FastSpring clients can now have their products featured on BoomerApp.com, a new discount software website that offers your products to thousands of potential new customers.  Your products are promoted through a special mail-in rebate offer which gets featured on the BoomerApp site.  Customers pay the retail price up-front, and then print out the special rebate form to claim their discount.  The site’s model is based on the fact that a certain percentage of customers will not redeem their rebate despite that we make it easy to do so and that a certain percentage will accept an alternate offer in lieu of redeeming their rebate.

Take a look at BoomerApp.com and contact them if you’d like to be considered for a promotion (not all products will fit the offer profile, but mention you’re a FastSpring client and they will review your product right away for a potential promotion).

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Whether you have your own affiliate program or you use an external affiliate system such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, or countless others, we will review your program and outline how your affiliate revenue can be increased. This audit service, available upon request, is included as part of being a FastSpring client.  (Note: FastSpring does offer its own reseller and affiliate management system, though actual affiliate recruiting is covered through this standalone service.)

For ongoing affiliate program growth management after Affiliate Program Expert Audit, there will be an additional fee, which often can be structured with a performance-based component; once a baseline revenue benchmark is established, the fee can be earned from the incremental revenue which is generated from our efforts. Our leading expert began his affiliate career at Commission Junction in 1999 before managing programs for a number of software companies, and is a highly respected expert in the affiliate marketing industry. Current affiliate program growth management clients include eFax, Savings.com, Angie’s List, Callwave, and Stamps.com. Interested vendors should email us directly to request an Affiliate Program Expert Audit.

Benefits of the affiliate growth management program include the following:

• Ensure your affiliate program is actively managed by an affiliate expert who focuses on nothing but affiliate program growth
• Learn which US, international, and niche affiliate programs are the best for you to work with for your particular products and goals, in addition to your existing program
• Increase the performance of your ads
• Increase your overall website’s conversion rate
• Find out which of the top 1,000 super affiliates are not yet promoting your products and get them recruited
• Increase affiliate outreach and communication
• Increase the number of affiliates that generate sales every month vs. sit idle
• Benefit from the learning gained from managing dozens of other affiliate programs
• Learn how to optimize the program offer you’re making to affiliates so you attract the higher quality affiliates
• Get help with managing any channel conflict between affiliate and reseller channels
• Develop a more effective affiliate incentive program to better motivate your affiliates

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Through FastSpring’s new SplitPay feature, you can easily track and manage online and offline B2B/B2C resellers, affiliates, and various other partners. Track your partners’ sales by product and view detailed sales reports. Each 3rd party partner is setup as a Payee in our system where they get a login to review their account, add their payment details, etc. Funds are distributed to each partner automatically for you based on the products your partners sell and their designated split of revenue, profit, or royalty share.

Prices, discounts, and cross-sells can be partner-specific, and each partner can have its own store look and feel. Affiliate recruiting is not included in this service, but we do offer a standalone service for growing affiliate programs. For those who prefer to use an external reseller or affiliate partner management system, FastSpring also supports most major 3rd party affiliate tracking systems, including Commission Junction, LinkShare and ShareASale, among other providers.

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by Gordon Graham, Editor, SoftwareCEO

Originally published www.softwareceo.com, 9/29/2009.

Building a website for your software firm is one thing. Developing an entire e-commerce system to sell software over the web is another.

Ask any developer, and he’ll tell you, “Sure! I can do that in a few days.” Ahhhhh… would you believe 18 months?

That’s how long Dan Engel says one of his software companies struggled to build an e-commerce platform.

“I went down that path myself. We spent one and a half years trying to build a system. We wound up having something decent, but it took away from our focus on growing revenues. That’s how I learned the lesson.”

Engel should know what he’s talking about. He’s had a successful career at a number of software companies, including marketing for GoToMyPC (now Citrix) and Picasa (now Google). And he was in charge of online marketing for AdWords and AdSense for Google.

Then he joined Santa Barbara, CA-based e-commerce service provider FastSpring, a company focused on helping software publishers increase sales and save headaches on e-commerce.

“We’re dealing with one pretty large company now and they’re looking at outsourcing e-commerce because they’re losing so many opportunities there,” he says. “They can’t do promotions, they don’t localize their order page, they can’t deal with the VAT and all the taxes.

“They’re a $5-million software company trying to become a $10-million company, and we fully expect that we can grow their bottom line 25 percent over the next year.”

After chatting with Engel, we came away with these seven tips on how to boost profits with e-commerce.

“Each piece adds a few percentage points,” he says. “So if you get two percent here and three percent there, it starts to add up. And it will far exceed the cost of outsourcing this, in terms of slightly higher transaction fees.”

So before you sink another $50,000 into building your own back end, listen to some words of wisdom from an e-commerce specialist.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #1: Focus on developing and marketing your software, not on building e-commerce

Building e-commerce is a lot like any other big project, cautions Engel, say renovating a house.

There are lots of unforeseen complications, and many issues you won’t see going in. It can easily become a major distraction that sucks up resources, but never gets finished.

“It’s a lesson that’s been learned many times over by many developers and business people,” says Engel.

“The best strategy, if you’re interested in generating revenue from software, is to focus on product development and marketing and sales, and completely outsource the e-commerce to a firm that specializes in nothing but e-commerce.

“It’s hard enough growing your software business, without being in charge of your own e-commerce too.”

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #2: Accept multiple forms of payment

Sure you can already accept Visa and PayPal, but how about American Express? A company check? A money order? A purchase order?

How significant are these other forms of payment?

Well, they can certainly add up, says Engel.

“Certain types of customers are more likely to pay with an Amex card. More technical customers are more likely to have a PayPal account. Old school, old-fashioned customers might want to use a check or money order.

“Sometimes schools or corporations order hundreds or thousands of units at once, but they do require a PO. When a school purchaser comes to your site, you have to cater to their needs; the last thing they want is someone who can’t deal with POs.

“At the end of the day, these multiple forms of payment make your sales appealing to a much wider audience. You don’t want to lose 10 percent of potential revenue because you don’t have a payment option for certain people.”

If you’re developing your own e-commerce system and negotiating with every partner, you’ll want to make sure that the demographics of each payment system work for you.

But if you can get one-stop shopping for all these options from a service provider like FastSpring, why not?

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #3: Increase sales with CDs and download protection

Engel says these two simple tactics can help build online sales.

“The variables are, is it opt-in or opt-out? And how complementary to the purchase is it?

“If you’re selling software to the average joe, and you ask if he’d also like it shipped on CD as an opt-out, we’ve seen 80 percent accept that CD for an additional $10.

“Extended download service doesn’t cost anything, but it gives your customer the assurance that they can come back and download in the future, if their computer crashes or whatever, so that’s a nice service that can get you another $5.”

The funny thing is, most companies would do this for free if a customer called in to say they needed to re-download.

So there’s a way to bump up most sales by $15 just for dropping a CD in the mail.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #4: Don’t forget volume discounts and bundles

This one sounds like a no-brainer, but there are lots of sites out there without it.

“You want to give an incentive for a customer to buy five copies, or 10 or 50 or 100, so they make that purchase immediately,” says Engel. This applies equally well to seats for SaaS products.

And you likely want to offer a discount off your other products at the time of sale.

“Software is not like most businesses, you don’t have any physical product in most cases, so when you’re discounting or bundling products together, there isn’t really the same cost of goods sold that you have with something like hardware.

“You want to take advantage of that.”

Don’t overlook discounts and bundles, not to mention bundling third-party products too.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #5: Start using rebates

“Companies are making a lot of money with coupons. But to date, rebates have been too much of a logistical headache for anyone to offer on software,” says Engel.

