business model

Deodiaus · Guest

I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existance?

Lorand the a(D)nalyser · Guest

Deodiaus wrote:
Quote: I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existance?

Having a site always helps. Most small profile software is sold through
websites. You should first consider selling your software through CNet
(download.com), as you'll get much more exposure.

You were asking about other sucess stories, based on internet
businesses. First of all, let's take the example of Elance. Developed
several years, today it's the largest freelance community, and a quick
look at their pricing structure and leads generated will give you an
insight on the entire business. Remember, this was a very small
community not so long ago.

Another example would be general discussion forums. They generate so
many leads that they can't even manage that at some times.

Lorand Minyo
http://www.adnalyse.com
Business Intelligence Specialist

Mike Turco · Guest

"Lorand the a(D)nalyser" <lorandm@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Deodiaus wrote:
I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

There are some really great programs out there, similar to what you
describe, that have been around for a while. Two that I use a lot is CutePDF
(cutepdf.com) and NoteTab (notetab.com). These sites have been around for a
while and seem to be growing.

Quote: Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existence?

I get quite a few leads from the Internet, from search engines and from
advertising. In and of itself, its not enough, but its a pretty good chunk
of my business.

What are you selling, "next killer app", or "another one of those"?

Quote:
Having a site always helps. Most small profile software is sold through
websites. You should first consider selling your software through CNet
(download.com), as you'll get much more exposure.

You were asking about other sucess stories, based on internet
businesses. First of all, let's take the example of Elance. Developed
several years, today it's the largest freelance community, and a quick
look at their pricing structure and leads generated will give you an
insight on the entire business. Remember, this was a very small
community not so long ago.

I have read some not-so-good things about Elance on Usenet. I would
recommend that one does a search of google.com/groups (or is that
groups.google.com?) to read the comments and then perhaps contact Elance or
do a thorough search of their page in order to determine the reality of
these accusations and so forth. I've never worked with Elance myself, this
is just a heads-up.

Quote: Another example would be general discussion forums. They generate so
many leads that they can't even manage that at some times.

That's interesting. Can you give a specific example of a discussion group
that can be used to generate leads?

Mike Turco
www.miketurco.com

matthew · Guest

"Deodiaus" <deodiaus@my-deja.com> wrote:
Quote: I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through
the website work?

You should take a look through the comp.shareware. and
alt.comp.shareware., etc. newsgroup hierarchies. They are pretty much
devoted to the questions and issues you raise.

Deodiaus · Guest

Well, the software which I am writting is a screen scraper application
which read Java applets in IE and transcribes the text to other
applications.
Is this something which has a market and can be sold on the internet?
I get so much mail from extablished businesses trying to sell me
software, e.g. softscan and PDF readers, that I'd think it is worth
their time to try to push it on me. Of course, it costs them little,
so might be worth the effort.

Mike Turco · Guest

"Deodiaus" <deodiaus@my-deja.com> wrote:
Quote: Well, the software which I am writting is a screen scraper application
which read Java applets in IE and transcribes the text to other
applications.
Is this something which has a market and can be sold on the internet?
I get so much mail from extablished businesses trying to sell me
software, e.g. softscan and PDF readers, that I'd think it is worth
their time to try to push it on me. Of course, it costs them little,
so might be worth the effort.

This sounds like the kind of thing for which there would be a niche market.
The difficulty is in sizing up the market and figuring out how to reach
potential buyers.

Deodiaus · Guest

In many ways, I want it to be in a niche market. I could not survive
if MS, Macromedia, IBM or some Indian SW shop were to release such a
thing. My biggest fear comes from someone who might have an OCR which
can be adapted to this application. He could sell it to the big
players for a dime. Isn't this how Microsoft got DOS?
I worked at IBM R&D on HotMedia. There was so much software which was
thrown away that it was not funny. IBM could probably find people who
worked on such similar stuff in a couple of days. I have also worked
for one software company (Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp) which joked
that the biggest challenge to its business model was getting customers
to upgrade to the next version. Once its non-technical customers were
trained and using the SW, it was not easy getting them to upgrade for
$20K. They had one customer using a piece of SW from 20 years ago.
The SW worked for him and was easy to configure and run. The latter
versions had too many options and enhancements that he was afraid to
make a calculation and get inconsistent results and chew up days
tweaking the inputs. I know, because my primary task was to figure out
if bugs were due to input errors, stardards variations or legitimate
software bugs.

Ramza Brown · Guest

Deodiaus wrote:
Quote: I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existance?

An add on question. I am in a similar bind. If you are targetting a
particular market as opposed a generic product, how do you target and
communicate with potential customers. I was considering getting a
point-man to do some face-to-face marketing, but I don't have any money
to hire somebody. Anybody have ideas?

My only issue with internet marketing there seem to be two routes, wait
a while before word-of-mouth finally catches on or go the Spam approach.
I could be wrong on this?

Herb · Guest

Ramza Brown wrote:
Quote: An add on question. I am in a similar bind. If you are targetting a
particular market as opposed a generic product, how do you target and
communicate with potential customers. I was considering getting a
point-man to do some face-to-face marketing, but I don't have any money
to hire somebody. Anybody have ideas?

Ramza:

It does not matter what the product is - during the start-up phase,
face-to-face marketing is the most effective way to go. Whether you have
funds or not, in the beginning the founder needs to lead the way. So go
out there and meet customers.

Have fun with it.

Herb

W. Wells · Guest

"Ramza Brown" <berlin.brown@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Deodiaus wrote:
I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existance?

An add on question. I am in a similar bind. If you are targetting a
particular market as opposed a generic product, how do you target and
communicate with potential customers. I was considering getting a
point-man to do some face-to-face marketing, but I don't have any money
to hire somebody. Anybody have ideas?

My only issue with internet marketing there seem to be two routes, wait
a while before word-of-mouth finally catches on or go the Spam approach.
I could be wrong on this?

Why not get a salesman on straight commission?

Deodiaus · Guest

Do you know of any, or how to find such a person?
Most people wisely avoid straight commissions.

Leslie Allan · Guest

We don't use any sales people at all. Our product range consists of ten
products so far at www.businessperform.com and we rely almost exclusively on
our customers finding us through search engine searches. Our products are
eBooks, templates and automated excel spreadsheets in various areas of
project management and business management. I can't say we make a lot of
money as yet (we've been going for two years), however, we have customers
all over the world and we don't even have to leave our office.

"Ramza Brown" <berlin.brown@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:11ekgpi8bqlvs2a@news.supernews.com...
Quote:
Deodiaus wrote:
I wrote some software which I am trying to sell.
Does getting a website and selling software through the website work?

I would be interested in knowing if winzip makes enough money to
justify itself? My breakeven point would be defined as the amount of
money that one would get if s/he worked for someone else. I ask this
because there are lots of programmers who do it for the love of the art
rather than to make money. Richard Stallman and the GNU project don't
make money, but rather have an idealized view of how things could work,
but I don't know how many other people could be motivated by this
appraoch.

Now, winzip has been around for 20 years and has great recognition.
Are there other case studies with utilities with a smaller customer
base which also work?

Outside of porn sites, have there been on-line business based in the US
which generate enough leads to justify their existance?

An add on question. I am in a similar bind. If you are targetting a
particular market as opposed a generic product, how do you target and
communicate with potential customers. I was considering getting a
point-man to do some face-to-face marketing, but I don't have any money
to hire somebody. Anybody have ideas?

My only issue with internet marketing there seem to be two routes, wait
a while before word-of-mouth finally catches on or go the Spam approach.
I could be wrong on this?