Andy Brice from Successful Software blog just released an excellent article where he is featuring 13 examples of software launches gone sour.
The article cover thirteen different software products and their launches that didn’t turn out like the software creators expected.
There are many lessons to be learned and if you are serious about your Software Marketing I suggest you read through the whole article.
Some of the bigger takeaways are that the software authors failed to research the market enough before venturing out and creating their software and the failed to market it when the product was released.
Take it away Andy…
Software entrepreneur culture is full of stories of the products that succeeded. But what about the products that failed? We rarely hear much about them. This can lead to a very skewed perspective on what works and what doesn’t (survivor bias). But I believe that failure can teach us as much as success. So I asked other software entrepreneurs to share their stories of failure in the hope that we might save others from making the same mistakes. To my surprise I got excellent 12 responses, which I include below along with one of my own. It is a small sample and biased by self selection, but I think it contains a lot of useful insights. It is an unashamedly a long post, as I didn’t want to lose any of these insights by editing it down.
Case #1: DRAMA
Contributor
The product
DRAMA (Design RAtionale MAnagement) was a commercialization of a University prototype for recording the decision-making process during the design of complex and long-lived artefacts, for example nuclear reactors and chemical plants. By recording it in a structured database this information would still be available long after the original engineers had forgotten it, retired or been run over by buses. This information was believed to be incredibly valuable to later maintainers of the system, engineers creating similar designs and industry regulators. The development was part funded by 4 big process engineering companies.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
Everyone told us what a great idea it was, but no-one bought it. despite some early funding from some big process engineering companies, none of them put it into use properly and we never sold any licences to anyone else.
What went wrong
- Lack of support from the people who would actually have to use it. There are lots of social factors that work against engineers wanting to record their design rationale, including:
- The person taking the time to record the rationale probably isn’t the person getting the benefit from it.
- Extra work for people who are already under a lot of time pressure.
- It might make it easier for others to question decisions and hold companies and engineers accountable for mistakes.
- Engineers may see giving away this knowledge as undermining their job security.
- Problems integrating with the other software tools that engineers spend most of their time in (e.g. CAD packages). This would probably be easier with modern web-based technology.
- It is difficult to capture the subtleties of the design process in a structured form.
- A bad hire. If you hire the wrong person, you should face up to it and get rid of them. Rather than keep moving them around in a vain attempt to find something they are good at.
- We took a phased approach, starting with a single-user proof of concept and then creating a client-server version. In hindsight it should have been obvious that not enough people were actively using the single-user system and we should have killed it then.
Time/money invested
At least 3 man years of work went into this product, with me doing most of it. Thankfully I was a salaried employee. But the lack of success of this product contributed to the demise of the part of the company I was in.
Current product status
The product is long dead.
Any regrets?
It was a fairly painful experience. I would rather have spent all that money, time and energy on something that someone actually used. But at least I learnt some expensive lessons without using my own money.
Lessons learned
- Creating a new market is difficult and risky.
- Changing people’s working habits is hard.
- Social factors can make or break a product. The end-users didn’t see anything in it for them.
- If the end-users don’t like a product, they will find a way not to use it, even if their bosses appear to be enthusiastic about it.
- Talk is cheap. Lots of people telling you how great your product is doesn’t mean much. You only really find out if your product is commercially viable when you start asking people to buy it.
Case #2: CleanChief
Contributor
The product
CleanChief was to be ‘The easy management solution for cleaning organisations’. Managing assets, employee schedules, ordering supplies, you name it CleanChief handled it. Essentially it was light weight accounting software for cleaning companies.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
A small number of copies were sold. No one is actively using it at present. Once I realised that it wasn’t a complete product and that additional development was required I moved on to other product ideas. I had basically run out of enthusiasm for the product.
What went wrong
- I am not an accountant.
- I have never run a cleaning company.
- I developed it for more than two years without getting feedback from real cleaning companies. I was arrogant enough to think that I knew what they wanted (or could work it out on my own). Or maybe it was that I was just where I was most happy and comfortable – writing software. Talking to real users was new and to be honest a bit scary for me.
- A successful cleaning company operator, a friend of a friend, offered to become involved for a 30% share. This was a gift from the heavens, exactly what I needed. I refused.
- In a way, even though I spent so long on the product, I gave in too soon, I was just getting feedback from real users, just getting my first batch of sales when I decided to move on.
- I developed the application in VB6 even though I knew it was outdated technology when I started the project.This meant there was no ‘cool factor’ when discussing it with other developers, I told myself it didn’t bother me, but it probably did.
Time/money invested
I worked on it at night and weekends for about 2 1/2 years. I paid for graphic design work, purchased stock icons and images. I probably spent a couple of thousand Australian dollars in total and an awful lot of time.
Current product status
I moved on to other products that have gone much better. My newer products were released in months rather than years and I looked for real feedback from real users from day one. they are:
- QueryCell – an Excel add-in making SQL in Excel easy.
- QuizNightChief – the easy way to organise a quiz Night.
- CustomerCradle – The easiest way to record and report on where your customers come from.
I do occasionally ponder returning to CleanChief and trying to raise it from the ashes.
Any regrets?
No. Looking back I learned a few lessons from a huge amount of time and work, it was a very inefficient way to learn those lessons. But when you are new to something like starting a business or creating useful software being inefficient at learning lessons is the best you can do, it’s a thousand times better than not learning lessons at all.
I learned so much more in my two and a half years of trying to develop CleanChief than I did in the two and a half years prior to that, during which time I really wanted to start a software business but didn’t take any action.
Lessons learned
Hearing or reading some piece of advice is totally different to living it. Here are some of the ideas that I always agreed were true but didn’t fully understand the implications of until I had lived them out:
- Force yourself to get out and talk to people. Ask their advice. Almost everyone will help if you ask them for feedback.
- Force yourself to cold call a few businesses in your target market.
- Create a plan of how to market your product.
- Try and use your product as much as possible as you build it.
- Get out of your comfort zone from day one
- Do not have the mind set that the day you release version 1.0 is the finish line, it’s the starting line, so hurry up and get there.
Case #3: Chimsoft
Contributor
The product
ChimSoft – Software for Chimney Sweeps.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I believe this failed for two reasons:
- Focusing on too small of a niche
- Me not being able to work full time on it.
I don’t consider it a complete failure because I sold two copies when it retailed for $2k, and maybe 10-15 more copies when I lowered the price to $200. Those sales proved that I wasn’t completely off base in thinking there was a market for the software, but the cost of customer acquisition and the size of the market were too small. Customers wanted to have a bunch of phone calls, face-to-face etc… the type of stuff you only see with much more expensive software. The problem was that for a niche this small we had to charge a lot of money to make it worthwhile for us, but the customers were small businesses where this is a major investment, so the fit was never right. The other issue was the people that did buy it were not super tech savvy, so there was a high cost of support that made even a $200 product not worth it.
What went wrong
- Having all partners who were not full-time, and had equal equity.  I ended up doing most of the work and this is the main reason I didn’t force success is I felt I was in it alone.
- Focusing on too narrow of a niche. Â The plan all along was to expand for all service industries, but it was much harder to make that move than we expected.
- Not researching pricing more, we knew small businesses made major purchases for things that really helped their business, but I think it would have been better to have a cheaper product with wider appeal than an expensive product with narrow appeal.
Time/money invested
I invested maybe a year of time and $3k into the company. I did not take any huge risks on it, so there were no big negative outcomes.
Current product status
The company folded in 2007, I refocused my efforts on my existing companies (AUsedCar.com and BudgetSimple.com) and both have been doing well enough that I quit my day job.
Any regrets?
I don’t regret it entirely, I think I learned several valuable lessons about working with other people, small business sales, trade-shows and software development.
Lessons learned
- Pick partners wisely. Don’t try to be even-steven with equity. Use restricted stock to ensure everyone does their part.
- Know what your customers expect (24/7 phone support?) to determine if you can do this while working a day job.
Case #4: PC Desktop Cleaner
Contributor
The product
PC Desktop Cleaner. Simple software that cleans your desktop and archives your files.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
My goal was to sell 10 units per month. I’ve sold less than 1 unit per month.
