"Turn" shared software made $1 million, and why didn't you? && my software to promote the success of the road

Some shareware made $1 million, and why didn't you?

Transferred from: http://blog.csdn.net/wangjiwei2010/article/details/1267044

Translation: Dreamgoal Original: Steve Pavlin

A few months ago, I decided to conduct an informal long-term study of the shareware industry. The first question I ask is: why are some shareware authors more successful than others? I examined dozens of shareware companies, including ASP members and non-ASP members, with sales ranging from $ hundreds of per year to more than $1 million a year. This article sums up definitely the best thing I've ever experienced.

Most of us like to work on our own strength, including myself. If you are a genius programmer, you may spend a lot of time improving your programming skills. Some shareware authors initially thought they were programmers and felt it was correct. Unfortunately, I've found that this idea is probably more limiting than anything else to your success. After a brief start-up, the level of programming is a rather unimportant factor for running a successful shareware.

There is a saying: "In every field, there are only a few important elements of success." If you master these elements, you will be successful. I think there are seven important elements to the shareware industry: decision, creation, promotion, sales, service, evaluation, and improvement. The better you master them, the more successful you will be. I found that most successful shareware authors noticed most or all of the seven-point features, while those who failed most tended to focus on only a few of them and ignored others.

Here are seven key success factors in the shared software industry:

1 decided to put forward some clear objectives and to develop plans to achieve them. The establishment of goals is of paramount importance in any industry. A well-known study at Harvard University found that only 3% of Harvard's 1953 graduating class wrote goals and plans. 20 years later, they were investigated again, and the results showed that 3% was richer than the other 97%. In addition, the researchers found that 3% had better health, interpersonal and social skills.

The goal must be clear, realistic, and predictable, and be written down. Each goal must also have an implementation deadline. Making more money is not a goal, and increasing sales by 20% within 90 days is a goal. Write down your goals, or lose them to your computer, and if you don't want to see them every day, at least check back regularly for a week. You should also establish short-term (one-year or shorter) and long-term (one-to five-year) goals and schedule a good job. The objectives should consist of an assessment of the results, but the plan should consist of action steps. Sales growth of 15% can be a goal, while submitting software to 10 or more download sites is an action step.

The word "decide" comes from Latin decidere, written meaning "from ... Cut off. " When you decide to set a goal, you also decide that you should not engage in other things. For example, if you decide to spend a week selling your software, you shouldn't be doing product development, surfing, and so on during the week. Making an unconditional, determined decision is a great motivator for us to move forward. If you tend to spend hours, days, or even weeks doing unimportant email communications, web surfing, phone calls, or anything else, your goals may be too weak to motivate you. At this point, simply ask yourself "what is the best use of my time now?" “

2 Create high-quality products that people want to buy. Most shareware developers have the ability, but this is only part of the answer. Obviously if you want to be successful in sharing software, then you need at least one shareware to sell. However, I found that most of the most successful shareware authors spend less than half of their time on software development. That means you don't need too much software, and most of the creators of shareware that have been incredibly successful have only one or two software.

Let's take a look at creating assets while minimizing the debt. Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, provides my favorite definition of assets and liabilities: "Assets put money in your purse, and debt takes it away from your purse." "In fact, you can easily find that your own debt and expenses are more than your income." enough to buy magazines and services, the depreciation of hardware, frequent software upgrades, development tools, taxes, virtual hosting, and Internet fees can quickly consume your shareware revenue, especially when you're just starting out. Always remember that your goal is not to make money, but to develop a money-making asset. If you don't make money while you're sleeping, you're just working instead of an asset. Consider product development as an investment, and try to maximise your return on investment. You're putting in the time and effort to make things that can automatically generate revenue. Most successful shareware authors have taken the time to build strong assets. Even when they are not working, these assets create a huge income. When we develop new products, remember to "create an automated revenue generation system" goal.

