The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Replied to you per email Steve.

[DVSOL005]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Ted, thanks for explanation. Need to check if my wife knows that one.
IAC can now be changed to IWC. I was confused!

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

UTCAA can be easily decoded:
http://abbreviations.yourdictionary.com/utcaa

But IAC?

[DVSOL005]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Googled and didn't find anything about it. My wife didn't know what it means until I explained, then she remembered the song Ted mentioned.
IAC= I am confused

[Keith Hubert]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

You should know by now that Ted is a master at Acronyms.

[seaken64]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Ted,

I'm in a similar boat as Alpha Software. Too much on the docket and not enough hands. Managing a small business is hard and there will always be something, or someone, that gets missed. Maybe they are interested in your project but just can't commit to even commenting on it right now. Maybe it got filed under "interesting but not urgent".

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

This all happens because TCSTSHL

(Ted cant spell to save his life)
Probably uses acronyms to tie his shulaisses.

Sean, I'm sure many businesses right now would love to have too much on the docket and not enough hands.
So you are one of the lucky ones.

[Ted Giles]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Doesn't Ray converse well for a "colonial"!
Try this:
I have a spell in chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased to no,
It's to word perfect in it's weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew.

He doesn't wear shoes - he's a hippy. Ask him where he's been recently.

Back on thread. I have found that appealing to a client's insecurities helps sometimes and they are often too deeply involved that they fail to see the bigger picture.
They only see their bit of the diagram, so I try to help them along by a) studying their sort of business so they are not sure if I'm talking rubbish or not and b) offering the free prototyping. As I have mentioned previously, I've never had a client back out of a deal they were involved in Prototyping - it was too personal by then.

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Although this thread seems to have ended up in a cozy little pub (nothing wrong with that) I wonder what creative thoughts people have come up in order to enhance sales/turnover/orders for our development business with Alpha Software?

Of course, "a solution" should be covering "a problem", and since it seems rather obvious that several "interest groups" within the forum population (such as: independent developers, developers on payroll, developers in the USA, developers in the UK, developers in the rest of the EU etc etc) have their own "problem definition" it seems only reasonable to predict, that there must as many "solutions" as well.

Thinking about the interest group of independent developers that produce and sell off-the-shelve software (let's call them DPOS for convenience) I think a major problem is getting your software "out there". Nowadays, everyone is on internet. For software it seems like a pre-arranged marriage for it to be sold on internet. Internet stores are numerous but most internet stores can't be found easily, and none of them are doing anything for you except putting you and your product "on their list". The best they do is offer you cross-listing, and of course they would have more then one "list" for you to appear on, and you would be able to improve on your location on the list by paying for that. Experience is, that this does not do much for you, since few customers look in lists for any software that is out there and they do not yet know about to see if it would be something for them.
Your average website is not going to work either, since you are one in a trillion and unless you pay for it, you will have a hard time to get found by customers on an attractive scale.
To top it off, marketing budgets will be limited severely, if they exist at all.

There you have it.
Many good products remain unsold simply because the customer does not know about them, and the developer can't afford to get the word out big time.
A major problem for DPOS developers, since they do not only have just ONE product, but more like at least ten or dozens of them who knows.

Some organizations offer listings of their own: so does Alpha Software and so does AIDN. And although that helps (or at least does not influence sales negatively) your potential customers are not likely to look in a listing supplied by some development platform manufacturer or developers organization. They are not purchasing the development platform, and they are not purchasing the developer. They want a product and are more expected to look for any products that fit their description.

To tackle this problem:

Would it not be an idea to combine efforts to create a completely new platform for selling software, that does not focus on the developer, or the language the product is written in, but simply on the product itself (without even emphasizing that it is written in Alpha Five maybe). Maybe even under just 1 brand name.
This platform could house all of the available products for direct sale to consumers or b2b, and/or even deliver services to it for installing etc etc worldwide, in all countries where developers are located that take part in the new platform. Marketing efforts could be done on a combined scale.

Of course, this is just an idea. Much to think about, much to discuss (or not....).
But without any ideas no solution will follow either I guess.

[cptutrecht]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Hi Marcel

Would it not be an idea to combine efforts to create a completely new platform for selling software, that does not focus on the developer, or the language the product is written in, but simply on the product itself (without even emphasizing that it is written in Alpha Five maybe). Maybe even under just 1 brand name.