To overcome this, FastSpring recently partnered with another company to bring the concept of offline rebates to online sales.

Note: A “coupon” is a code a buyer can enter at the time of purchase for an immediate discount, while a “rebate” is an offer to send in for a check by snail mail.

The big difference: Everyone will use a coupon that’s in their hands, but not everyone will use a rebate. In fact, perhaps 60 percent will never get around to mailing in for their rebate… which puts that money back on your bottom line.

FastSpring’s rebate partner has mailboxes all over the world, so a customer in Germany can mail to an address in Germany and get their rebate dropped into their bank account in Euros.

Here’s a flow diagram that shows all this.

But wait, there’s more…

“We just did a study and found that only 20 percent redeemed the rebate: 60 percent never redeemed it in general, and we convinced another 20 percent to use the money on other software, instead of redeeming it for cash,” says Engels.

“Say on your home page, you have a product for $50. Now you can say it’s only $30 with a $20 rebate, knowing that 80 percent are never going to use the rebate.

“What I love about this is that you can reduce the price you present to the customer up-front, from $50 to $30 with a $20 rebate, and that’s really compelling. Imagine how many more units you can sell if you reduce your selling price by 40 or 50 percent?”

And to reduce your costs even more, you can offer to redeem the rebate for software instead of cash, bundling in another $30 program that you’ve discounted down to $20.

“Our clients are very excited to start testing this out, and we think it’s going to be a very big success,” says Engel.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #6: Automatically localize language and currency for each visitor

Imagine your order pages being so “smart” that they automatically reconfigure to match the language and currency of your visitors.

Ideally your e-commerce system would analyze the IP address, mailing address, and browser settings of each visitor, and change to accommodate them. So if they speak Spanish and come from Spain, they see the European Spanish version of your order pages with the prices in € (euros).

That’s another development challenge that’s already been solved by FastSpring. Prices can be given in euros, pounds, yen, or Australian, Canadian, or American dollars, and the order pages support something like 14 different languages.

“On most sites, when you see a converted price, instead of $60, you see $59.23 or something. So we let our publishers determine what the price will be in each currency as a nice round number.

“And there are no currency exchange fees like those charged by banks; no one wants that extra $3 to end up on their credit card bill.”

FastSpring will also match the branding and look and feel of your original site to avoid turning off shoppers.

“If you don’t do that, people are more likely to abandon the shopping cart,” says Engel.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #7: To optimize results, test and re-test your order pages

We’ve heard this advice before. But with all of Engel’s experience on so many sites, aren’t there some rules of thumb for what works best?

“I really wish there were,” chuckles Engel. “Then I could write a book and make a lot of money.”

But like most things, it all depends.

“It really depends on the type of product and the type of customer, whether they’re corporate, or consumers, or my parents’ generation. It’s foolish to assume that you know all this without testing.”

He suggests that software firms should run through between 25 and 75 orders for each variable being tested.

With FastSpring, you can re-test the whole order flow, the number of pages, the buttons, the cross-sells, anything.

“You can try a single-page order flow or three pages; you can try the credit card on the first page or on the third page. And all that stuff should be re-tested at least once a year,” he says.

“There is always something out there that you haven’t tried, some little tweak that makes a difference.”

We could go with the other features of FastSpring:

• Collecting sales taxes and VAT
• Eliminating chargebacks, with a rate below 0.5 percent
• Minimizing fraud, with a 12-point self-correcting algorithm
• Multiple merchant accounts, so you’re never frozen out due to a sudden spike in ordering activity or fraud
• A blog with lots of marketing tips and ideas.

So what does all this cost an ISV?

FastSpring charges either 5.9 percent plus 95 cents per transaction, or a flat 8.9 percent, with a minimum of 75 cents per transaction. You take your pick.

“Most companies think they’re paying 2 percent because that’s what gets quoted,” says Engel. “But they’re really paying between 3 and 4 percent. If they have transactions in AMEX or Paypal, or overseas, or anything other than the standard transactions, all of those cost significantly more.”

You can be up and running in as little as one day, with no setup or cancellation fees, and a lot of advice on tweaks you could make to increase sales.

We think that’s reasonable, and moving to a service like FastSpring makes a lot of sense.

About the author: Gordon Graham is an award-winning journalist with 30 years in the software industry. And as That White Paper Guy, he helps B2B software firms tell their stories with crisp, compelling white papers.

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We are rather obsessed with providing the absolute best customer service in the e-commerce industry, and we love hearing from clients who are enjoying it, as was expressed recently on a post on the popular Business of Software Forum.  Selling software is not an easy business, and our vendors deserve to get all the help and attention we can possibly give them to manage and grow their businesses.

Some highlights from the forum post:

“I just got to use this thread to say how happy I am with FastSpring…Switch to them…Right now…After all of these months now I can’t tell you how good they have been - at helping with custom settings, getting my order template changed when I need it  - blocking fraud (They are really good at this..very few false positives). They always answer your questions within 24 hours…but usually within moments. They will work for every penny you send to them.”

“FastSpring is the best payment processor I’ve ever tried.”

“btw… now that’s a great comment on the FastSpring service, Ken was able to clear this up for me within about an hour of my initial request & that’s including me going back several times with supplemental questions.”

“Another +1 for FastSpring…. their support is astounding, both at setup & in use.”

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Recently a vendor who sells software asked members of the Business of Software forum “Do you wait a while before issuing a requested refund?”.  Ken White, one of FastSpring’s Dedicated Account Managers, had an interesting response based on his experiences with a software firm he’s been involved with over the years:

“Not everyone will like this idea, but with my product line, which actually cost me something because of some 3rd party royalties, I sell the software products with a 30 day money back guarantee.  BUT, when I get a refund request, I first ask if there was any particular problem or something we can help with.  Then I tell them if they would like to proceed with a refund, visit our refund page.

That page describes that while we are happy to offer a 30 day guarantee and offer refunds, because of some licensing issues and the fact that some buyers in the past have purchased, downloaded, then asked for refund just to get the products free, we require that they print, sign, and mail the attached form to receive the refund.

What I’ve found in about 5 years of doing this is:

1) The ones who were just trying to steal get really upset about the whole process, yell, scream, etc.  I’ve pretty much decided the ones in this group were never going to be profitable for me, and even if somehow they were to eventually become customers, they would be the high-maintenance types that would cost us more than we’d make.  About 50% of these will actually send the form and eventually get a refund.

2) About 50% of the normal people who wanted a refund will end up engaging me more about their problems before jumping to the refund form, and with many of those I can help them work through the issue that made them want the refund to start with.

3) About 5% of the refund requesters will get angry and impatient and initiate a chargeback.  This is an acceptable level of that given that I’ve cut out about half the returns with the form.”

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Instead of your customers having to rely on an email coming into their inbox after they purchase, they’ll be provided with the product info (downloadable file, license code, etc.) instantly after they complete their purchase, right on the post-purchase confirmation page. In this era of spam and email filter problems, you can’t afford to require your customers to rely solely on email-based fulfillment. By providing this instant gratification to your customers, you will increase customer satisfaction while cutting down on support volume.

Customers will no longer need to check their email program; they will remain on your site after purchasing, potentially exploring an additional purchase. Eliminate emails from upset or angry customers who need to start using your product instantly but who can’t afford to wait for a few minutes as they wonder whether they will in fact receive an email. No more customers who complain they never received an email from you for one reason or another and are quite dissatisfied because they haven’t been able to use the product they paid for. You will reap the benefits of the improved level of customer satisfaction. In addition, you can customize the content your customers will see on the order confirmation page in case you want to communicate something specific after they complete their initial purchase.