What went wrong
- I think that the product concept is not useful enough. It’s not a thing that people would pay for.
- The market exists (some people buy) but it’s too little or difficult to reach.
- I didn’t do any market research. I just got in love with the idea and did it. Later, I’ve learnt to use “lazy instantiation marketing†and have trashed a lot of embryo projects.
Time/money invested
I think I wasted near $500 in development tools and some freelancers. Not too much.
Current product status
I’m still selling it. I’ve thought about others products, but not really decided yet.
Any regrets?
No, it was a lot of fun and I learnt lot of things. In my “day job†I own a small firm that sells software for production scheduling. I’ve learn a lot of SEO and AdWords in the DesktopCleaner project that now I’m using with great results.
Lessons learned
Go for it, maybe you win, maybe you fail, but you will grow and get tons of useful knowledge on the way.
Case #5: Smart Diary Suite
Contributor
The product
Why it was judged a commercial failure
It sells and the profits cover current investments in the product, but there is little left over on top of that.
What went wrong
If I had a chance to do anything differently:
- Take it seriously from day one.
- Never stop developing and supporting.
- Invest as much as possible in marketing early on.
- Don’t stop believing in your creation.
Time/money invested
Up to this point, I have spent 13 years on Smart Diary Suite and a lot of money went into buying hardware, software, hosting, marketing, etc… All of that money came from my day job, but at this point SDS has recovered all of that back and is now making a small profit. The actual amount is hard to calculate (over the 13 year span), but we would be talking in tens of thousands of US dollars.
Current product status
For a while it may have seemed like SDS is not going to be successful, but that’s probably my fault – I stopped believing for a little while. Now I am back, starting again and this time I’ll make sure it doesn’t fail.
Any regrets?
I do not regret doing it. I regret allowing myself to stop working on it, basically bailing out on it for a while – that is my biggest mistake.
Lessons learned
If you want a successful product – believe in it and let others know that you believe in it.
Case #6: Highlighter
Contributor
The product
Highlighter. A utility to print neatly formatted, syntax highlighted source code listings.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I earnt a grand total of £442.52 (about $700 in todays money) in just over two years, so I guess it paid for itself if you exclude my time.
What went wrong
Since it was my first product and I was very green about both marketing and product development. I would suggest the following would have made things better:
- Get feedback from potential users about the product (eg from the ASP forums). Some parts of the program where probably too option heavy and geeky.
- Diversify. If people didn’t want to print fancy listings, maybe they would have wanted them formatted in HTML.
- Better marketing. I’m not sure this would have saved it, but all I knew in those days was uploading to shareware sites. I never even sent a press release.
I figure it failed simply because it was a product nobody wanted. Actually, more importantly than that,, it was a product *I* didn’t want to use, but it developed from a larger product I was working on, on the assumption I could earn some money on the side from part of the code. Since then I’ve stuck to products which I’ve actually wanted to use myself. There’s a lot to be said for dogfooding, not just for debugging, but for knowing where the pain points are and what extra features could be added.
Time/money invested
I would guess a couple of months of evening/weekend development time. Financially there was little spent, except that I offered the option of a printed manual and CD for an extra charge. One customer took me up on the offer, so I had to get 100 manuals printed and 99 of them went in the bin.
Current product status
I moved on to another product which has sold over £50,000 and a third which has earnt even more than that. Not enough to retire on but considering I only do this part time it must work out at a great hourly rate. There’s a lot to be said for not giving up…
Any regrets?
Nope. I figure every failure in life teaches you valuable lessons. Of course if I’d made a large financial investment I may feel differently, but that’s one of the big advantages of software over physical product sales.
Lessons learned
Just to reiterate – develop something which you find useful, instead of second guessing others.
Case #7: R10Clean
Contributor
The product
R10Clean. A data cleaning and manipulation tool.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
In the 18 months or so it’s been on the market I have sold 6. It has been £199, £99 and £19 – with no effect on sales !
What went wrong
Not sure what I did wrong ? Â The product is maybe too techie ?
Time/money invested
No effect financially as at the time I was in a strong financial position.
Current product status
I still have it for sale but do not market it at all. I have other products.
Any regrets?
I don’t regret it as it saved me a ton of time when I was working with legacy databases a lot, as a commercial product it has been raved about (once!) and received a good review from the Kleper report, but has failed totally.
Lessons learned
Advice to others ?  Just because you need it personally, don’t assume the rest of the world does too.
Case #8: nBinder
Contributor
The product
nBinder, packs multiple files into a stand alone executable with over 50 advanced output and file unpack options, conditional run and commands.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
It was the first product I began selling. It sold to 300+ customers in 4 years. But for about a year the sales began to go down and have finally stopped completely.
What went wrong
- The biggest problem was that because it was a packer intended for people that wanted to pack their products (software or games) into a single package (compressed and encrypted) many have used it for creating malware by binding malware files to legit files and then distributing the output so it isn’t detected by antivrus software (although it would be detected at runtime). Because of this I had lots of problems with antivirus companies that flagged files create with nBinder as malware. This was of course affecting legit users as their files would be falsely marked as malware. I used virustotal.com to see which antivirus detected it and contacted the antivirus manufacturer as soon as I detected the problem. In most cases they would remove it from their definitions. But it was an uphill battle because it would appear again in a matter of weeks. Some small AV companies didn’t event bother to reply to my emails to fix the problem. Others were using heuristics to flag files create with my applications and AV developers were reluctant to whitelist files created with nBinder. You can imagine it that it was enough for an AV such as Kaspersky or Norton to pick my files as malware for a day and customers would be affected and not use my product any more, especially that it took about 3 days for AVs to remove the false positive.
- Infrequent updates. Due to lack of time I only updated the product once or twice a year and this affected the product a lot.
- No marketing. I decided that I didn’t want to invest money in marketing so, except for a short AdWords campaign, I invested no money in marketing.
- My decision to develop 3 products instead of concentrating on one or two affected development time and quality. I have worked on 3 products simultaneously instead of concentrating on making a single good one. The reason I worked on 3 is because I enjoyed developing different software in different categories. I didn’t start this for money but for the fun of development.
Time/money invested
I invested almost no money (except for hosting costs). Time invested I can’t really say exactly, but not too much as I only worked on nBinder in short bursts like 6 hours a day for a week or so before releases.
Current product status
Still for sale. My other products are:
- nCleaner – a free system cleaner that has gone quite well (over 2 million downloads).
- nMacro – an automation tool that has seen some limited success (bought by over 100 customers in a year or so).
Any regrets?
It’s not a total failure as I did make some money out of it with no investment, so I don’t regret starting it, but it could have been much better.
Lessons learned
Words of advice for others trying to make money from software development:
- Study the market and the current trends very well.
- Before deciding to take on large competition make sure you have something better (at least from one point of view) than the competition ( for example you might not have the same features but you have a better GUI and general presentation).
- Do not get scared of an overly populated market segment. For example with nBinder I picked a segment with very little competition but also few possible users and the results were not so great (I didn’t have many users). With nCleaner I went head-to-head with lots of already established products but also the market is very big. Although nCleaner is free it has had the most success because there are so many potential users (anyone with a PC actually), so it had over 2 millions downloads and I still receive lots of mails regarding it, even if the last update was in 2007. So it is possible to have success in a market with lots of competition with no investment but it’s hard to reach the level of more established products.
Case #9: Net-Herald
Contributor
The product
Net-Herald – a monitoring application for water supply companies. It was a complex client server application that would receive monitoring data from specialized hardware and store that data inside a SQL database. The client displays that data in different graphs, provides printable reports or sends alarm messages via SMS if a monitored value is not within its specified limits.
I developed Net-Herald as a perfect fit for that specialized hardware that is provided by a local manufacturer. That way, so I hoped, I could profit from their sales leads and would find a smoother way into these water supply companies. The downside of course, was that my software would only work with their hardware.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I sold a first license fairly soon after I had a sellable product, although it took the customer nearly a year until they finally bought. But since then I sold only one more license within the last 4 years or so.
What went wrong
- I didn’t do my own marketing and the hardware guys weren’t really concerned with selling my software.
- Water management companies have a terribly long sales cycle. Other vendors monitoring applications usually cost tens of thousands and are geared toward large suppliers. Whenever a supplier buys into such a product he is unlikely to change within the next decade or more. I tried to position my software towards small suppliers but even then most of them were already locked into another vendor’s solution.
- My software only worked with a specific hardware. That narrowed the marked down substantially.
- In the end the software became too complex for one poor mortal to maintain. Because the software didn’t produce any substantial income I had to stop adding new features which would make it attractive for more prospective clients.
- This kind of software is not sold over the Internet. Rather it needs very active sales people that nurture clients over a rather long period of time.
- All these facts indicate that software like this should not be developed by a one man show.
Time/money invested
The development time for the first sellable version was maybe about 9 months. I didn’t have a job income at that time, but got funding due to government support for small start-up businesses. So I didn’t drain our family’s personal finances. But I did of course invest a great deal of time and sweat.
Current product status
Now, I have drawn a line and stopped active development of Net-Herald. I still do some custom extensions for my first clients. But I no longer market the software. I have instead focused on my consulting services. I also try to learn developing and selling software with my cross-platform drag and drop product Simidude.
Any regrets?
I didn’t succeed yet selling my own software (which is still my goal) but I do not regret doing it. I developed Net-Herald using (Java) technologies that now give me leverage at my consulting gigs. All in all it was a heavy ride. But it was fun and I would do it again.
Lessons learned
- My biggest mistake was the lack of market analysis. I trusted the word of the hardware manufacturer without verification.
- I have written more about the above and some other failures on my blog.
Case #10: HabitShaper
Contributor
Adriano Ferrari.
The product
HabitShaper – set and track daily targets for your goals (weight loss, quit smoking, jogging, writing, etc…).
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I sold a few copies, but not enough to make back the time I invested in it and my conversion numbers and traffic are below average.
What went wrong
- Did not do enough pre-production research (talking to customers, etc).
- Did not do a large enough beta to make up for lack of initial research.
- Ignored gut-feeling that my product is better suited to being web-based and multi-platform (incl. mobile).
- Did EVERYTHING myself (logo, web design, video, software, AdWords, etc).
Time/money invested
I worked on it two years, part-time, while doing Masters/PhD in Physics. It had no impact on my finances (very little money invested) or circumstances.
Current product status
I am relaunching as a web-based product this summer.
Any regrets?
Not in the least! I learned about as much from making HabitShaper as I have from my MSc thesis and PhD work.
Lessons learned
- Most important: PAPER prototypes, minimum viable product, and iterate.
- Don’t be afraid to launch early.
- Launch a little bigger than you’d expect (it’s harder to find those initial customers than you think).
- Don’t be afraid to change directions, especially early on.
- Doing things yourself is a great learning experience, but if you want to get your product out to customers as fast as possible, don’t be afraid to invest money and outsource your weaknesses.
Case #11: BPL
Contributor
The product
BPL – Batch Programming Language Interpreter.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I sold about 10 copies.
What went wrong
- I didn’t really do enough research to find out if the target market was in existence. I was hoping that network admins and support staff members would find it easier to use than batch files and less complicated than any of the free scripting language options available. So, I just rushed to get the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) out the door.
- I never did provide a compiler that would build a stand-alone EXE. I think that might have met with more success.
- I didn’t do much as far as advertising the existence of the product.
Time/money invested
I only spent a few weeks coding and documenting it in my spare time. Support issues sometimes took a whole evening, but nothing major. It did not have any impact on my finances as I had invested nothing but my time.
Current product status
I will still address support issues with this product for registered users, but I don’t actively sell it. I’ve open-sourced the program and it still really isn’t seeing heavy use.
I was more successful with other products. I have a few retired products that saw some good bulk-purchase deals ( command-line DUN HangUp, command-line scheduler ) and I still sell the following (for Windows):
- MailSend – Command-line SMTP mailer.
- MailGrab – Command-line POP3 reader.
- CMD2EXE – Packages up a batch file into an EXE.
