agent” that finds the stories users want, and then reads them aloud or to portable audio files. WeatherAloud™ is a weather application that lets users select and listen to personalized weather forecasts, while StocksAloud™ reads stock updates and related news headlines aloud for specific companies of interest. For more details about NextUp, visit the corporate Web site at www.nextup.com.

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FastSpring Selected by MediaRECOVER™ to Power E-Commerce Store
MediaRECOVER cites platform flexibility, ease-of-use, company’s rapid-response-based customer service function as critical to decision

Santa Barbara, CA ( April 25, 2008 ) – FastSpring, offering a next-generation e-commerce payment and merchandising solution for companies that sell products online, announced that it has been selected to power MediaRECOVER’s e-commerce store. MediaRECOVER provides easy-to-use and award winning data recovery, photo recovery and security software, for consumers and business customers.

“We are very excited to be working with the seasoned team at FastSpring,” said Korey Bachelder, MediaRECOVER’s CEO. “These guys pioneered software e-commerce years ago, and have invented the next-generation system yet again. Like us, they value customer service ahead of everything else. Their platform is highly configurable and was built to adapt as we grow, which is perfect for us. Additionally, our marketing team found their e-commerce platform to be extremely easy to use.”

“MediaRECOVER came to us in search of a technological leader who offers a higher level of customer service, ease-of-use and an expandable platform, and we’re very pleased they have selected FastSpring to manage their store,” said Dan Engel, CEO of FastSpring.

About MediaRECOVER

MediaRECOVER is a leading data recovery and security solution provider creating innovative and award-winning products for corporations, organizations and individuals. The company began as a provider of digital photo recovery services and software. Increasingly, vital information is stored on computer media. To manage this data MediaRECOVER provides leading technology products for file recovery, disk wiping and restoration. The company’s products are distributed world-wide via retail, e-commerce and a direct sales force. Founded in 2001, the privately-held company is located in Chandler, AZ. For more details about MediaRECOVER, visit the corporate Web site at www.mediarecover.com.

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Welcome!

We’re excited to bring you this new blog covering a range of topics including e-commerce technology, online and offline product marketing, software, general goings-on related to FastSpring, and more.

If you like some of the content featured on the blog, feel free to subscribe to it and you’ll be notified of each new posting. If you’d be interested in guest posting, please contact us:

info [at] fastspring.com

We hope to build the new blog into a valuable resource.

Best,

Dan Engel, CEO
FastSpring.com

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