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Did you know rebate checks in 2008 totaled over $6 billion?  It’s a hugely successful and popular merchandising tool.  We just released a new feature for online vendors that increases profits by offering a mail-in rebate to your customers instead of a coupon. This is the first online-based rebate service of its kind, and it is unavailable through any other e-commerce service. Rebates have proven to boost sales and profits in the offline world, but to date they were difficult or impossible to implement online because the online customer base is truly global and the logistics were too much of an obstacle…until now!

While customers redeem coupons nearly 100% of the time, typically less than 40% of rebates get redeemed, so the difference gets added to your profit instead.  Run these numbers on your own coupon promotions and you’ll quickly see how much you can potentially increase your profit in short order by replacing some coupon promotions with mail-in rebate promotions.  Through the service’s global mail-in locations and payment options, customers mail a form in to an in-country address and get paid in the default currency for that country.  For example, a customer in Germany would be provided with an address in Germany to mail their rebate to and would subsequently be paid via an EFT in Euros.

While some rebate companies try to disqualify consumers, hold consumers’ money for a long time for no other reason than the float, or send the consumer something other than what you promise them, we take the exact opposite approach and make the experience fast and easy for the consumer so that they are kept fully satisfied at all times.  Since the rebate form is simple and the payment is done quickly and efficiently, it’s a positive experience for both you and your customer.

You also have the option to offer a complementary product (already at a special discounted price) to which the consumer can apply their rebate, instead of having to mail in the rebate and wait for weeks to get reimbursed.  This will further decrease the number of actual rebates fulfilled, constituting additional savings for you (and more new customers who will potentially purchase upgrades).

You can view a diagram that illustrates the flow here:
http://www.fastspring.com/features_rebate.php

I hope you enjoy the financial benefits of this innovative new feature we’re introducing as a new merchandising opportunity for FastSpring vendors.  If you’d like to learn more about setting this up, please contact your FastSpring Dedicated Account Manager.

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You can now bid on keywords for YouTube videos on a pay-per-click basis.  For example, if you upload a video to YouTube that promotes your software or other type of product, you can drive traffic to your video and generate clicks and sales through your website.  Why is this worthwhile?  In addition to potential new user exposure, the pay-per-click rates on your top keywords for YouTube searches are likely to be far lower through this medium because of the temporary lack of competition for video keywords.

Click the image to see a sample report

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The following was authored by Terry Whalen from CPC Search, a pay-per-click (PPC) search agency offering PPC management services to its clients, some of whom are software vendors. CPC Search is a partner of FastSpring’s, and I help advise their company on certain strategic initiatives from time to time.  Thanks for sharing your insights with us, Terry.

CPC Search is offering a free, no-strings attached Google AdWords Account Audit to any FastSpring vendor who would like to obtain free expert feedback on their AdWords campaigns including how to increase their results. In addition, CPC Search will waive the regular $1k minimum PPC management fee for those FastSpring vendors who work with CPC Search to manage their search campaigns. Vendors can contact Terry directly at terry at cpcsearch.com

KEYWORD DEVELOPMENT

I think people sometimes try to over-think keywords for their PPC campaigns. The truth is that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a great starting point for keyword (kw) discovery. In my view, there is really no need to use outside third-party keyword tools. Since a majority of searchers use Google and its partner network, the idea is to ‘go to the source’ for kw lists based on actual user search queries. Simply input a few initial kw’s and Google will spit out additional relevant kw ideas. Access the Google Keyword Tool at the top of the kw list in any ad group.

Use Google’s Search Query report to further expand and refine your kw lists. This report has been much improved since April 2009, and now displays more granular data. Users of the new AdWords web interface will have noticed that Google now shows search queries within the management interface. For better efficiency, however, I still recommend pulling the data all at once from the reports section. Focus on search queries that have received conversions, rather than just impressions or clicks. Filter for queries with match type showing as ‘broad’ or ‘phrase’ and then add these as keywords into appropriate ad groups. Bid according to search query CPA (cost per acquisition) and average CPCs (cost-per-click).

Additionally, mine Google Analytics, Omniture, or other web analytics reporting systems for keyword ideas. Just as with using Search Query reports, focus on (organic) kw’s that have resulted not only in clicks, but in conversions, goals, and measurable value. In Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then Keywords, then click on non-paid, and lastly select the Goal Conversion tab.

Lastly, use all 3 kw match types: broad, phrase, and exact. Using all 3 match types gives you, as the advertiser, greater visibility and control into campaigns. Add phrase and exact match versions for kw’s that show a high volume of impressions, clicks, cost or conversions – or for kw’s that are core to the products that you sell.

PPC AD CREATION & TESTING

Test Keyword Insertion (KWI) in your text ads. KWI automatically inserts the user’s search query into the text of the ad. KWI can be used in headlines or in lines 1-2. Test KWI cautiously, and only in ad groups that exclude high-volume, broad match keywords. Example headline: {KeyWord:MP3 Software}.

An often-overlooked detail is to set ad-serving to rotate. Ads must be rotated evenly in order to be tested properly against each other. AdWords defaults to serve higher-CTR ads more often than lower-CTR ads; this makes more money for Google at the expense of the advertiser. This option is found in Campaign Settings.

Remember ad text basics: highlight the advertiser value proposition; incorporate relevant ad group kw’s within ad text; use a compelling offer (e.g. Free 30-day Trial) and include a call-to-action or implied call-to-action (e.g. Learn how to improve your PPC campaigns – Free white paper).

Remember - the higher the average CTR, the higher the quality score, and this will translate into lower CPC’s and potentially lower CPA’s.

PPC CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE

A simple PPC account structure benefits day-to-day navigation, management and bid optimization. Consider separate campaigns for breaking out geo-targets, differentiating between different target metrics, or for reporting purposes. Always run Content campaigns separately. This is acknowledged best practices, since Content is an altogether different medium vs. Search.

ADWORDS EDITOR

Download and use AdWords Editor (AE) for: bid optimization; ad creation and optimization; creating new campaigns; adding kw’s in bulk to multiple campaigns and ad groups; modifying destination URLs for conversion tracking, and much more. Download AdWords Editor.

AdWords Editor will make account management and optimization much more efficient, saving you time and therefore money.

GENERAL APPROACH FOR EFFECTIVE PPC MANAGEMENT

Start simple and small, and go where the resulting data takes you. PPC is an iterative activity. The data determines next steps. If you started with one campaign composed of five ad groups, expand the ad groups that show click and conversion activity and leave the others for later. Over time, advance to complex and large. Expand kw’s, ad groups and campaigns based on what has worked. In terms of time and effort, feed the winners and starve the losers. This approach will help you best focus your time and make your company more money!

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The following was authored by Nico Westerdale from BitsDuJour, the website that brings you exclusive 24-hour discount deals on some valuable software applications.  Thanks, Nico.

You’ve worked hard to perfect your application - it represents the end result of hours of planning, coding, debugging, and polishing. Now that it’s done, you need to get the word out on the street about your fantastic product, especially if there are other competing apps that aim to serve the same audience.

For many developers, the only marketing effort that they will ever undertake is the development of a website that showcases their software application. This approach, however, is less than ideal because websites take a while to become established on the internet.  Web traffic in those first few weeks of existence will be very low, almost nonexistent, and small developers need to start making sales immediately if they are to survive to fight another day. Those sales will not be forthcoming if you’re waiting for Google to index your site (it can take a while). And no matter how well-designed, your site won’t have a very high search index ranking if no other sites link to it, which is highly likely since no one knows about it.

