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How do you promote your software?

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posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 07:58 PM
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How do you promote your software? You create an app and want to make money off of it. How do you promote and sell your product?



posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 08:07 PM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


Put them in the app stores and make them available to as many platforms and devices as you can afford to do.

Word of mouth, Facebook, Twitter are your best bets besides that. It better be a damn good app, because the competition is stiff.

~Namaste



posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 08:11 PM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


You can set up an affiliate link and let marketers sell it for you. If you plan on making several of them, you may want to research becoming an affiliate marketer, yourself.



posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 09:58 PM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


You can apply to the iTunes Store and need to meet certain criteria. Google it. I looked it up once myself. You need to be accepted as a developer. You can go to apple.com community forums for help. There's a developers forum on there.

Hope that helps and good luck!
edit on 15-2-2014 by violet because: (no reason given)


ETA
Or wherever else sells the apps. I don't know about androids.
Find a developers forum on what it relates to
edit on 15-2-2014 by violet because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 10:04 PM
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It has to be really good, a lot of apps are free. You might want to start with free or discounted for a limited time. If they love it, once they try to update it, they need to pay now. They will if it's great.
edit on 15-2-2014 by violet because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 15 2014 @ 11:09 PM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


The best way is to create a blog. Content is King. You write unique quality content. This will bring great SEO. Do it as often as possible but not at the expense of unique quality posts.

Blog about anything and everything loosely or directly related to your app. Let's say your app is about decision making. Write a blog about pop psychology on leadership. It's related enough
The more you come up with the more Google will point people to you and your page [which will include a link or reference to your app itself]. Make sure it's unique content though. That can't be stressed enough. Google is smart about that. If you rip off content your SEO will suffer.

Secondly I would say Twitter. Network. Try and and of course accumulate a high amount of followers. However, be strategic about it. Try and find people at least loosely connected to what your app is about. Then when you create a new blog for your blog site you can give a teaser about it in Twitter. Leading them back to your web site.

Here is a fantastic example of what I am saying. They blogged for a year straight and then launched their app. When they did, because of the following they acquired through blogging, they had over a hundred thousand subscribers on day one. Read about their history and study how they accomplished what they did.

How Mint Grew to 1.5 Million Users and Sold for $170 Million in Just 2 Years

www.mint.com...

"According to Patzer, the marketing plan was “Whatever we can do, basically, for cheap or for free.”

A big area that Patzer and his team turned to was content marketing. They started a personal finance blog and began building an audience for Mint.

Jason Putorti says “We focused on building out a unique personal finance blog, very content-rich, that spoke to a young professional crowd that we felt was being neglected. Eventually the blog became #1 in personal finance, and drove traffic to the app. Our app didn’t have a high viral coefficient but we had content that was. Our infographics and popular articles became regular hits on Digg, Reddit, etc.”


Put them in the app stores and make them available to as many platforms and devices as you can afford to do.

Developing it with a html5/_javascript framework will allow it to be cross platform, and negating the need to develop separately. Then Phonegap and it can be put in Apples App Store.
edit on 15-2-2014 by Lucid Lunacy because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 16 2014 @ 01:11 AM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


Get at patent on it or someone with more $$$ than you will steal it, say they made it, sell it themselves...after THEY get a patent on it if you don't.



posted on Feb, 16 2014 @ 09:05 PM
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reply to post by Lucid Lunacy
 


Thank you.

You are much help.

Better Google placement no less.



posted on Feb, 16 2014 @ 10:04 PM
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reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman
 


It would depend on where your market is, and what you hope to make.

Now, personally I would do things in this order, to get the funding out:
1. Register a trademark, or my product.
2. Make sure that I'm not using any third party tools (such as DLLs to create emails and word documents).
3. Create my own website for said product (or products).
4. Start signing up for software conventions or fairs, to promote. I'd also sign up with a company like Google for ad generation.
5. Create a trial version (30 day or limited preview). This way, they can test drive the app, and I can get feedback on how well the app functions.
6. Create a release schedule - For example, I doubt you want to be supporting multiple versions of the same product. What I would advise is that to start, make sure that you only support two versions at a time, and charge a yearly fee to begin with - after that year, offer a renewal fee that is less than a "new user" fee.

Why a year? Look at what the major software companies are doing: For example, most of your Anti-virus companies (Kaspersky, AVG, etc...), are starting to go by the year instead of a one time only price. Even Microsoft and Adobe are following this concept, as it helps to maintain support and finances (plus, it allows you to update their software easier).

7. Listen to what the user's don't like. For example, look at Facebook - not only did I (and many, many more people) not like the fact that they dumbed down the privacy settings, but they, as a company, didn't care. I'd make sure you listen, and plan on putting in those features in a future release. A Happy Sheeple is a Happy Spender

8. Assuming that app gets popular enough, keep an ear open for offers, or take on employees. This is where you get rewarded for all of your hard work - at some point, someone may offer to buy you out of your app. If you want a living example of this, take a read on Sysinternals. Basically, these guys delved so far into the Microsoft OS that Microsoft actually paid them to join up. Now, although the tools they created are free for everyone's use, they still got paid rather nicely for them...Not bad, when you're a developer
.

Now if only I'd get paid to develop Microsoft SQL Server Add-ins (of which, only a handful of companies are able to do; I did it in one week, on 2008 R2, which supposedly only three of those companies had the no-how - I did it in a week, imo).

9. Assuming I found a pirated version of my software, I'd hire someone to place a killswitch virus into a copy of my product, and then release it into the wild - nothing says "fun" like injecting your own software with a virus to prevent theft.

NOTE: To the NSA, or major companies reading #9 - please don't start getting any ideas, as I want to be the first that sends out tainted copies of my software.



-fossilera

PS: As far as keeping track of versions, you might want to consider creating license files (*.lic) to register the product. Many of the "professional tools" like Aspose or Telerik already do this, and it's gaining popularity.




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