3 Publicize your product and distribute your shareware as widely as possible. If you make a good mousetrap, you will only attract mice, but if you advertise a mousetrap, you will attract customers. This is the difference between the best and the worst shared software companies. In the best companies, it is common to spend 15-25% time and resources on propaganda, while the worst companies spend little or no time on propaganda. If you don't like to advertise or feel that it's beyond your reach, the most you should do is go to Amazon.com and pick at least one of these books. I recommend the works of Jay Conrad Levinson and Al ries/jack trout. You should also read some excellent free articles on the www.abraham.com of Jay Abraham's website. I got a lot of great ideas from his website,

What are the two most powerful words in advertising? If you don't know, then you'd better remember them now. They are "free" and "new". These two words create more wealth than any other word. You can find them in all kinds of good ads. Just adding these two words to the headline of the ad will turn the effect upside down or double. Let these two words run through your website. For example, free downloads, free software tools, latest press releases, free contests, free mailing lists, new tips and tricks, and more. You can also add free technical support, up-to-date versions, free unexpected gains, and more on the form of reminder registration. No matter how boring and trite these two words may seem, they are still excellent at attracting customers.

Selling is not just about submitting your software to a software download site, although that's quite important. Press releases can be sent via www.dpdirectory.com, who only receive $89 for ASP members. When I was using it for the first time, it brought me at least 100 extra sales, and even after six months it was playing its magic. Also, if your site doesn't get at least dozens of visits a day from a search engine, you should take a good look at Dave Collins's article on search engines. You should at least maintain a good relationship with more than 10 of software commentators, and if not, treat it as a goal. A commentator friend can bring you a lot of benefits. In a few months, I have established a relationship with some software commentators, and I owe them to at least hundreds of of the sales. Host a regular game on your website. It hardly requires money, but it keeps bringing new visits. Every month there are hundreds of of people in my game, just to win an old Windows 3.1 game. Don't underestimate the power of the game.

There is no reason to have a mailing list. If you don't have it now, build one today. In just a few minutes you can create a mailing list via www.listbot.com. Listbot provides you with comprehensive mailing list management capabilities, and you can even collect subscriber information if you wish. I send a very simple email through it every month, not even for 30 minutes. And each time after I issued a few days, my site visits and sales will show a significant increase. And as the newcomers continue to join, each period becomes more effective. adjourned

* Steve Pavlina is the president of the ASP and CEO of Dexterity software company.

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[ZZ] my software promotion success [/ZZ] write it down, take a closer look at it later.
Original sticker: http://community.csdn.net/Expert/topic/4697/4697489.xml?temp=.8771784

I, like everyone else, turned out to be just an ordinary programmer, earning a living by working for a software company. Later felt this long-term dry without any future, although now young can also work overtime to eat, after the old age how to do? I heard that many people do their own work each year by sharing software can earn hundreds of thousands of, why can't I? relied on their own technology, and at that time already had the idea of mature software, I resigned to join the sharing software this line when.
Through more than six months of hard day and night, software has finally been compiled. Because I feel that their software function is relatively new, programming technology is also very good, think as long as a release will everyone to seize the registration to buy, can also be like those who share the software as the author of the same month sit tens of thousands of yuan, the result is I imagine, in the first year after the release, only 1 people registered, only to the poor dozens of. I just realized the importance of software promotion-we as a technical staff, often heavy technical light marketing, the result is no good software is also because no one knows and can only be narcissistic. I am at this time on the Internet to search for software promotion articles, domestic data on the Sharing software forum abroad to check, but also combined with their own in the actual promotion of the experience and lessons constantly improve their promotion skills, slowly in the second year of software promotion has a preliminary improvement, got more than 1000 yuan. After a few years in the field of shared software, it is now nearly million yuan monthly. Although the money is not enough for those who share the bull, it is a good idea. In order to avoid the programmers to take a lot of detours like I did, now put their own lessons to write, to everyone in the software promotion of a little revelation.

First, the requirements of the software itself.