Twitter represents a real opportunity for small shop developers to promote their software, but only if your relationship with the Twitterverse is carefully established and cultivated. There is a world of difference between “marketing on Twitter” and “effective marketing on Twitter”. Here are some tips on doing it the right way.

1. Register, then Follow Your Key Demographic

Your journey through the Twitterverse starts, naturally, with registering an account and profile name. Try not to pick a profile name that’s overly cold and corporate, but do try to tie your profile name back to your company or the product that you’re developing, so folks will associate your Twitter account with your product or service. Be sure to fill out your Twitter profile with a brief description of yourself, your product, and a link to your website.

After you’ve endured the arduous process of selecting your Twitter name, do a quick keyword search across the Twitter service and start following other Twitter users who do what you do, or are otherwise part of your target demographic for your software. Developing graphics software? Follow folks who are employed as graphic designers, or who design graphics software. By following their tweets, you may just learn a thing or two that makes your software even better. When you start following someone, they’ll be notified, and, after sizing you up, may start following you as well. This is how you build your Twitter audience. The best Twitter networks focus on a core group of people allied together around a common theme.

2. Be Open, Be Yourself, and Use Twitter as a Sounding Board

Not counting the Twitter accounts of sites that offer breaking news, daily discount offers, and other “in-the-moment” opportunities, businesses that view Twitter as just another electronic billboard are missing the point and are often puzzled when they don’t attract many followers. Successful users of Twitter attract followers because they do and tweet things that interest people, or otherwise offer a peek into a lifestyle that others may not see everyday.

You should start your Twitter account well before you plan to launch your software application, keeping your tweets professional (no vulgarity, for example) but personable, dropping hints about yourself in ways that demonstrate that you have quirks like everyone else. In other words, be a person on Twitter, and not a corporate presence or a PR intern or a robot that spews status reports about the latest build. When you reach a level of comfort with Twitter, and have developed some followers, start tweeting about your application, and how its development is progressing. It even helps to tweet about drawbacks, hurdles, and disappointments in your software development. The point is this: get people interested in you, and they will also become interested in what you do.

Keep tweeting about the progress of your application (along with the usual quirky details about your life), and you will build buzz for the application’s release. If you run into a coding problem, ask Twitter! Inviting the counsel of others makes them more likely to be personally invested in your success. It also helps you to build a better network by connecting with others who may be running into the same issues.

3. Promote Your Launch and Encourage Feedback

This is where a lot of companies start on Twitter, and this is where they fail. A company will register a Twitter account, and within an update or two, they’re literally screaming at people to buy their product. Since no one knows who they are, and it’s obvious that they’ve created a Twitter presence just to sell things, they get no takers. But you, having built up a measure of credibility on Twitter, now have an audience of followers who’ve followed the evolution of your project from drawing board, to coding, to debugging, and now - at long last- to launch day. You may want to consider offering a discount to customers that purchase your software using a link that you post to Twitter, or holding a contest to give a free copy of the app away to your 500th follower. No matter what, it’s your launch day and you should have fun with it.

Recruit your Twitter followers to help you spread the word of your launch by re-tweeting your launch announcement, and keep them updated throughout your first few days with tweets reporting how well your sales are progressing. You don’t have to divulge specific numbers, but something along the lines of “Incredible first day sales! Thanks to everyone” will be appreciated, and further help to put yourself out there as a real, live person behind the Twitter account. Solicit advice and questions from those who buy your app, and be sure to respond promptly.  You can use their suggestions as a starting point for the next version, which will give you even more to tweet about after the launch!

Using these tips, you can continue to accumulate greater numbers of followers, keep your existing customer base updated on your progress, provide immediate customer service, and generate buzz leading up to the release of each new version of your application.

Follow FastSpring on Twitter here.

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Andy Brice, a friend of FastSpring’s and the developer behind the SuccessfulSoftware.net blog, recently compiled data from a group of small software firms to analyze their conversion rates from visit to download, visit to purchase, etc. You can see the results from his survey and see how your site’s conversion rates compare with others by clicking here.

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For “buy now” buttons, it’s helpful for the button to be a bright color (e.g. red), to be large enough on the page to be highly visible, ideally to be located above the fold.  When possible, it’s wise to have a purchase link on every page of your site (this link could just be in your navigation menu that appears at the top of each page) even if it’s not specifically a buy button that appears within every page.  You want to make it as easy as possible for those who want to buy to do exactly that, irrespective of where they are on your site when they make the decision to buy or to learn about pricing and purchase details.

Some of FastSpring’s better performing buy buttons are these:

You can view a larger selection of buttons here

(Upon request, we can at times redesign a button to fit your particular order page needs.)

Notice how the various payment options are listed next to the buy button, letting customers have an idea upfront regarding whether there is a a payment method that applies to them.  Given that most popular payment methods are covered in the graphics, most users find at least one applicable payment method that attracts them to then click the buy button and proceed with their purchase.

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If it’s indeed the typical software/hardware bundling arrangement, you’ll likely be expected to accept a per unit fee ranging anywhere from $.10-$1.00 per unit bundled, depending on the OEM partner, the anticipated unit volume, etc.

Assuming that’s the range you’re presented with, you’ll want to ask the OEM partner to justify that kind of rate by guaranteeing a minimum volume.  For example, if they are only open to paying $.25 per unit, require that they bundle a minimum of 15K or 25K units in the next 12 months, and explain that otherwise there is no way to justify their extremely low per unit rate relative to what average customers are paying you per unit (for example, your MSRP might be $29.95 per unit).

Setup a sliding scale so that the more units they bundle the lower per unit rate they’ll pay, so the OEM partner is incented to bundle as many units as possible and so they can get the low rate they desire from you, provided they hit certain metrics, but just not for “free”.  Some OEM partners will be able to bundle a few thousand units, while some of the larger ones can do a few hundred thousand or even a few million units, so it can really add up, although they will expect the rate per unit to decrease the more volume they can do, which is fine.  Just make sure if they tell you that they’re expecting to bundle a large volume of units, that you tie them to it in order to get the pricing they desire from you.

There are a few reasons why OEM partners get away with such low rates.  They can often guarantee a substantial minimum number of units (though not always, and sometimes it’s still a deal worth doing).  OEM partners realize that you get free branding when they bundle your products, that you can sometimes collect email addresses from their users, upsell their users, etc., and this value you receive further justifies their low rates.  Also, you, as their partner, can appreciate the economics that lead to the OEM partner only being able to pay a very small % of the purchase price they charge their own customers given all the other expenses they have in each sale of their own product that they’re bundling you with, the other bundling product partners they’re paying along with you when they sell their own product, etc.  If they sell their own product say for $30.00, pay retailers, distributors, etc, buy advertising, have a significant cost of goods on their hardware product (being that it’s a hardware product with hard costs, not a software product), plus pay for 3-4 bundling product partners each being paid along with you, you can see why they can’t afford to pay, for example, $5.00 per unit to each bundling product partner, but are instead dealing in pennies per unit.

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We recently added a section of our website that features client testimonials.  You can see what clients are saying about FastSpring here.

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Personally, I would only go with a .com. If it’s not an option, I’d go with a different domain. With that said, I have had a software firm that only has a .net (we didn’t obtain a .com for Picasa.net until right before we sold Picasa to Google) and it did fine, but a certain % of users will look for you at the .com address and never find you or will find a similar service depending on who owns the .com. It’s hard to know what that % will be for your particular offering. You can bid on Adwords for the domain with .com and try to push those folks to your non-.com page, but buying .com keywords via Adwords doesn’t always work out.

