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 the next few weeks, we’re launching the FastSpring Prepaid MasterCard.  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 we’ve run into 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 clients and friends who had previously used PayPal to list any issues or limitations they experienced when using PayPal for their e-commerce.

“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”
“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.”
“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