Perhaps people will find it strange, not to say software how to promote it? How can you tell the requirements of the software itself?
In fact, it is not surprising that high-rise buildings lie in a solid foundation. Do not have a good software products and to talk about what promotion, do not say that there are few successful, even if the promotion out, the customer will have the feeling of being deceived after the hand, returns and refunds, coupled with the negative publicity of your software will make you burn.
So what is a good piece of software? First of all, your software should be novel and unique, there is no other software and everyone needs the function. One of the problems that many programmers often make is that they like to start out with their own technology, weave things they like, or simply flaunt their programming skills. In fact, as a user, they do not understand and do not care about what the advanced programming technology used in your software, they are concerned about the software can bring themselves what useful things. Some programmers do not have their own unique ideas, always follow the line, a see what software on the network hot, and immediately imitation, now is not the popularity of QQ, he also compiled a chat software; not FlashGet is very popular, he also with a download software. This kind of software can be sold out only to blame it.
My experience here is that if you don't know what kind of software you want to sell, you're going to have to think about it from the perspective of a normal computer user. To all from the user's concept, to start from the user's requirements, as long as the user needs the function, that is afraid of software only this one function, as long as the other people's software has not been included, you here have the possibility of success. For example, Zhou Yi's MP3 CD Maker, the function is not complex, but we need this function, and many of the popular software, such as Nero, and so on, so he can get into the tens of thousands of dollars.
What's more, the software itself must be as perfect as possible, that is, there are no obvious bugs. Now there are a lot of people in the software has not been tested in the case of the urgent release, the results of the use of people everywhere is a problem, such software to the user's impression is very poor, will only cause great negative impact on the software. My experience is that the software is ready for at least two months of testing. Not only do you want to thoroughly test, but also to your relatives and friends around the test, of course, can be handed to the ordinary user testing is better. Maybe you would say that people would be willing to do this? My experience is that just promise to give them the official version of the registration code for free after the test, and they are happy to test it for you.

Second, the common method of software popularization

First of all, of course, is to publish your software to large-scale software download site, such as Huajun Software Park, Sky Software station, and so on those hundreds of small download sites, there is no need to publish a one. At the outset, I also want to publish in these small software download stations, but there are many pages that do not publish software at all. Some give an email address even if good (but I use e-mail post software also like Niniuruhai, heard), some simply have a QQ number. In fact, as far as I observe, as long as you in the Chinese military Software Park, Sky Software station and other successful release, there will be a lot of software download site also reproduced. This is good, save me a lot of time.
Second, it is to create a website specifically for your software. Perhaps you would say, I have already posted the software to other sites? Why bother to make a website. The reason is very simple, other people's website is someone else's, you must also have a special website to promote, and this site is also responsible for collecting user feedback, and more importantly: sharing software in the service, you also rely on this site to your software users to provide technical support and other services. In particular, it is important to note that your site should be very professional, so that users will be able to enter your site after the impression that you have strong technical ability. Do not think that you are doing software, do not know how to make a website, just casually create a deal with the incident. I have a friend, download a software trial once wanted to buy a formal version, can enter the author's humble web page, there is no desire to buy. Because your website is poorly done, it's easy to think about your programming skills and services. So, poor websites not only can not promote your software, but also may be the opposite of your potential customers.
In fact, since you can make up the software, to design a website should not be what many difficult things, the key is that you do not willing to work hard. If you really don't have time to learn how to write a webpage, spend some money and ask a dedicated web design company to make one for you. Perhaps you will say, I do not have the money to do. Here, I call you a secret recruit (I easily will not teach others), to the large download site download ranking Top 10 software in the official website to find a most in line with your software style, with FrontPage to copy the entire page, the text and pictures for you, and retain the original site layout and CSS style , such a professional software promotion site was born. This trick I also used in the beginning, but later I learned the site design knowledge, and constantly improve and improve, already more than the original site of others are more professional.
After the site has, it is not the end of everything, the website itself has a problem of promotion. According to your software, design some keywords, use these keywords in the title of your website and the content of the site, so that others in the use of these keywords in search engines such as Google, can quickly find your site. Of course, the promotion of the site is not the topic we have to discuss here, you should be able to easily find this information on the Web. If you can do the keyword about your software to the first page of Google search results, then congratulations, you are not far from success.
Thirdly, it is about the advertising of software. Some people will say, it is very simple, find a large flow of web sites such as Sina, NetEase, in the above advertising propaganda do not have. Yes, if you can afford to pay $ tens of thousands of a month for advertising, of course, that's understandable. But if you have a monthly income of tens of thousands of yuan, I would not need to rely on the sharing software to eat. In fact, advertising is very learned, not just the traffic size of the site, but to the potential users of your software to set the situation. The key is that you have to carefully analyze the site of the browser is what kind of people, if the same as the potential user base of your software, even if the site traffic is not particularly large, you can also advertise on it. This way you don't spend a lot of money, but in the middle of your target audience, the effect of advertising is very good. I have an industry application software, initially in the general software download station to advertise, but found that the effect is not good, because these users just to find some common system tools software, not interested in my software. Later I found that there is a software business network Http://www.bizsofts.com browser and my software's user base match, on this site to advertise. Advertising is a type of text, in the website "hot-selling Software" column, because the column appears in the software information on all pages, so the number of views. The most important is the advertising costs are not expensive, only 100 yuan per month, the effect is very good after the release of advertising. Now there are people doing Google AdWords text ads, but I haven't tried them yet.