There is a real credibility issue when a business doesn’t hold the .com, and it can make a significant difference in results depending on the type of business. It doesn’t mean you can’t still be successful using a non-.com, but why add more obstacles to success than one already faces if you don’t have to? One site that can help when trying to find a .com that fits with the words you want to incorporate in your domain is NameBoy. It’s not great but it can at least help spark some ideas.

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I’ve been involved with a software product in the past that used online activation.  It had pluses and minuses.

It made it harder for users to do sketchy things in general with the product in terms of usage and purchasing/sharing, and let us track more of what they were actually doing with our software.  When a customer complained about something and requested a refund, we could always tell if the customer had tried activating on countless PCs before contacting us so we had an idea of how honest they might have been being before we responded to their complaint or refund request.  And we were able to have a policy that refunds were an option when no activation occurred but not when the user already activated (other than in special situations where a customer was particularly upset for a legitimate reason) since we had no way to stop them from using the product indefinitely once they activated.

Using online activation more or less eliminated piracy, which was great and we felt like one of only a small number of software firms that didn’t have a crack out there.  However, it led to customers complaining about lack of Internet connection being a problem, so it’s good to have a solution for those without net access such as an offline activation scheme to use in special situations.  It also limited our ability to work with some distribution partners.  We had to let it go to an extent when we entered retail stores since retail store users are less sophisticated than online users and definitely can’t be required to have Internet access.  In retrospect, while that opened us up to a little piracy, it was a good move overall.  Being overprotective has its costs and in our case the distribution opportunities were worth the cost of a small % of users not paying for the product, esp. considering a good % of those type of users wouldn’t pay for our product anyway, given that they’re the type looking to steal it.

Ken’s added thoughts:  If you sell software into schools for example, not only will they often not have net access, but they often need a method to install the software program on many machines in a more or less automated way (silent install).   The registration scheme must be simple and not require unique action on each machine in cases like this.  Also, one thing to consider is that if the registration process is too difficult, it can cost you money.  I’m aware of at least one company I work with who regularly gets chargebacks simply because their customers are all to often unable to navigate all the steps required to complete registration.

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I’m not a big fan of MBAs, though it can be good for people who are not naturally business oriented and have minimal business experience.  For entrepreneurs, I’ve often recommended reading this book:
The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship

I read this when I started my first company out of college (here’s an old story on it: GrapeApe) and it helped me greatly.  It covers key areas the MBA covers, and it’s from Babson College, home of the original entrepreneurship MBA program.

Between this book and having the experience of starting a business, I felt after my first business that I had better experience earned “in the trenches” than I would have obtained through an academically oriented MBA program.  I have plenty of friends with MBAs and I think they would have been better served investing the money into starting a business and learning on the job.  That approach is not for everyone, but it sure is educational if you can stomach it, and can be quite fun as well (not to mention, no academic homework!).

If you want to read Uncle Saul’s take on getting an MBA, you can view his post here. For those who don’t know Uncle Saul, he’s a fellow blogger and friend to FastSpring whose blog we enjoy.

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In my experience, Tuesday through Thursday is best, with Tuesday/Wednesday being better than Thursday.  On Mondays, people’s inboxes are too full from the weekend and they’re overwhelmed with email, they need to dig into work, etc.  Fridays, people are thinking about the weekend.

However, it also can depend on the email content.  If you’re marketing an entertainment product, for example, sometimes it can perform better on weekends since weekdays are less about leisure.  There may be fewer email “opens” on weekends but better response for non-productivity product content emails.  At the end of the day the best way to know for sure what’s best for your particular product is of course to test the different dates for the same offer and sent to the same type of users (comparing apples to apples across different days).

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UI Refresh

We recently refreshed 3 of the main SpringBoard UI elements based on your feedback and experiences.

Toolbar

All toolbar icons have been updated to a consistent look and location on the toolbar. The home link has moved out of the main toolbar into the navigation bar.

Navigation Bar

The navigation bar has been revamped for a more prominent look, adding an integrated home link, and a more noticeable help icon for pages with help information.

Larger Click Targets

The click targets have been increased in size to speed up navigation around the UI.  Rather than positioning your cursor exactly over link text, you’ll find that click targets are now generally wider and taller throughout.

New Verisign EV Store Certificate

The SSL for all stores has been updated to use a Verisign Extended Validation (EV) certificate. Verisign has an excellent brand reputation which many customers have come to recognize. The EV certificates display more prominently in the address bar of both Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox as a “green address bar”.  You may have seen this certificate type already on sites like paypal.com.

You may optionally display a clickable Verisign logo on your store look and feel.  If you’d like to add the Verisign logo to your look and feel, please see the documentation under Styles / Appearance, or contact us using the “Support” toolbar link and we’ll make the update for you. Displaying the Verisign logo in your look and feel is not required for the green address bar to appear.

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Below are some of the benefits to outsourcing to a full service e-commerce payment solution like FastSpring vs. utilizing a basic payment service like PayPal or setting up your own merchant account.

* Focus on developing your products and marketing your business rather than investing your company’s time, money, and resources into building and maintaining a commerce platform, a platform that will need to be constantly updated and improved as your business grows and your needs change. To get a better sense for the features you would need to build out on your own, review the list of features that FastSpring displays on its web site and you’ll have a better idea of the software development and administrative work, both upfront and ongoing, that is involved in building out your own solution on top of a basic payment service or by setting up your own merchant account.  Avoid having to do any custom coding.

* Eliminate chargeback fees (typically $15-$40 per occurrence) and chargeback management.  Let your e-commerce service handle them for you.

* Avoid the order-related customer service work, let your e-commerce provider handle this on your behalf.  FastSpring assigns a Dedicated Account Manager to you who provides hands-on help with anything you need which can be quite helpful.  You can expect to get a response from your Dedicated Account Manager within 12 hours or less, even on most weekends.  Gain access to a support staff trained for software product and software delivery issues as opposed to customer service representatives who are not trained specifically for handling software vendor issues.

* Get support for delivery issues specific to software products including delivery of download links, customized emails, generation of registration codes, and other items.

* Avoid complex tax compliance issues by state or country by having a full service solution like FastSpring handle tax collection, compliance, and payment on your behalf, including management of the European Union’s Value-Added Tax (VAT) and California’s state sales taxes.

* Save time, hassle, and avoid losing revenue by using a service like FastSpring to minimize the volume of fraudulent sales.  FastSpring’s fraud prevention is tailored to software sales and is highly effective.

* Increase international sales by displaying your order page text in each customer’s native language, displaying prices in localized currencies, and settling your transactions in the appropriate currency for each customer.  FastSpring supports a dozen popular languages and currencies supported include Euros, Pounds, USD, AUD, CAD, and Yen.

* Utilize multiple merchant accounts for payment processing.  No need to obtain your own merchant account, which typically costs 3.5-4%+ of every transaction (card processors routinely advertise rates of about 2%, but check your statements and you’ll see it’s far more because of the surcharges applied to your international transactions, higher rates charged on reward card transactions, corporate purchasing and debit card transactions, and higher priced American Express processing costs, fees for items such as chargebacks, etc.). Many full service e-commerce firms utilize multiple merchant accounts for backup security and the merchant account cost is included in the price of the service. Avoid working to obtain different accounts for different payment methods you want to support, doing technical development to setup and support those payment methods and to support multiple merchant accounts on an ongoing basis (the methods and accounts require periodic servicing due to updates and issues that arise), avoid paying monthly fees to merchant providers, turning over personal financial records, being personally liable for certain bank account funds, etc.

* Accept customer payments through as many methods as possible to maximize sales, including Visa, MasterCard®, Discover®, American Express®, PayPal™, JCB, check, and money order.  Corporate, educational, and other types of customers who purchase large quantities often require payment to be accepted via purchase order, a method FastSpring supports as well.  Increase your revenue by accepting these large-sized orders.

* Gain access to a marketing distribution network and online marketing guidance offered by software marketing gurus.

* Increase revenue through utilization of cross-sells and upsells on order pages which typically increases your average revenue per order by 15-45%.

* Utilize order pages branded with your site’s look to reduce cart abandonment.

* Increase revenue through sub-product listings (i.e. drop down menus for add-ons) and data collection throughout fully customizable order pages.

* Ensure your customers’ transactions occur on secure servers on a PCI compliant system that avoids storing customer credit card numbers so that you avoid that serious liability.

* Utilize valuable 3rd party marketing tools like Google Analytics for site traffic analysis, online ad campaign tracking, and affiliate programs for growing affiliate marketing revenues.

* Increase revenue by offering your customers the option to receive your product in physical format for an additional customer charge via an on-demand CD/DVD physical fulfillment network.

* Convert more traffic into paying customers by testing between and choosing from a selection of different order page and product layouts and offerings.

* Increase revenue by utilizing product discounts, coupons, bundles, volume licenses and other pricing adjustments.

This is a sampling of some of the many benefits to outsourcing e-commerce to a full service e-commerce payment solution like FastSpring.

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A user of the JoelOnSoftware forum recently posed this question.  Since we use S3, we’ll explain how we see the advantages.  For those who don’t know, at FastSpring we offer a fast, reliable, and secure global file distribution network which utilizes Amazon.com’s S3 bandwidth service to ensure your buyers have a smooth and trouble-free file download experience.

S3 has been great in our experience and according to a number of our clients.  The biggest advantage is multiple servers.  There are also some capabilities with S3 that would be a pain to implement by oneself.  For trial downloads it isn’t an issue, but for post-purchase downloads, S3 makes it easier to do time and attempt limited downloads, so that you can give a customer a URL and not worry about it being posted or shared too much, as it will only work for a few days or attempts (configurable).

As Amazon continues to build out a network around the world, I think you could eventually see S3 being comparable to the distributed speed and quality of something like Akamai.

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Since we’re not a financial blog, I’m not going to go into too much detail on this other than to point out a statement made in the past by legendary long term investor Warren Buffett:

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

He seems to be putting his money where his mouth is, making some recent investments in areas others are particularly fearful of.  I’ve noticed a lot of younger and less experienced investors are cashing out and heading for the hills while older, more experienced long term investors are actually buying, not selling.

Something to think about when you find yourself emotionally reacting to changes in the stock market.

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Recently a consumer software publisher said they were approached by a big German PC magazine requesting to feature the software product on the PC magazine’s covermount CD. The magazine asked to bundle a fully functional version of the software product. No compensation was offered. What should the software company do?

It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask for money upfront. Some magazines will pay, and sometimes they’ll pay well since they’re asking for a free copy of something others are paying significant money for. We’ve done a couple of deals where the software vendor was paid a one time upfront fee of $5-$8K, though that tends to be the exception more than the norm certainly.

The next best thing is to give them an older version which prompts users to upgrade to the new version, or to give them a Lite version which doesn’t have all features enabled, and when users click a non-Lite feature they are asked to upgrade from Lite to a higher version.

It would be great if they accepted a trial version but they generally don’t since it doesn’t have perceived value to their readers. Another option is to ask them for a free advertisement in their publication or a story included in that issue about your product if they haven’t already offered that. Either option gets at least some traffic to your site where hopefully you can offer their readers additional products or editions of your product.

Some software vendors just want the free exposure (think word-of-mouth) more than anything and are OK without having a way to monetize it at all, and that’s fine too if you’re comfortable with that. Especially since the magazine is based in Germany and most likely most of those magazine subscribers wouldn’t have found your particular product on their own anyway, so it’s not likely cannibalizing your business to any great extent by giving it away for free, unless your primary market happens to be Germany, though even so there are still advantages along with disadvantages.

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If you’re interested in increasing your international sales, allow your customers to pay for your products in their localized currency and to view your order page in their local language. Through FastSpring, you can now accept customer payments in USD, Euros, Pounds, Yen, Australian or Canadian dollars. If you’re interested in setting up multicurrency, just drop us an email. We handle Value-Added-Tax (VAT) payments on your behalf, so you don’t need to worry about international tax issues. Non-English languages including Russian, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Serbian will automatically be displayed to your customers based on their IP address and other information we detect from their web browser settings. We’re pleased to be able to help you grow your international sales.

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In November, we launched the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard together with our partner Payoneer.  Through this new partnership, you’ll gain near-immediate access to your revenues from anywhere in the world through a new method.  Once revenues have been loaded onto your card, you’ll be able to access your funds through normal points-of-sale, banks and ATM machines wherever MasterCard is accepted.  No bank account is needed and your funds are secure.  Check out a demo of how it works through our partner Payoneer here

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Lately a few prospective clients have asked us to explain the benefits of using FastSpring over PayPal.  We posted not too long ago on “What Makes FastSpring Different From Cheaper, More General E-Commerce Services?”, but let’s look at the PayPal question specifically.  This time around, rather than my focusing on the benefits of FastSpring, I thought I’d ask a few software vendors who had previously used PayPal for their payment processing to list any issues or limitations they experienced when using PayPal for their e-commerce.  The following outlines some of the issues that they experienced.

“PayPal’s reporting is extremely limited.”
“Virtually impossible to use for serious businesses without extensive external code or a system to manage customer flow/cross/upsells.”
“You spend too much precious time on e-commerce tasks and way too little time on marketing and dev.”
“For business-to-business products, clients do not take you seriously as a potential supplier if PayPal is your main payment method.”
“No branding on PayPal order pages means fewer purchases!  My order page needs to blend in with the rest of my site or too many people will bail on us”
“No fulfillment support”
“Revenue is lost because a decent number of customers are located in countries PayPal won’t accept payments within for whatever reason.”
“Tax responsibilities are on the client, ugh.”
“Huge problems with spam filters on PayPal — we automatically send out logins once an order is processed yet a higher percentage is not received than is received.”
“They have virtually no fraud screening.”
“(PayPal is) more difficult to set up - documentation spread all over the place, and forum answers sometimes misleading”
“There is no support for discount codes/vouchers (this really surprised me)”
“No experience with (PayPal) customer service yet- but I’ve heard bad things”
“Their system is very clunky, as far as looking up orders, pulling reports, checking a history etc…”
“PayPal heavily favors the purchaser not the vendor selling, as in chargebacks or disputes etc.”
“I don’t get notification of orders on a consistent basis, I have to login and check orders daily”
“We sell off multiple sites with the same PayPal account and the reporting to figure out which sites generated which sales is a nightmare”
“Lacks professionalism”
“Their UI stinks, it takes me a while to figure out how to do things in their system”
“I have heard too much about PayPal’s abuses to trust them.  When I see something where the only payment option is PayPal, I select a different option: not buying.”
“No ability to offer upsells (at least that I can figure out)”

FastSpring addresses most every issue described above.  PayPal appears at first as though it saves a little money in transaction costs, but the big question you discover is…at what cost, in terms of PayPal’s limitations as well as the opportunity cost of using a basic service.  People tend to overly focus on the small % increase in fees that comes with using FastSpring over PayPal and they miss the critical figure - the percentage that utilizing a full service solution like FastSpring increases their overall revenue.

When you consider the cost on your business of PayPal’s limitations and the benefit on your business of using FastSpring’s full service features and tools to increase your overall revenue, it becomes apparent that the financial benefits of utilizing FastSpring far exceed the small difference in transaction fees between PayPal and FastSpring.

