Selling a service or a product online?

webdev · #1 (**permalink**) 07-30-2007, 07:07 PM

How would you go about promoting your site from which you sold some sort of service or product(s). For example, if i set up a website where i'm selling scripts and application or web software installation services, how would i promote my site? I want to get some quick exposer in the marketplace so i can make some customers fast and kick start my business.

The only reason i hesitate to build a software which i can sell online is, number one i don't know how i would go about promoting it online. For example, i could build a software which allows people to integrate web forms on their websites. I been thinking about doing this one for a long time.

How did companies like vbulliten become so popular. I'm sure there are forum software out there which better than vbulleten which we haven't heard of. Why? Because they couldn't market it as effectively as vbulleten did with their software. So what did vbullenten do to promote their software become so widely used around the world?

Likewise, i searched for companies who provide form widgets (for a fee) for people to use on the websites. Now some of them are successful while some seem to be struggling (you can usually tell through forum activity).

So, in summary, I want to build a software which i can potentially sell online. However, how would i go about marketing my company and software online?

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 07-30-2007, 09:37 PM

I'm not sure how vbulletin started promoting their product but once again the key is offering something other sites are not and your product would spread like wildfire. If you think about it, there are only about 3-4 popular paid message board scripts and they got popular because they offer features that other message board scripts don't provide. That's why they have no problem selling thousands of copies of a $150 product.

So if you think about a problem many developers have (or whoever is in your target audience) and you can create software that will help that problem and promote it in the right spaces (developer message boards, etc.) then your product will largely spread by word of mouth.

If you think about it, becoming successful with a product is no different than trying to make money with a content/information site. Know who you are targeting and create a product that solves the problems of your audience. Post in forums where your niche congregates (digitalpoint forums is a great example of a place where there are a lot of developers) and if these people start recommending your product to their audience, your product can get a lot of word of mouth.

You know your subject matter better than anyone. So what are the hurdles of PHP? Can you create a software program that can rectify that problem? Offer a limited/trial edition for free to get people to try your product and then offer a full version for a fee. To start, find develop forums and promote it in your sig file to get some feedback.

BumbleBeeWare · #3 (**permalink**) 08-04-2007, 07:48 AM

You ask the million dollar question, "how do you get customers?"

I launced my hosting company bumblebeeworks.com with google ads, newspaper ads, tv ads and radio ads. I ran radio spots every 2 hours on 4 different stations and spent $500 a day on google ads at about $0.25 a click. I ran daily classifieds in the newpaper business sections. It was a well rounded campaign.

Since you probably never heard of me, you can see how sucessful it was.

Then some guys makes a dancing babby video and it takes over the net, tv and everything else.

Some things just work and sometimes its luck.

It is much easier to market free videos on youtube than web hosting to businesses. The youth market online is active and vocal with blogs and chats.

If you can capitalize on a free download market, you can get big fast. But selling a business product like form builders will take much more effort and cash.

The market wont have the same accessibility online as something like napster.

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 08-04-2007, 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BumbleBeeWare

You ask the million dollar question, "how do you get customers?"

I launced my hosting company bumblebeeworks.com with google ads, newspaper ads, tv ads and radio ads. I ran radio spots every 2 hours on 4 different stations and spent $500 a day on google ads at about $0.25 a click. I ran daily classifieds in the newpaper business sections. It was a well rounded campaign.

Since you probably never heard of me, you can see how sucessful it was.

Then some guys makes a dancing babby video and it takes over the net, tv and everything else.

Some things just work and sometimes its luck.

It is much easier to market free videos on youtube than web hosting to businesses. The youth market online is active and vocal with blogs and chats.

If you can capitalize on a free download market, you can get big fast. But selling a business product like form builders will take much more effort and cash.

The market wont have the same accessibility online as something like napster.

Great advice bumblebeeware and welcome to the forums.

webdev · #5 (**permalink**) 08-06-2007, 09:28 AM

Quote:

If you can capitalize on a free download market, you can get big fast.

I have seen his happen with my friend's website. He offers free download of TV shows for his Iranian audience. He bought the script for $100 and started the site about 2 months ago. He is already getting 1500-2000 visitors a day and making good money through adsense on his site.

These days with social networking and all, the young generation (mostly teens) are really active on the net and spends hours and hours on the net. If you can capitalize on this market, you can get big really fast.

ssmorgan · #6 (**permalink**) 08-08-2007, 03:01 AM

webdev,

Have you thought about packaging relevant scripts together and promote them using Clickbank? Clickbank is easy to use as an affiliate, but I think it's also simple to sign up as a publisher.

I am sure affiliate marketers whose websites are related to website creation will be more than happy to promote your scripts.

Would there be potential flaws with this idea? Would it be hard to accomplish this?

Sherif

webdev · #7 (**permalink**) 08-08-2007, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Would there be potential flaws with this idea?

The only way i can find out is by trying and i have to try this.

Quote:

Would it be hard to accomplish this?

Not really. I just have to make some more enchancments to my two free scripts i offer and try to sell those.

thanks for the idea sherif

ssmorgan · #8 (**permalink**) 08-08-2007, 09:29 AM

hmmm... are you thinking of having 2 variations of each script?

1 script free. The 2nd one would be more specialized, advanced, or improved that people would pay for.