Third, how to push the software overseas

Your software has been promoted in the country, or to go overseas? The answer is yes. Due to the domestic existence of anti-piracy activities such as the problem of weak, you worked hard to work out the results of the labor, to others cracked may be all wasted. So at home to prevent the software is cracked is a major issue, to deal with the problem of cracking I left to the next point to speak carefully. And in foreign countries, because of piracy and crack the intensity of the attack, in addition to the user's sense of authenticity is generally higher than the domestic, so pay to register to buy more people. Therefore, it is necessary for your software to be promoted abroad. As far as I am concerned, most of the software revenue now comes from overseas users.
The first step in promoting software overseas is similar to that in China, as well as submitting software to a large software download site. There are two major download sites abroad: One is www.download.com and the other is www.tucows.com. And the domestic software station is different, the release of the software on the download.com to charge, each submitted once to receive $79, update once also charged $79. If you really want to push the software overseas, the money can't be saved. Because Download.com is too hot, truly is the world's first software download station, if not published here, you will lose more than half software users. Another software download site tucows.com, although it is claimed to be free to publish, in fact, if you do so, you will be disappointed. I have a software, submitted to tucows.com in January, but by June has not been released, into the author management interface, is in the 8,340 software to be reviewed 1367th, perhaps a year or two after the release. Then it cost $59 to "jump the queue", and the results were released in two days.
In addition, in foreign countries are generally looking for an agent to help you collect money, send you a regular monthly check. Agent industry in foreign countries is already a very mature industry, do not worry about the agency will not give you money. Larger than the agent has: www.RegNow.com facilities The most complete agent, the need to open an account fee. www.Qwerks.com free account, it is said that the credibility of excellent. And Www.Shareit.com is also a good software agency company. There are www.RegSoft.com but it is said to reflect the general.
In addition to publishing the software to these download or proxy sites, you should also have an English-language website. If your English is not particularly good, I would advise you to find a special English friend or simply pay a professional English expert translator to publish your website again, or your site will not only play a role in promoting, but also leave a bad impression on foreign users.
For the software to go overseas, in addition to the methods described above, it is particularly important to pay attention to the feedback information of foreign users and to do well the service. I have a software released after Download.com, about one months to see a comment above, the evaluation of my software as the worst, and added a lot of comments: although he is a Czech, English is not his mother tongue, but also found that my software in English is terrible 中文版, Full of misspelled words, non-existent words and so on; In addition, after the software opened, the interface has no operation hints, do not know how to use, the function is not perfect, in the resolution of the X 768 can not be full screen display and so on. In short, my software is a useless, in his words: terrible, just terrible. At first, I felt frustrated, but then I thought carefully, why not correct the bug and upgrade the software. Since I could not find the contact of the reviewers in the download.com, I found his email address in the registrant information of the software, emailed him my corrected software, and sincerely asked him to continue correcting my mistakes. It was not long before he replied to my email, and in the mail he pointed out my other mistakes in a single line. I took this opportunity to further correct the error and upgrade the software to 2.0, making my software a big step. In short, pay attention to users of your software evaluation and criticism, and actively face the views of users, so even bad things can become a good thing.
Also in foreign countries, you will encounter someone else to buy your software and feel dissatisfied with the request for a refund. PayPal and other payment methods are not satisfied within dozens of days of the provision that can request a refund. For users who request a refund, he must be able to withdraw if he insists on retiring. So generally according to user requirements directly back to him, and told him keep my software as a gift, anyway he has got the registration code, you do nothing useless, rather to a accede. Even if he has written back and asked you to provide technical services, you should help him as much as possible. To do this, your service is really home.

Iv. how to deal with software cracking

In the domestic promotion of software, you have to face the biggest problem is the software has been cracked. Many software authors reflect that the original software was cracked before the payment of the registration of a lot of people, but after the break of the revenue straight down, even the cost will not be paid back. You think, with the free stuff, what do people pay for that money?
Here, I borrowed from a software author's anti-cracking experience: Release 1.0 version 2.0 version has been written almost. Release 1.0 version of the 1.0 version of the anti-cracking or registration algorithm to write simple to wait for others to crack. One but 1.0 of the crack, waiting for a few weeks, the weeks of time enough to make online 1.0 cracked version of the world. Then, the analysis of the process of Cracking Change 2.0 version of the algorithm (layer encryption, complex and complex), although it can not eradicate the crack but it could waste the time and endurance of the cracker! In general, a search on the Internet your software has cracked version (1.0 of) new crackers will rarely be cracked, not to mention the 2.0 version more complicated. One of my software used this method, the introduction of the January after the cracked organization cracked, open crack process and registration algorithm, and made to break the tutorial. In fact, the crack in a sense is to help me publicize the software. I launched a new version that I had written in one months and was registered as a "special edition" to confuse people who wanted to hack the version. After using the above method, at least after I updated the software a few times today still did not appear cracked. But in the online search cracked version, special edition, registration version is everywhere, but no one is true. In fact, some cracked master just want to test their ability to crack a software, will generally be targeted in the next software. But if your software becomes a tool for manual work, this is not the way it is.
In addition, technically there are some anti-cracking methods. Assuming that your registration section has 300 lines, you can divide it into 30 inline function calls (must be inline), func1 (), Func2 () ... func30 (). Put them at random into the various parts of the program, must not be put together. Do not use memcpy and other common system calls copy registration code, as much as possible to write their own, like memcpy very good writing, performance almost indifferent. After the compiled inline function expands, and the registration part is mixed with other code, it is difficult for him to write the keygen because it is almost as if it was a needle in the sea to find a useful registration part in hundreds of thousands of or even millions of assembly code. Also do not put the registration code together, assuming that your registration code is 12 bits, do not use a 12-bit array to put the registration code, you can define 12 global character variables in different places of the program, each put one, so that the registration code in memory is not continuous. It is better to encrypt the process (simple character XOR), and then decrypt the authentication. As long as the cracker cannot find the place where you have verified the end, violence and loader cracking is not possible. It is important not to use continuous memory to save the variables used for validation, as far as possible the use of the validation of temporary variables to be defined in different places in the program, and then in the verification, constantly transfer some values to other variables, to deal with violence and loader will be more effective. It is not necessary to use complex cryptographic algorithms to become a target for tracking. As long as you will register the part hidden good enough, there is no loophole, you spend 1 days writing encryption algorithm, the cracker may spend 100-1000 times the time to crack. Most people will give up. You will register to do together, just like your treasure in the modern safe, although very strong difficult to decrypt, for the unlock master two minutes to open. For some more professional crackers use the above method is also very effective, but also to avoid some low-level errors such as: Do not appear in memory directly registration code and obvious registration code comparison section do not give users too much information about registration verification, do not receive the registration code immediately after the comparison. The benefits of validating at different functions of the software are not immediately executed to the verification Code registration code, can be divided into several verification, also can be divided into several verification, can also be divided into a few layers of verification verification, you can do as much as possible to perform some useless operations, plus some like recursion, such as difficult to debug tracking code, But in it to be interspersed with the implementation of software functions of the code, or people directly jumped the past. Anyway, the less noticeable the better, the more chaotic the better.
In fact, to completely prevent the crack is also unrealistic, in addition to research on the method, in the release before the shell, and use the above mentioned method, constantly upgrade the program is also a better method.
In short, the promotion of software to get used to the technology of the software authors to take a few detours at the beginning, but as long as learning the experience of successful people, continue to learn the lessons of their failure, you will be successful. Finally, I wish you all to become a master of sharing.

Transferred from the computer business newspaper Http://www.cpw.com.cn/Article/2006-4/2006418140345692480.Htm

"Turn" shared software made $1 million, and why didn't you? && my software to promote the success of the road