Category Archives: Increasing Revenue

FastSpring Offers Full-Service Subscription E-Commerce

FastSpring’s feature set expanded greatly in the past year and included the introduction of subscription, initially in Beta and then released in March as a full-fledged offering with a wide range of functionality built into SpringBoard, our e-commerce platform. The launch of subscription / recurring billing was no afterthought for FastSpring. It was a focused [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, News | Comments closed

New Social E-Commerce Feature: Incentivized Reward-Based Promotions via Social Marketing

Social media tools have clearly transformed the way people communicate. Internet users routinely share information, from photos, videos and music to sites and links. Recipients of these user-friendly, ubiquitous, one-click communications often pass them on in turn, extending the reach of a personal recommendation. Imagine if at point of sale this process were not only [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, News | Comments closed

FastSpring Adds Newsletter Signup for Integrated Email Campaign Management

Are you looking to easily add a new customer to your newsletter subscriber list right at the point of sale? FastSpring recently integrated MailChimp email list sign up functionality to do just that. This was a request we were seeing from our customers, and we responded. When your customers order through FastSpring, they have the [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, Marketing Tactics, News | Comments closed

Surveying the Landscape of Customer Acquisition

In an interesting report on customer acquisition for software, Trialpay, a system for ad-funded alternative payments, has revealed some trends that are worthy to keep in mind when assessing your current marketing strategies—and perhaps adding some to your repertoire that haven’t occurred to you yet. The report, entitled “2010 Report: Best Practices for Acquiring Software [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

FastSpring to Attend SIC

If you’re planning on being at the 20th annual Software Industry Conference (SIC), held July 15-17 in Dallas, get in touch with us, as FastSpring will be attending and would be thrilled to meet up with you. We’re excited about SIC 2010, as it brings out some great software developers and covers various topics related [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

An Affiliate Program Experience

Recently a software publisher asked some questions about affiliate programs on a forum. He’s had an affiliate program for about 6 months and is disappointed in the results. He’s using a small affiliate program tied to an e-commerce service, as opposed to using one of the large 3rd party affiliate networks which hosts affiliate programs [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

Learn More About Utilizing Basic Coupons

I’m Shawn from the FastSpring Support Team. In an effort to help you to more fully utilize the breadth of features contained in the SpringBoard e-commerce platform, I’d like to talk a little about some basic couponing… Sales drive sales.  And what better way to have a sale then the good old coupon?  Coupons have [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

FastSpring Language & Currency Support

As FastSpring’s capabilities grow, so does the potential for international sales in the form of support for an expanding number of languages and currencies. Currently, FastSpring’s order pages support consumer transactions in Euros, Pounds, USD, AUD, CAD, and Yen.  The order page is translated into Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info | Comments closed

FastSpring Introduces Affiliate Program Expert Audit™ & Campaign Management

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 [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info | Tagged , , | Comments closed

How To Boost Your Profits By Outsourcing Your E-Commerce

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 [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, News | Comments closed

An Interesting Strategy To Cut Down On Refunds

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 [...]

Posted in Increasing Revenue | Tagged | Comments closed

Introducing Mail-In Rebate Promotions For FastSpring Vendors

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 [...]

Also posted in FastSpring Info, Marketing Tactics, User Monetization | Tagged , , | Comments closed

What Is A Typical Visit To Sale Ratio For Software Vendors?

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 [...]

Posted in Increasing Revenue | Comments closed

Best Practices For Using “Buy Now” Buttons

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 [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

How Should You Price OEM Bundle Deals?

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 [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics | Comments closed

Magazine Covermount CD Software Bundles

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 [...]

Also posted in Marketing Tactics, User Monetization | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Bundling Software

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 [...]

Also posted in User Monetization | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Republishing Deals Offer Smaller Software Publishers Ready Access to Global Markets

[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 [...]

Posted in Increasing Revenue | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Fighting Fraud FastSpring-Style Can Increase Your Revenue

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 [...]

Posted in Increasing Revenue | Tagged , | Comments closed

Is An Affiliate Program Worth Doing If You Are A Small Software Company?

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 [...]

Posted in Increasing Revenue | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment