ЪДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДї
і HomeCraft's Small Business Journal іЫ
і SPECIAL ISSUE іЫ
і The 1992 Summer Shareware Seminar іЫ
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ЪДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДДї
і EXPERIENCED TRACK SESSIONS іЫ
і іЫ
і Hints From The Pros II іЫ
і іЫ
і Part I іЫ
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MODERATOR: All right, everybody. We've got an all-star panel for
"Hints from the Pros II". This is, by far, the largest panel, and to
make it manageable we're going to split it in half and change
panels mid-stream. This particular session goes on until 5:00.
There will be a break at 4:15. This panel is also the most fun of
all the panels because it's a free-for-all. Most of the sessions
will basically be open to the floor. There will be some discussion
of topics varying from stem to stern of the shareware industry, and
you'll be able to get some advice, maybe, or some secrets from the
guys that are arguably leaders in the field.
I'd like to introduce the panel. What we'll do is start at my far
left and each person can introduce themselves.
BOB WALLACE: I'm Bob Wallace from QuickSoft. We do PC-WRITE.
We've been doing that since 1983.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: Paris Karahalios from Trius, Inc. We're the
developers of AS-EASY-AS and DRAFT TOYS, and we've been in the
business since 1986.
JIM PERKINS: My name is Jim Perkins. I'm with FormGen and Gold
Medallion software. At FormGen, we're developers and publishers of
FormGen Plus, FormGen Fill, and Procopy and DUP. We're also the
marketers for Commander Keen and the Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter, and
the pending Wolfenstein game.
At Gold Medallion we are shareware rack vendors.
KEN McGINNIS: My name's Ken McGinnis. I'm with Expressware
Corporation. Expressware was started in '84. We have five
products, our File Express, our database program. We have the
Express Calc Spreadsheet. We have Express Check home checkbook/
business checkbook application. We have On Side, which is for
sideways printing. And Express Graphic, a business graphics
package. I'm the Vice President of Expressware.
SCOTT MILLER: Hi, I'm Scott Miller. I'm with Apogee Software
Productions. We publish games.
MODERATOR: All right. The intent of the session, of course, is to
allow people in the industry to have access to some of the more
well-known authors and companies in the business. Perhaps to
discuss business issues, marketing issues; perhaps to ask for hints
or tips that are useful in overcoming some of the hurdles that
they've faced in the past.
Basically, there's a number of areas that all of these companies
are involved in. There's marketing and sales; there's production;
there's financing; there's staff and support; and all of these
areas are open for this particular session. I guess I have a few
questions I'd like to ask the panel to start with.
I'd like to talk about the importance of product quality, and the
importance of programming, and I guess the quality of programming
in the products. Would someone like to lead off in that area?
BOB WALLACE: Sure. Quality is very important, which means
testing. If you're the programmer, you really want someone else in
charge of testing because, subconsciously, there are areas of the
program that are weak that you avoid. Or areas you just don't
think about. Obviously, if you think something might happen then
you'll program for it. It's the things you don't think about that
can hit you.
So you need a testing program, and get everybody in the company
doing it. All the employees and everybody you can find. That's
alpha-testing. In beta-testing, it's important to have a group.
We usually have 120-130 people who are enthusiastic about your
product who can do testing.
Building and debugging code is useful.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: If I may expand on what Bob said: I think ten
years ago you could write a mediocre program and, if you marketed
it correctly, you might be successful. But now both retail and
shareware markets have become so competitive that, besides
marketing the product very well, the product probably has to be
very fast, very efficient, very good; and then you have to market
it to make it successful. So things have changed. Shareware is no
longer, "Okay, it's not as good as the retail, but at least it's not
as expensive." That is not holding any more. That was something
that people used as a reason to buy shareware - not any more.
ANOTHER PANELIST: It's also important, in order to put bread on the
table, you've got to put the product out. So you want to test that
product, set a date for delivery, and make sure that you meet that
delivery date. And it's always good, from a marketing standpoint,
to make sure your developers understand that you've set up press
releases; you've announced to the public your gonna release this
product; and that you've tested it sufficiently many weeks before you
release it - not many hours before you release it. It's critical
that you do release it. Don't forget that you have to do that.
KEN McGINNIS: I'd like to add to that. All of our products go
through beta-testing where we use a lot of our customers. We
collect the names as time goes by - the people who call with a lot
of questions or report problems. We'll ask them if they want to be
added to our beta-test list. We'll send out about 100 copies --
that's about how many beta sites we have for each product -- and
several months of letting them use the program really helps a lot.
They find things that you just don't even think about testing.
Like our database program, File Express. It's a fairly large piece
of code. The EXE size would be about 1.2 MEG, so there's a lot of
code. With only ten people in our company, we use it a lot. All
our Tech Support, they use it. I guess testing is really important
to us, because, if it gets out there and it's slow and there are
people finding problems, it comes back right away. It can hurt
you a lot, if you don't have good software when it first goes out.
MODERATOR: Some of the other things I'd like to ask about have to
do with marketing techniques or revenue opportunities. I think
everybody in this room is probably aware that it's a good idea to
get your shareware out there, to get people to use it, and to get
them to send you a registration fee. But there's many other things
that companies can be doing to generate revenue. Things that will
put dollars in your pocket or cash in the bank for you to use to
operate your company. I wonder if the panel has any comments on
things they've done outside of the traditional area in shareware.
BOB WALLACE: Recently, we've been doing a lot of direct mail work
using lists from other shareware companies. We find that, if a
mail order customer is registered with a shareware product, they're
willing to be amiable with other shareware authors. So that's
something I'd recommend, getting together with other shareware
companies and sending out offers.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: Well, one of the things we've done - I see a
lot of messages on Compuserve and I hear a lot of authors
complaining, for example, that not enough registrations are coming
in from Europe or from the other continents. So one of the things
we did very early on was to cover the foreign markets, for many
reasons. This way we would be the first kids on the block, so to
speak - one of the few shareware products that would strongly
market themselves in Europe and other markets. So do not forget
the foreign market. It's very important.
JIM PERKINS: One of the things I touched on at the last session was
to make sure you're exploring all the opportunities that your
product offers. There's more than just a handful of customers out
there that are looking for your product. What I mean by customers
is possibly the people that would license your technology to
incorporate into other products. So we have gone out as FormGen
and found other people that need our technology in their product.
They don't feel like writing it themselves. Our technology is
incorporated into some products that everyone knows about here.
It's not widely advertised, but that technology brings us some very
profitable revenues every month. So make sure that you're offering
your technologies to everyone out there that has a need for it.
KEN McGINNIS: Talking about the international market. It's been
kind of a thing that as Expressware we were really successful here
in the States. Our company was growing. With five products we
spread ourselves out - we're always working on some product to get
another release out the door. And rather than focusing in on the
international business, I think that we probably missed a fair
share of the marketplace. That's something that, over this last
year, we've been working hard on doing: working on foreign
language versions.
One of the things that we have is distributors in other countries,
such as England and Australia. Some of the things that we do to
help support them is that all of our products have an opening
shareware screen - kind of a reminder screen - and when they quit
the program another reminder screen pops up. In our software now,
those screens guide the shareware people in England to go to our
distributor there in England to register the product through them.
I think it's going to make registrations for the foreign countries
and the foreign people easier. I look forward to seeing
Expressware doing better in the foreign market. It's a whole new
market and area that's been neglected, other than the American
copies that are there.
The other end of that is going into the translation and actually
coming out with a German version, and a French version, and Spanish
version. This is something that we're working on now also.
MODERATOR: Scott?
SCOTT MILLER: On the subject of incentives, I think that to be
successful you need to have a good incentive for people to register
your program. I find it hard to believe that people, even honest
people, are there to register software that they have in their
hands already. As an example of this, a friend and I went to a
parking lot the other day and we left our car in the parking lot.
It's one of those parking lots where you pay $3.00 and put it in an
envelope. We didn't see that little envelope thing there until we
came back, and it was very tempting not to go ahead and stick that
$3.00 into the envelope and stick it in the box. No one was there,
it was after 5:00, we could have very easily left. There's a very
strong urge for people not to pay for what they already have in
hand. I think you really need to come up with some creative and
compelling incentives for people to want to register your product.
MODERATOR: Scott, could you also elaborate on something you did
quite well, and that is you have a lot of international
distribution. You seem to have put a lot of emphasis onto finding
local distributors in almost all of the English language countries.
SCOTT MILLER: We've been very fortunate in that we've been sought
out more than we've had to seek out. I think Shareware Magazine
has quite a list of foreign distributors that distribute PC-SIG
products. Those are people you might want to contact. You might
look at what other big authors or successful shareware programs
have listed in their products and seek those people out and see if
they would be interested in distributing your product. You might
look at the foreign distributors at Apogee, listed in all of our
games, and write them a letter to see if they're someone that might
want to distribute your product also. You can find these places
everywhere.
MODERATOR: Thanks.
Does anybody here have any comments they want to make about the
biggest headaches they have in their business, or mistakes that
they've made in the past that perhaps other people would want to
avoid?
BOB WALLACE: I think the biggest mistakes you can make -- we made
them -- are first: hiring the wrong people, and second: not hiring the
right people. The hardest people to hire, I've found, are
marketing managers. I think it's because you can't always judge
them by their appearances -- because, if they're good, they appear
good. But I've had just terrible luck with people who claim to be
marketing managers that were total flakes. I did have one very
good one. Good marketing managers are much more analytical than
you might think at first.
The problem we've had with not hiring was just not hiring a
President soon enough and my not letting go soon enough and going
back to programming.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: No mistakes here. <<Laughter>>
No, I'm sure I wouldn't have to think for too long for a whole list
of things that we could have done better or should have done in the
first place. I think one of the biggest mistakes we made is
delaying an upgrade for one of products for about two years. That
is the biggest mistake you can make. If you don't keep your
product in front of your customer's eyes and you don't capitalize
on the fact that you have a number of registered users that most
likely will upgrade, you're making the biggest mistake. We did
that once, but we've learned now.
I think, typically, eight to twelve months is a good time for an
upgrade, and estimates will vary but we found that to be a good
time period.
JIM PERKINS: Well, I don't care to share any mistakes that we've
made. << Smile >> We've made a number of mistakes. I think one
of the most important things that you have to remember is, you have
to keep your customers informed about what you're doing. And if
you don't keep them informed about what you're doing, they're going
to look for other products that will do something that your product
apparently doesn't do.
The other thing is to not concentrate necessarily on chasing a
commercial product that you see as an industry leader. Offer
something different. We've spent and did spend, and some others
spend, a lot of time chasing some very large or comparably large
competitors in their market. It's just plain not worth it. Those
competitors - you don't know what's going on behind the scenes
with them, but if they're adding more and more features to get a PC
magazine review, or to have the most features of any product in the
product comparison, you may be making a big mistake. It's more
important for you to find some important features your customers
like. Go after those, make sure that they're the best in the
industry and don't worry so much about what those guys are doing.
In a lot of cases, those guys are losing a tremendous amount of
money, whereas you can make a lot of money going after the
customers that have spent money with you already.
KEN McGINNIS: I guess running your own business ... I guess every day
there's mistakes that can be made. I think some of the big ones
that affect your customers are the ones to try to avoid.
This morning Bob said that running out of manuals and having a 30-
day window where there's no products being shipped ... that can really
hurt a company. I think planning and keeping things going in those
ways are really important.
Another thing mentioned is waiting on your upgrades. File Express,
in going from version four to version five, took us almost three
years. It was just way too long. It was kind of announced almost
a year earlier. It should have been out, but because of other
products - we had to squeeze in an upgrade to Express Check and
some other things. Some of the customers were calling and were
asking. Don't ever tell them when you're releasing your next
version because, just do it, work on it harder and try to get your
products out faster. Otherwise I think you lose a big market share
if you don't work on it really hard and keep your products
upgraded, because the upgrades are great. There's a lot of money
tied into those upgrades to keep your company going, and your
business running.
SCOTT MILLER: We've made three big mistakes. First one is,
initially we didn't get a big enough P.O. Box. It doesn't cost
that much to get a big one from the start, so I would recommend
doing it. Another one is, we didn't get ourselves a logo until
recently. I don't know why it took so long, but I think it's
important to establish some sort of company identity with a logo,
so I would recommend getting one. And the third one was... The
third one was that I forgot to write it down.
MODERATOR: That's okay Scott. Actually, it's kind of interesting
that a lot of the stories you've heard are fairly common throughout
the industry in companies big and small and in other industries as
well. I feel that one of the biggest mistakes happening in our
industry is that, as we're programmers by nature, we know that it's
relatively easy for us to program and we tend to do the easiest
things first. I don't know how many people I've met over the years
that said things to me like, "Well, I can't send you the latest
version right now because I've got one more bug to fix" or "I'm
just going to add a new feature, and in a few weeks it's going to
be even better." It's because they're focusing on their
programming and they're forgetting to sell their product. That's
certainly the largest mistake in my opinion in the shareware
business. Because, if you don't sell your product, you're not
going to survive at all.
All right, during the rest of the time up until 4:00, I would like
people to be able to ask their own questions as well. So feel
free during the discussion, at any time, to come to the microphone,
and you can get us off in a new direction I may not have thought of.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Something we haven't talked about today is
Procomm, for example. They're very successful. They were out when
all the modems were sold in the market, I guess, bundling. Without
going into detail of what we might do or anyone else might do,
what's your opinion on bundling?
MODERATOR: That's a very good point. Does anybody on the panel
have some experience they want to share?
BOB WALLACE: We've done some of that. Communication programs are
particularly good for shareware - and also any program that helps
a particular piece of hardware - so a modem and a communication
program, a laser printer and a font program, or something like that
is useful.
Bundling deals are worth going after. You can actually start by
saying, "We want $10.00 a copy for every copy you give out," and
then you go down to $5.00 a copy, then you go down to, "Well, why
don't you just put a copy of our shareware disk on your machine?"
and then you can say, "Well, actually, we'll pay you a quarter a
piece if you put..."
SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: That's the question, I guess. If it
goes down to that and the thought process is, for example: use a
laptop company. There's more laptops going out there. It makes
more sense to even buy them nowadays, instead of a desktop - in
some cases. If you can get your software on there -- obviously if
you have commercial packaging and you can use that -- it helps them
as a promotion. Maybe they'll buy it from you for $5.00 a package
and you hope to put it on all of their systems. Obviously it
helps. Everyone who buys a laptop is already a money spender, and
they're happy to buy your products, especially if you have an
upgrade to go to. But if you can't get that, maybe the next step
is try to get the shareware on there. And hopefully, you'll have
a good enough impact for that to happen.
MODERATOR: Jim, do you have some comments on that?
JIM PERKINS: Well, I think that bundling can lead to some other
things as well. It may lead to licensing your whole product to
somebody who thought they might want to bundle the product with
their product, but may discover that your product is very, very
good and is comparable to the line that they've got already. They
may want to package it up as an individual product, spend the money
on terrific packaging, advertising, PR, whatever the case may be.
Then go and sell it as their own product, put their name on it and
sell it as their own product. And there's nothing wrong with that,
because you've already done the development, you've already done
manuals, and you could put the product into millions of more
locations, literally millions of more locations, as a result of
their marketing power. So the bundle can lead to that as well.
Everybody knows that FormGen -- various versions of FormGen Fill
and FormGen II can be purchased in the range of $9.95 to $279.00.
Of course, there's a value relationship there, but we only carry
three of the 22 form products out there ourselves. For the rest,
the work is done by somebody else. So consider that when you're
considering bundling as well.
MODERATOR: So, you're talking about licensing.
SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: I have another question. How do you
approach these companies? You have to obviously select something
like laptop people or whatever. How do you approach them?
MODERATOR: Let me just interject here before he answers that.
There's a couple of strategies for bundling that you may want to
consider, if you're going to get into bundling deals.
One is that you may want to go after bundling as an idea to
generate direct revenue. Which means that the bundling agent
actually pays you a price for each copy that he puts in and you
derive your revenue from that fashion. The other side is using the
bundling agent as a vehicle to put your software in the hands of
more people -- where you do not charge them anything for doing the
bundling, but you make your money back in registrations or some
other method after the fact.
Those two strategies are quite diverse, and the fact is that many
of the hardware products in the computer businesses right now are
very much becoming commodity products. And selling a deal where
you're going to derive direct revenue can be very, very difficult,
because it means that the marketing manager on the other side - and
the hardware company - has to face a situation where he's going to
reduce the amount of profit he has in order to get the sales. Or
he may have to raise his price, which is highly undesirable.
So, if you're going to approach it in that way, you're not likely
to meet up with the same kind of success as the second way. But
you will have to put some strategy in place to make sure that you
are going to derive some revenue in the second half. Sorry, now,
Jim or does somebody want to...
BOB WALLACE: You were wondering who to approach. You know who I
would approach is: either look for the title "Product Manager" or
Marketing Manager".
PARIS KARAHALIOS: If I can expand a little bit on that. On the two
types of bundling that you're talking about, Randy, we always try
to bundle our fully registered packages, with hardware. Although
we don't totally abstain from it, we shy away from bundling
shareware copies. Simply because shareware has a problem. Let's
say someone buys a shareware copy, they feel they own it or they
bought it. It's true more so, I believe, with bundling. If
someone buys a hardware system and there's a shareware diskette
there, the user gets a strong feeling of having bought the
software. So when we do it, we make sure that the hardware vendor
clearly explains the shareware concept. It's very important.
MODERATOR: All right. Does anybody else have something to add to
that? Okay, next question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I'm Ward Mundy. We have a database
called Wampum. You stole all my thunder. If I could have a dollar
for every mad buyer of a PC that has called us because they got an
early version of Wampum, that blew up on a PC that they bought -
and the dealer told them that they owned all the software on the PC
- I'd be sitting up there instead of out here. But I would think
long and hard before I entered into any other bundling agreement
for a shareware product. Not to discourage any particular vendor,
but they do what they can to sell their hardware and they're not
real careful in describing where the software came from or what the
terms of use are.
MODERATOR: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that, and that's, I think,
why you need a strategy for generating the revenue for the second
side.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: And Randy, you said that if someone has to pay
you even 25 cents, the person who's selling the hardware has to
give you a portion of his profit. Well, that's true, but you have
to convince him that by allowing you to distribute a shareware copy
- in those few instances where you will authorize it - they are
adding value to their system. So it makes their system more
desirable than the system sold over the next person.
MODERATOR: All right, next question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Scott, I wonder if you would follow up on
your comments about getting people to send in money - register -
for something they perhaps already feel they own. What incentives
have worked for your company?
SCOTT MILLER: It's pretty generally well known that what we do is
release games in three parts. Releasing the first part in
shareware, which is sort of a hook technique. If they like that
game, they can order the remaining two parts. That's probably the
key to our success. I think there are ways that it can be applied
to other types of software. It might take a whole panel to discuss
all the ways, but that's the trick to our success.
I think that, if there's some way to add extra functionality or
add-ons or something -- just so there's a good reason for the user
to want to register and get extra goodies.
MODERATOR: Next question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I do software, by the way. I want to get
...<< unintelligible >>... what you expect from us as
a vendor in bundling to let that customer know exactly how you want
..<< unintelligible >>... We put our notice out front just like
in our catalog, but I'd like a little more in particular what you --
how would you like us to present it to the customer?
MODERATOR: What kind of software bundling do you do?
PERSON ON THE FLOOR: I work with Bernoulli Disk. Are you familiar
with it?
MODERATOR: Yes.
PERSON ON THE FLOOR: We buy a Bernoulli drive and our shareware
disk is what comes with the product.
MODERATOR: So you're providing a shareware bundle, basically, with
a Bernoulli drive?
PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Right...
MODERATOR: I see. And your question is, what would the shareware
community like to see?
PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Exactly.
PARIS KARAHALIOS: If you're interested - as a matter of fact after
the meeting I can give you a copy - we have developed a
standard agreement that we have everybody who bundles Shareware
copies sign with us. That very clearly specifies what we expect
from that vendor.
MODERATOR: What are the highlights of the agreement, Paris?
PARIS KARAHALIOS: Okay. For example, just like for a disk vendor,
we want to clearly have some sort of printed documentation with the
system that explains the shareware concept.
PERSON ON THE FLOOR: It actually comes with the disk?
PARIS KARAHALIOS: Absolutely, absolutely. With a hardware package,
whatever it is. We make sure that, for example, they don't put it
underneath some menu program so that our opening screen is bypassed,
or it's very obscure, or whatever.
MODERATOR: That hides the Shareware...
PARIS KARAHALIOS: Absolutely, that hides the shareware to our
customer. These are very simple things, but unless you clearly
state what you expect, you cannot enforce them. But I'll give you
a copy if you're interested.
BOB WALLACE: One thing we've done occasionally, which I think can
work well, is going to the shareware company -- if you're not
buying a lot of shareware -- just a few things -- and work out a deal
where we would send you a master of a coupon. A letter saying,
"Thanks for using our evaluation copy. We'll give you $10.00 off
the registration price because you were so good to buy a Bernoulli
Box. But you must do it by..." some cut-off date. Include a
coupon, and that subtly explains this was only an evaluation copy;
you have to send the money in to get it. But that can be a good
call to action on the customer's part.
ANOTHER PANELIST: And that's good perceived value, too. They may
perceive that they aren't getting much value by getting shareware
on that disk when there isn't a special coupon involved or some
discounts involved. With a coupon, they feel like they're getting
something of value, and obviously, you'll sell more disks.
MODERATOR: Next question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I'd like to go back to the incentives for
the shareware buyer. What does the panel think of the idea of
fixing the program so that at some point or under some
circumstances, he gets a message on the screen that says, "You can
keep on using this program. It will do anything you want it to do.
Except after this particular file, give us a call and we'll show
you how to reload it." Or something like that.
MODERATOR: Now there's a question.
BOB WALLACE: It's a good marketing approach. I wouldn't call it
Shareware.
MODERATOR: Yeah, okay, do you want to elaborate on that just a
bit, Bobby, because I think...
BOB WALLACE: In shareware, the principal is that you get fully
running software, and people do...
FROM THE FLOOR, INTERRUPTING: I can argue with that...
People put out what they call their shareware version, and then the
incentives are for the "real thing" where you've got color
management, and you've got file management; we've got 18 other
facilities that we'll send you with the manual,...
BOB WALLACE: Well, you're talking about a time limit, or number of
uses limit, or something like that?
FROM THE FLOOR: Yeah, well, at some point, obviously, you're in
some position where the user is accidentally using the package...
MODERATOR: I don't know if there is a definitive answer to that
question. I think there may be some validity to such a strategy,
but I can say that to my knowledge none of the main producers of
shareware use that kind of technique. Certainly none of the large
companies that are represented by this panel use techniques of that
sort, and I'd have to correlate those two facts together to
conclude that may not be the right thing to do.
BOB WALLACE: There's a subtle psychological thing. It would be
easy to get around, obviously, just get another copy, and then the
counter is reset to zero. But in a more subtle way, it sets up a
game between you and the user saying, "Okay, well, I'm going to try
and stop you from using this." And the user says, "Oh, well, I can
get around that." Some of the shareware users are sophisticated
enough to get around that. It kind of loses the very open - we're
depending on the honesty approach.
One thing, as far as incentives and crippling and things like that:
we fell into it accidentally and I don't know what to think
about it. We wanted a Thesaurus in our word processor. We don't
have time to develop a Thesaurus, you can't do that from scratch.
So we went to Houghton-Mifflin and said, "Oh, we want to buy your
Thesaurus and license it." And they said, "Okay, fine," and then
we told them we're a shareware product, and they said, "Well, we
don't really want you to put it on shareware. Your license doesn't
really extend that far." The product comes on four disks and then
there's a fifth that has the thesaurus stuff. And the fifth disk
isn't shareware. We would make it shareware if we could. But it
is a subtle form of crippling, I guess, but it's one that...
COMMENT FROM THE FLOOR, DIFFERENT PERSON: Actually, the term that
come to mind is Hostageware, as you described it. We've got your
file and if you want it, call this number and we'll tell you how to
get at it.
BOB WALLACE: Well, there's that approach. I'm talking about more
functional limits. The other thing that people do, fairly often,
is say, "Okay, if what you get is complete and runs well, and you
can use it, most people will consider that shareware. And then if
you register, you get something else which is not shareware, a
separate product." So it's different than a product that can't
print or every time you print the header says, "You owe us money."
There's a difference between, if you have something that is useful
and is a good product, then that's important.
ANOTHER PANELIST: I think that's the key, and I also think that -
personally - if you list your restrictions up front and not
surprise the user, you're not going to piss them off. By listing
your restrictions up front and making sure that your program can be
very well evaluated, and I think adding more functions to the
program later on -- I think that it's a very reasonable marketing
strategy.
MODERATOR: All right, next question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Momentarily I'm going into the
lease/rental business, and of course, the future market's in
CD-ROMS.
There's not one major disk vendor like PC-SIG, Public Brand, that
has not put out their CD-ROM disk only to find out that an
individual either had or was going commercial - and they take them
back. But once those items are pressed, you people represent
those 400 programs in shareware. Once that thing is cut on a CD-
ROM, it's in there. It's locked in. You change your mind about
what you want to do -- you know, that can really get around. I
don't think I'd sell it.