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The question has come up a number of times — I’m a software company and I’ve been asked by a 3rd party company to bundle their software along with mine, should I do it?

I’ve managed a number of bundle deals in the past, including a little time spent working with the Google toolbar bundle distribution team while I was at Google.

Bundle deals can be very lucrative if they’re done properly with the end user experience in mind.   You need to be extra sure that the products you bundle are products that are considered user-friendly, useful and pleasant applications, not anything that has been considered spyware in anyway.  Enable your users to easily view and evaluate the 3rd party bundle offer and opt-in or abstain from it without any confusion.  The bundled product should be easily uninstallable by your users as well, with all components uninstalling.

The amount of money you make depends on which company’s product(s) you bundle, how much you are paid per install or as rev share, how many installs you receive of your own product, the geographic breakdown of your installs, retention of the 3rd party bundled product among your users and how often your users use the bundled product if it requires usage, etc.   For those bundle opportunities that pay you on a revenue share basis, you can expect to be paid 35-75% of the revenue earned, depending on the company you’re working with.  Examples of companies that at times pay on a revshare include Google, Yahoo, Ask, Conduit, and Visicom.

It’s hard to know if you’ll earn more from doing a revshare or a pay-per-install arrangement, the only way to know is to ask a lot of questions and test different bundles.  How much will you earn if you do a pay-per-install arrangement?  Say you generate 1,000 installs per day. In my experience, that can generate anywhere from $50 to $500+ per day, depending on the factors I’ve mentioned. I realize that’s a big range, but there are so many factors, and that’s why it’s good to test a few different bundles in case one makes you a lot more revenue than another.  If you find a good fit, you can definitely earn $300+ per day on 1,000+ installs per day ($.30 per install) with a decent geographic breakdown which includes a higher pay rate for US traffic, lower for non-US.  Some firms will pay as much as $2.00 for a US install, some will pay as little as $.25 per US install, it really depends on the situation.  Those firms which can do a good job monetizing your non-US installs might be willing to pay as much as $.75 for EU-based installs, though oftentimes they won’t pay more than $.10-$.25, especially for countries they consider less able to be monetized such as third world countries.  The better paying install countries are US, UK, Canada, the next tier down is generally other EU countries such as France, Germany, and perhaps Italy, then everywhere else is the 3rd tier which almost always earns only $.10-$.25.

Here are some questions, techniques, and tips to consider when you are evaluating a bundle opportunity:

- Ask the company who wants you to bundle their product with yours if they will pay you even if their product is already on the user’s desktop.  Some firms will only pay for unique installs and if a lot of your users already have their product installed, you lose out on a lot of installs - think Google Toolbar.

- Will they pay for installs on Firefox and other browsers as well as IE?  If 20% of your users are on Firefox and your bundle partner only pays for IE installs (this assumes the bundle product gets integrated with a browser and thus the browser type matters), you’ll make a lot less than you would with a partner who pays for Firefox installs as well, assuming all else were equal.  Check Google Analytics (FastSpring has it integrated) if you don’t know what % of your users browse with Firefox.

- Can they track the geographic location of your installs from their end of do they require you to?  If they require you to and they’re paying a different rate based on geography, you need to be sure you have a way to track the user location and that your partner will accept your tracking method as valid.

- Test out the 3rd party product with popular anti-virus/spyware programs and be sure those popular programs don’t get flagged by this 3rd party product.  If they do, then the bundle may not only damage your brand and reputation, but can also lead to fewer installs of your own product since users will be notified that your software is not safe.

- Is your bundle partner OK being bundled alongside another product, if you do already bundle something else?  Some companies will be OK with this, some not, and some will be OK with it so long as the other bundled product isn’t a competing product to theirs.  When you ask this, be sure to specifically ask about their product being bundled with a specific product you are already bundling or intend to bundle along with theirs.  The last thing you want is to find out at the last minute post-integration that they didn’t realize what else they were actually going to be bundled with, and they can’t accept the co-bundle as is.

- If you are planning to bundle on an opt-out or opt-in basis, be sure your partner is OK what the setup you prefer.

- If you want the installer/EULA page where you mention to your users that there is a 3rd party bundle to have a certain appearance or contain certain content, be sure your bundle partner is OK with it, and in your contract state both parties get to approve of the install page’s look and feel.  Include in the contract that you have the right to approve everything related to the bundle, so that your partner can’t insist on anything you aren’t OK with, you get to have final say.

- Have a short-term exit clause (ie. 30 days) in the agreement in case you need to pull out of it quickly.  You don’t want to find out the bundle is causing a problem for your business and then be stuck with your new bundle and no way to get out.

- Ask your bundle partner for financial projections based on your install volume and user profile (geography, browser usage) and their experience with other similar products they’ve bundled their products with.  Ask to talk to other clients of theirs who are bundling their products and ask those clients about the experience and whether it’s been a lucrative initiative for them, what if any issues emerged, etc.

- Find out if your partner will pay you for all installs or will deduct those users who uninstall within X days after installing.  If those uninstalls get deducted, you will earn significantly less than if you are paid for all installs no matter if the users uninstall at any point.  In general, you will find no two bundle partners tracks your installs the same, and so it is difficult upfront to accurately estimate what you will earn, but you might as well try for a rough estimate.  You may find that for every 100 installs you track, your bundle partner only credits you with, for example, 65.

- Find out what the bundled product will add in file size to your installer.  If your file is 5 MB you don’t want to bundle a product that is 4 MB as you’ve almost doubled your file size which means you may get fewer installs of your own product.  Many firms will offer a stub installer or another option that enables you to bundle a file that is far less than even 1 MB and that file will fetch the bigger file on its own or address the problem in another similar manner.

- Ask about how the bundled product will install/open/run/embed itself once the user has selected to install it.  Ask for screenshots to see all the steps the user will be presented with, or go through the process yourself if you can.  Be sure you are comfortable with how the installation process will work, how their product will be displayed to the user, their product’s behavior once on the user’s PC, etc.  Avoid behavior that is unattractive to your users, such as the bundled product running in system trays, spawning pop up ads, etc.  Put yourself in the shoes of your users and make sure you’re comfortable with the process and its result.

These suggestions should be helpful in evaluating 3rd party bundle opportunities.  At FastSpring, we provide marketing guidance to our clients, so always feel free to drop me an email if I can be of help.

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[Guest authored by Alison Simpkins of Access International. Access is a FastSpring partner that helps grow software publishers' revenue through their international business development team.]

If expanding into international markets is a key element of your overall growth strategy then you’ve probably already considered some of the challenges that adapting your software application for new regions can bring. The increasing pace of globalization, accelerated by the growth of e-commerce and availability of on-demand applications, is forcing software publishers of all sizes to consider their solutions within the context of a much broader marketplace and to further examine regional markets for new opportunities.

Localization services offer many software publishers an affordable, scalable method for international expansion, enabling them to successfully target global technology customers and build sales in regional markets. While some large publishers can afford to manage localization internally, most find it far more cost effective to outsource the work to companies that specialize in localization. But for smaller publishers faced with limited global marketing options, republishing may yet offer the most viable solution to international expansion — especially among those considering the traditional retail channel.

Republishing arrangements work especially well for publishers who want to ready access to the international marketplace, but who, for one reason or another, are not ready to bear the costs of new market development. The republishing model also allows publishers to reach new customers in several different regions simultaneously, allowing even small software publishers to compete in the rapidly developing global economy. Typically, a republishing arrangement is structured as a licensing agreement in which the original software publisher grants regional sales and distribution rights to a republisher — ideally one specializing in both the local market and in the original publisher’s application category.

