Daniel Jalkut over at Red Sweater Software posted this idea about a co-operative advertising scheme for the independent Mac developer community. I’m not currently a Mac developer myself, but I hope to take my first steps in that direction some time in the near future (just as soon as my ideas solidify and I stop learning new languages which aren’t objective C - it was ruby this week), and over the last few months I’ve given quite a bit of thought to the problems associated with advertising your product when you’re an independent. At heart it’s a matter of getting your software in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Let me digress...
I’m old enough to have heard tales of a time when teenagers were becoming millionaires selling by mail-order programs they wrote in their bedrooms. I’m not quite old enough, however, to be sure whether these tales are true or merely a rose-tinted view of some more innocent time. And they were more innocent times back at the dawn of the personal computer era. The business was new to everyone and consumers didn’t know that software should come in a big cardboard box from off the shelves of their local PC warehouse, rather than through the post from an advert in the back of their favourite computer mag. But times changed. And then they changed back again. The internet - as we were repeatedly told at one point - remade the level playing field. Take a look at a selection of software company web sites - some mac indie, some “professional” - and ignoring the range of products on offer you’ll see that the indies are every bit as adept at putting on a good face.
(This doesn’t seem to hold for Windows indies, though. A quick tip: it doesn’t say much for your software if you need Google AdSense to support your site.)
In a comment to Daniel’s post (a rare instance of my sticking my head above the parapet), I half-made the suggestion that instead of trying to attract customers from other indie developer’s sites - people who in all likelihood if they are interested in what you sell should be able to find it on their own - it may be a better use of your resources (and yes, I know Daniel’s idea was to make it free, but time is a resource too) to try and snag some of the less mac-savvy, the switchers or new-to-computer users. I introduced a thought experiment involving the readers own theoretical parents. Without you there to guide them, where would they look? I was suggesting a single, well-publicised catalogue which could bring together all (or just most) indie mac products. But that’s the subject for another post. Let’s go off on a tangent.
Say that, instead of software, I want to get my band’s album in front of as many eyes (ears. besides as many ears? into?) as possible. (Please note: I have no band, and the very idea that I might have is laughable to anyone who knows me.) What are my options? Well, there are a couple of services which will get you onto iTunes and Amazon. How about if I want my book published? (More likely but still laughable.) Well, there’s lulu.com. Now, I know a little more about lulu.com than the music example, so let’s concentrate on it instead.
For those of you who don’t know, lulu.com runs a print-on-demand service for books (and a few other services, but we’ll concentrate on books for now). You upload your manuscript and should anyone wish to buy it they can. You set the price and when an order is received a copy is printed and dispatched and you get a royalty. So far so what. But the best bit is that for a one-off fee of around $100 your book is also assigned an ISDN code (just like proper books have) and is added to a number of catalogues. So wh- and to Amazon. To reiterate: $100 gets you onto Amazon.
Returning to software, which developer wouldn’t happily pay $100 for access to a market that size. Just think, after giving up on Wall*Mart and starting to wonder whether their shiny white new toy may be able to help them buy more software for their shiny white new toy, this is one of the first places your parents are likely to look, because they can remember some people talking about this Amazon thing. (Plus, you only need to give Safari an “a” and it’ll suggest you go there.)
Okay, this being the Mac development community there’ll be some grumbling. We’ll ignore all those “but how am I going to support all these new users?” - with the extra money you earn you can now afford to bus in some Mexicans to do support for you. (You may even be able to afford to do things properly and fly in some Poles.) Sure, Amazon will want to take a cut, as will whoever runs the scheme. But just think of the extra volume. And if it works on the lulu.com nothing-down model (except the $100) then what have you got to loose?
So, like Daniel, I’m just tossing this idea out there to see if it gets any feedback. (Yeah, like this site would ever even get any readers...) There are lots of details to work out, like whether the product needs to be in physical (CD) form (which is just so twentieth-century), but I don’t see anything insurmountable. After all, there are already examples out there of this model being applied in similar markets. But to get it off the ground it will need the support of a community. And luckily we’ve already got one of those.
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