In Holland and Belgium there is one (as you probably know) www.softwaregids.nl and www.softwaregids.be Of course i have a listing there and also at other places.

I'm not a local supplier, but my main scope is national. For me high ranking in google.nl is much more important. For Steve's survey: would be good how many people think theire product aim's at an international scale....

I'm very happy with my listing in google.nl when a search is made for 'vastgoed software' (without marketing budget!)....

So, SEO is crucial in my opinion. Another sellingplatform would only be of importance if it would improve our listing as a group in google

[DaveM]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I kinda agree with Ger. If you notice small to major companies all over with their advertising, they make sure their .com, .org, .de, etc are very prominent in almost every ad they run in any type of media. Even a business card has the .com, etc on it. All advertising is aimed directly at the web. SEO becomes a very large part of our business.

I am also going to restate something I stated before but differently: I advertise my auto program in automotive DEALER trade papers and magazines. That alone has sold about half my production. I cannot afford to advertise in the dealer's side on cars.com or autotrader.com. They are just too expensive.

I do not spend any money advertising the free veterans Diabetic software because it is a free download. I don't even keep a good track of the downloads. I am sure it has passed 500 installs so far.

The race car application has been advertised on most of the racing sites across the nation. I won't follow that up until late January due to race schedules being rather blank until February.

Point being, SEO is super important!!! But, there are other ways too.

In most Cases, Alpha does not show up on searches I do in google over the first several pages. Then, alpha sells to private users and I am not sure they ever expected people to actually develop with it at their start. They sell a RAD solution. I do not remember large corporations being real familiar with clipper, pascal, basic, etc back in the day. I know all businesses wanted word perfect and quatro pro. They were advertised as a solution and programming languages were not.

Just memories. May mean nothing.

[Ted Giles]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I did have an idea which I floated to a few UK developers, for a site where the applications could be advertised and there would either be links to their sites or a place to download their apps.
I think we agreed that there was not enough interest - not exactly apathy - so I joined forces with one of the USA developers and I'm camping out on his site at the moment with a link that I place on all my e-mails, letters and here.
If you haven't read what Robots look for on your site, suggest you do so. Working for me.

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Of course, on this forum, the common denominator is .... together.... hence, what attracts me first is what WE can do TOGETHER to improve our INDIVIDUAL situation. That does of course not mean the things any individual can do are not important, they might very well be the MOST important for that matter, and they surely must be named. But what sets this forum apart from being just an individual is.... being a group. So what adds to these individual solutions is more what THIS GROUP can bring towards the table that it has not until now. Which does not mean we should refrain from mentioning "the obvious" (at least, for the one who mentions it, everybody else could not be aware of it!).

[mronck]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

I did have an idea which I floated to a few UK developers, for a site where the applications could be advertised and there would either be links to their sites or a place to download their apps.
I think we agreed that there was not enough interest - not exactly apathy - so I joined forces with one of the USA developers and I'm camping out on his site at the moment with a link that I place on all my e-mails, letters and here.
If you haven't read what Robots look for on your site, suggest you do so. Working for me.

Did you find out WHY they UK developers where that lacking of interest? Was it maybe a matter of cost, or did they not see a benefit in it? Or (for example) are they mostly hobby-developers would could care less since they live on a pension anyway (to just name something) ? Why the lack of interest in your idea?

[DaveM]

Re: The Business End of Alpha Software for independent developers

Actually, Ted,

That is not a bad idea. IADN does a bit of this. It could be an alpha type site or an open developers site. I like it.

Doesn't cost much per year. I currently pay about 60.00(cost would be a great deal more if powered by alpha was) a year for a hosting account that includes the .com name. If there were enough people involved that can send a bit of traffic there for their downloads, it could work. say, as little as 100 people sending only 20 people a year would be very good. If I sent 20 people there to download my product, maybe they would see something of yours and want that too. Or, need a developer to make something. If each person who got a sale/job out of it would contribute a bit, the whole thing could be a non-cost to the users. NitPick stuff would have to be worked out. That does not mean we would not maintain our own sites, but a separate site owned by all the members/users.

Who would be in to something like this??? Give some input??? You can email me at [email protected] if it would be better for you.