While the specific terms of each agreement will vary according to the goals of the publisher and their republishing partner, most agreements will necessarily include localization for the targeted region. The republishing partner will also market and distribute the application throughout mutually agreed upon channels, providing all of the necessary support and logistics needed to ensure successful penetration within the designated market. Most often, this arrangement yields pure profit to the original publisher who does not undertake any of the risks inherent in new market development. Rather, the original publisher receives a royalty from the republisher in exchange for licensing its sales and distribution rights within the specified region.

If you’re considering the republishing model as a way to develop additional streams of revenue from international markets, then there are several key things to consider as you begin to explore your options.

If yours is a multi-regional strategy, then it’s likely that you’ll be working with more than one republisher. Few, if any, republishers are adept at localization and market development within all application niches, or across all global regions. Therefore, it’s absolutely crucial to carefully research and vet your potential partners within each region, as your choice of republishing partner will largely determine the success of your endeavor.

What are some of key things to look for in a partner?

Because most republishers tend to focus on a specific solution category (utilities or games, for example), it’s best to seek out those who already sell into your category and understand your niche. Make sure, too, that the republisher understands the regional culture and also has a micro-level understanding of the local market for your category. It also helps to have feet on the ground in the local market, especially if you’re focused on the retail channel. Is there someone within your organization who is already in the region, who speaks the language, and who knows the retailers? If so, this person would be ideal as he or she can visit the various retail locations, talk to retailers and identify which republishers are selling well within your category.

You’ll also want to know who the local competition is and which republishers are representing your competitors. Which republishers, if any, are successfully representing applications or solutions that complement your own? Remember that you want to find a republisher who is incentivized to sell your product. This often means someone who doesn’t already have your solution, but who needs it to extend or complete an existing line. This information will also come in handy later on when you’re negotiating with potential republishing partners. For instance you may be able to negotiate a higher licensing fee if you know in advance that a particular republisher needs your solution.

If you don’t know where to begin your search then seek recommendations from other software publishers. Do any of your partners or colleagues have personal experience working with a particular republisher in your target region? Try to get recommendations from as many other publishers as possible — especially those who are in similar lines of business. Getting recommendations before you begin your search will help you avoid the pitfalls of working with inexperienced publishers, or those who simply do not need or understand your solution.

If you’re simply too busy focusing on your core business to thoroughly research potential republishing partners, then you may wish to consider outsourcing your search to an international sales and marketing organization or other rep firm like Access International. These organizations work with international republishers in global regions everyday and can readily identify the best partners for your business with little, if any, up front investment. Some will even handle contract negotiations with republishers on your behalf.

If you plan to handle the contract negotiations on your own, then you’ll want to make certain that the terms of any agreement you make with your republishing partner clearly articulate the branding, channel and overall go-to-market strategy. Will the software be sold under your brand or under that of the republisher? Which channels of distribution will used; OEM, retail, online, or other? How will the product be supported within the channel and when will it go to market? Generally speaking, it can take up to three months from the signing of a contract for your product to get to market so you should carefully consider the timing of all republishing initiatives within the context of your overall sales and marketing plans - especially if your agreement calls for any form of local support from you, the publisher.

Whether you decide to outsource your search for republishers or go it alone, it helps to know in advance what to expect from your partners. Establishing a republishing relationship need not be difficult and can yield significant financial rewards. By taking the time to fully explore your republishing options in advance, you increase the likelihood that your global expansion efforts meet with success.

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Over the past few months, we’ve been getting a large number of companies signing up for FastSpring who are complaining about how their former e-commerce provider was handling fraud. We’ve heard from a few of our own clients who have stated that once they switched their e-commerce over to FastSpring, sales increased 10-20% simply because FastSpring is processing more of their orders as opposed to those orders being held up due to excessive fraud concerns from their former e-commerce provider.

In a number of cases, other e-commerce providers are holding back a significant percentage of their orders until they can verify the orders are not fraudulent through manual, automated, or other methods. Some e-commerce providers are even attempting to reach the customers at their homes through automated phone messages to validate the orders are genuine. Others are manually reviewing orders and creating significant lag time before a customer’s order is fulfilled, assuming the process gets to that point. Not surprisingly, these tactics have been leading to a lot of upset customers and of course to lost revenue due to so many orders going unfulfilled. A key reason why e-commerce providers want to avoid fraud at all costs is because we lose money on fraud orders, chargeback fees, etc.

FastSpring protects your store against fraud without having that type of negative impact on your revenue. We auto-analyze each new order prior to each transaction occurring, seeking inconsistencies and patterns worthy of further analysis, but ensuring as many of your prospective orders as possible get processed. Our fraud checks are real-time so you avoid upsetting customers and losing sales because there are no automated phone calls to customers, no lengthy delays due to manual fraud checks, less unnecessary order flagging, etc. The process we use works great for our clients, and our chargeback rate is extremely low despite that we allow so many more of your orders to complete. As we see it, other e-commerce providers being so excessive with their anti-fraud measures serves the interests of the e-commerce provider, not yours.

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This question was recently asked on a forum. Here’s my take on it…

Typically affiliate programs account for 7-15% of a company’s overall revenue. Every situation is different, but that’s an average for affiliate programs as a % of revenue. Since they are revenue share based, provided the setup costs are minimal (many programs cost nothing or just a few hundred dollars to setup), they are generally worth doing. For most smaller software companies I would not recommend using CJ.com which is among the largest because their upfront/ongoing costs are too high, it’s a pain to setup and many smaller software merchants have lost money on CJ b/c of their fees which don’t always get offset by affiliate revenue. One of our software vendors recently reported it lost about $5,000 by testing out CJ due to the fees.

But we recommend ShareASale.com, which only costs a few hundred dollars to sign up, attracts a nice range of affiliate publishers, and is easy to setup quickly. That’s why we’ve integrated ShareASale with FastSpring. Don’t expect overnight riches but after a few months it could increase your revenue 7-15% if a few decent affiliate publishers pickup your offer, like the results, and stick with it.

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From time to time we’ll highlight one of our new clients.

SerialKeyMaker from Puresto Group helps .Net developers protect their software. Here’s a bit from their PR:
Serial Key Maker enables .Net developers to easily incorporate Serial Key Protection into their software. Developers can spend their time working on the core functionality of their application without having to worry about the details of protecting it. It allows the software to be time-limited for DEMO use, and also allows for full license protection when users purchase the software - without requiring re-installation.

Serial Key Maker was designed from the ground up to be very easy to implement and to provide minimal disruption to clients’ users. There are multiple sample projects that demonstrate how to most effectively implement Serial Key Maker; these are included in the installation package, and are available for download from the web site: Product Download Link

The idea behind Serial Key Maker is to make it easy for software developers to make their software available to users in limited mode and to encourage them to purchase the unrestricted editions. It also assists in making it difficult for users to use and distribute pirated versions of the software.

Serial Keys can be generated in singles or in batches, and can be easily exported into multiple formats for easy upload to content hosting, or fulfillment processing sites like FastSpring.com

I haven’t tried it personally, but might be worth checking out.

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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 about 3.5% when you consider paying chargeback and other fees on top of the merchant account transactional costs, assuming you have international transactions, offer American Express, etc. The merchant account cost is in addition to the fees charged by some of these services which sit on top of your own merchant account.

Also, with your own merchant account, you need to dedicate the development time to setup and then support multiple payment methods and multiple merchant accounts (for backup protection) on an ongoing basis as those methods and accounts get updated and issues arise that require addressing. When you work with FastSpring, you don’t deal with any of these issues or costs.

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 15, 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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