I would offer the free one (and maybe you can get email addresses in return)... and that way you have an opt-in list in the process (do you know the success rate of opt-in lists in your industry?)... and then if they want a more advanced script, I think they would be willing to pay.

I think that's a good idea, what do you think?

webdev · #9 (**permalink**) 08-08-2007, 09:50 AM

Quote:

hmmm... are you thinking of having 2 variations of each script?

1 script free. The 2nd one would be more specialized, advanced, or improved that people would pay for.

Yep! that's what had in mind.

Quote:

I would offer the free one (and maybe you can get email addresses in return)... and that way you have an opt-in list in the process

What's a opt-in list? How does it work? And how would having email adresses help? I'm not exactly sure what you are saying.

I mean once they have the free script, off they will go. How does having an email address come into play?

ssmorgan · #10 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 01:01 AM

Opt-in list is a list of email addresses you keep of people who signed up to receive your updates. An example of this is a "squeeze page", which is a webpage that is used to entice visitors to share their names and email addresses with the website owner. The list of names and email address would be called your email list or opt-in list (because these people opted to receive emails from you).

When you develop future scripts or products, you can send an email to the whole list... and if you are selling something, you can get several conversions overnight.

If you decide to do this, I would research it first, because you want to do it correctly because a) you obviously want to capitalize and not abuse it's power, and b) if not done correctly, you may be crossing the line of spamming.

Hope this clears it up.

webdev · #11 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 08:19 AM

Hey Serif! Thanks for the info. I'm gonna set that up in days to come. This will also bring addition traffic for my site. I should put the opt-in newsletter thing for the entire site including scripts section.

Going back to the scripts, here's something i have been noticing. A lot of people who contact me about the scripts are web design companies. Since yesterday i've had 3 different web design companies asking me about technical aspects of my scripts (help installing them or how to add additional fields and such).

Last night after work, I helped all of them install the scripts for their clients. I don't mind helping if i can gain some sort of incentive off of it. I'm sure i can somehow capitalize from this?

webdev · #12 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 08:48 AM

On further note, i should clearly write out on my script pages that for any customization it will cost this much and so on.

However, i see a flaw with that model. Because if i put in X amount of hours to help customize the script for someone for let say $xx amount of money, they will use the same script for all their 100s of clients. So, that's means i'm loosing money and they got a good barging for $20.

But instead, i think, i should adopt software licensing model (just like vbulleten). For exxample, I can say when you sign up, you will get a one copy for free or you'll get a free trial for 2 weeks or something. From there on, I can license each copy for a small monthly or yearly free OR say you can license x amount of copies of the script for $xx amount of dollars and so on.

What do you think guys? I'm interested now how i can make this work because i know there is potential to turn this inot a small business.

I'm also interested know how vbullitent prevent people from pirating their software?

lisa · #13 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 09:05 AM

Hey webdev,

You could set various prices. For the simple scripts, you can charge a smaller one-time fee and for the more complicated scripts (forums, chat rooms, etc.) you can charge a licensing fee and then charge them again for updates and new releases like vbulletin does. I think it's a great idea.

I don't know how vbulletin keeps people from pirating but I'm wondering with PHP is there a way for you to code something in the scripts that reports what domains are using it?

So when the person uploads the script and it gets accessed online via the web there is something in the script that triggers a report/email back to you saying what domains are using it? Again you know I am not the techy person but I was wondering if something like this is possible for you to keep track of where your script is being hosted.

And then again who's to say people aren't pirating and using vbulletin scripts.

webdev · #14 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 08:44 PM

Lisa, you're right. The only way to do it is to set a track. I can certainly set tracking in the code to track who is using the scripts. I don't know how vbulletten does it but i'm sure they assign a unique id to each copy sold and track their customers that way.

Since its a web software, that means the customer has the full code. If they are savvy enough they can figure out where the tracking is ste in teh code, and thus hack it or remove it. I'm sure vbulletten somehow deals with this thing.

This is where widgets are better, all the code is being accessed from my server, through small javascript code. But widgets rely on users browser, if javascript is disabled, they won't see anything.

Quote:

ou could set various prices. For the simple scripts, you can charge a smaller one-time fee and for the more complicated scripts (forums, chat rooms, etc.)

I want to focus on providing small useful scripts like the tell-a-friend and contact-us form scripts and such which people can easily embed in their websites. Forums would be hard for a single individual to make since the complexity is enormous. I would need a team of developers. May be in the longer run, i would decide to do it.

What i'm thinking is this. Provide unsecured version of tell-a-friend/contact-us script for free and provide secured version (with form validation and captcha) for a fee. With that, set a price for any customization and/or form designing, if they require.

Free version
Non-Secured
support and installation included (for $9.99)

Paid version - $14.99
data validation included
secured capcha validation included
free email support and installation included

Customization
$5 per additional field
Custom form design - based on a hourly rate at $20/hr

Customized Forms
As per request (get in touch with me for a quote)

With all the options i also capture the clients email address for future updates and so on.

so something like this...what do you think? Can you add something on this?

lisa · #15 (**permalink**) 08-09-2007, 08:53 PM

I always like incentive pricing so you could have $5 for each additional field, or if you order at least 5 custom fields you can have them for only $3 per field or something like that.

WB Sponsors