MODERATOR: And the question is, sir?
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: The question is: I intend to bundle CD-
ROMS with the machines. They're going to be complete information
systems. If you decide to change your ware in the future, where
does that leave me? Subject to a law suit?
PARIS KARAHALIOS: I don't think that what you're posing is a
problem. If you have version three of our software and you include
it in CD-ROM, and we decide that version six or version five is not
shareware anymore, that does not affect version three that you have
on your CD-ROM. That is still shareware.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Well, at the present time in CD-ROM's
Denmark has put out some of the PC-SIG, ROM 8's. And Magnavox,
they continue to sell CD-ROM 10, which is PC-SIG. And that's got
about 2,700 programs.
MODERATOR: We're down to four minutes, sir. Maybe you could let
someone else ask a question.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: Okay, but do you get
anything when you put your shareware on CD-ROM?
MODERATOR: No.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: You don't get a penny?
MODERATOR: No.
SAME PERSON FROM THE FLOOR: Well, that's something I didn't know.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, NEW PERSON: I'd like to make a comment to
the gentleman who was talking about time-limited programs. One of
the big reasons that we're all in shareware is because we don't pay
for advertising. As you all know, advertising is very expensive.
And the advertising that we do have are the vendors, the articles
you read about shareware. But most important, the biggest
advertising that we have is your customer. And a happy customer
tells other people about it. I'm amazed at the number of
registrations I get that are not from direct downloads or anything.
They're people who call me up and I ask, "Where did you hear about
our products?" They say, "From so-and-so." I write them down in
my book and look them up later in my database and I've never heard
of so-and-so. And I don't care about it either. Because that man
loves the program, he tells his friends and associates about it,
and that's the way shareware works.
MODERATOR: The conclusion being that the recommender was an
unregistered user, is that correct?
FROM THE FLOOR: Right. Correct. Fifty percent of my
registrations are from somebody else telling them about my program.
So they are the ones that are spreading the word for me, and it's
unpaid advertising. I don't pay a penny for it. It works.
MODERATOR: All right.
BOB WALLACE: Another benefit of unregistered users is you can
really get the press interested in your product. The press are
interested in the product if people use it, not if they pay for it.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: My question is: at what point do you
decide to hold back on functionality or even data, if you're
supplying a product that has data. Do you decide to hold back on
that to be an incentive to register or go full blown out and put
the whole package in?
MODERATOR: I'm not sure that there's a definitive answer in that
area, but I can tell you that there's a complete panel session
tomorrow on incentives at 2:00 p.m. It will cover an awful lot of
issues and should be pretty lively and fairly focused. I'm not
trying to avoid it, but what I'm thinking of is based on the
context of your question ... I'm hard pressed to see that we'll be
able to do anything more than muddy the waters at this point by
trying to get into it what the specifics limits of a program
might be to derive registrations.
QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Scott, you mentioned adding goodies
that come with registration. I know you have an author BBS. Do you
find that to be a valuable?
SCOTT MILLER: Yes. Dan Litton, who is the sysop of the Software
Creation BBS - which is the home BBS for Apogee Software - has done
an outstanding job. We now have about 25 lines. When we first
started, we had about three -- and that was about five months ago.
We're getting about 1,500 to 2,000 downloads a day on our software,
and it has really helped out a lot. We're using that now as a
support BBS, and if authors can hook into some sort of home BBS, I
would recommend it.
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QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: Do you also utilize that to
send out information to your customers? Do your customers call in?
Do they use that a lot, in other words, for technical support? Are
they using that for technical support?
SCOTT MILLER: Not so much for technical support. Actually, we get
more technical support stuff done on America On-Line, where we have
another Apogee forum. But we are setting up a conference
specially on our home BBS for technical support. We're also
setting up a conference for a contest and stuff. So we're going to
get a lot of mileage out of it. Since it's so new, we just haven't
put all these things into effect yet.
MODERATOR: Okay, it's 4:00 p.m. We're going to break now for 15
minutes. We're going to start again at 4:15 p.m. and go to 5:00
p.m. The panel members will be mostly around the room, so I'm sure
you'll be able to ask them any specific questions you might have
now.
<< end of part one >>