- ScreenKap – Command-line screen capture.
All of the above still bring in a modest passive income.
Any regrets?
Not at all. “Nothing ventured,…â€.
Lessons learned
Had I not attempted to bring the BPL product to life, I might still be sitting here wondering “what if?†I think it was very beneficial for me to invest the time to try out this idea.
Case #12: Anonymous
Contributor
Anonymous.
The product
A time tracker.
Why it was judged a commercial failure
Because it is not my primary income. I have about 150 customers in one year.
What went wrong
- No marketing.
- No real thought into features.
- I don’t spend any time on it.
In my defense, the reason I do not spend much time on it is that the market became saturated with ‘me toos’ right after I released, which was quite expected. In fact, as I was looking for users, I got an email from a competitor suggesting that I don’t enter the market because they are working on the same thing! I don’t know what I would do differently. Maybe spend more time on it? I think the law of diminishing returns applies quite early in this space so I am not sure.
Time/money invested
Since inception (Nov 2008), I’ve spent close to 250 hours total. Total cash outlay was something like $500.
Current product status
I never tried to make it succeed, to be honest. It was only a learning experience for me. What I probably need now is to go all in. Quite frankly, if I double the sales for this product, I can quit all consulting work. But I really do not think it is a good idea to work on this app full time as it is too simple.
Any regrets?
Definitely not.
Lessons learned
- Do it!
- Solve a problem people know they have.
- Don’t invest too much time and money at the beginning.
- Don’t be wedded to a particular idea.
- Don’t only listen to your customers. Listen to yourself. After all, you created the idea which attracted the customers.
- Never promise a feature for a sale. I’ve never done it but the pressure is really great. My stock response is always: “While such a feature may be available in the future, I recommend that you only use current features when deciding on your purchase.â€
- Do use Google to your advantage.
Case #13: ScreenRest
Contributor
The product
Why it was judged a commercial failure
What went wrong
- Not doing market research first.
- Creating a prevention rather than solution product – people generally wait until they have a problem and then look for a solution.
- Creating a product with medical associations – the SEO and PPC competition for related keywords is prohibitive for a product with a low purchase price.
Time/money invested
Current product status
Once the product was complete and we started learning SEO it became all too apparent that organic search traffic for related keywords was going to be insufficient. Â Research into PPC then revealed that the price point was too low to support purchasing medical terms. Planned features for ScreenRest have been put on hold and no further marketing is planned. Â We continue to support new and existing ScreenRest customers and plan to do so for the foreseeable future. Rather than create another software product we chose to use what we had learned about marketing, copywriting and SEO to create a series of websites targeting a range of topics (often known as niche sites). Â The most successful of these sites we are expanding in value and functionality to fill gaps not serviced by the competition.
Any regrets?
No. ScreenRest succeeded in every way intended, other than commercially. Creating it was a rewarding learning exercise that started us down a path to finding the intersection of our skills, experience and market opportunities.
Lessons learned
- Start with market research – creating a high-quality product you believe in is not enough on its own.
- Make sure you can identify a specific target market, that you can reach that market and that it is large enough to support your financial goals.
Conclusion
Analysing the above (admittedly small and self-selected sample) it is clear that by far the commonest cause of failure were:
- lack of market research
- lack of marketing
With the benefitof 20/20 hindsight it seems blindingly obvious that we should:
- spend a few days researching if a product is commercially viable before we spend months or years creating it
- put considerable effort into letting people know about the products we create
Yet, by my count, a whopping 6 out of 13 of us admitted to failing to do each of these adequately. Probably we were too busy obsessing over the features and technical issues so beloved of developers, which actually contributed to far fewer failures.
It is also noticeable that, despite the failure of these products, there are few regrets. Important lessons were learned and no-one lost their house. Many of us have gone to develop successful products and the others will be in a much stronger position if they do decide to try again.
A big thank you to everyone who ate a large slice of humble pie and submitted the above. I hope we can prevent other budding software entrepreneurs making the same mistakes. Even if you don’t succeed, you will learn a lot.
Source: Successful Software
Feel free to add your own hard-won lessons from failure in the comments below.
hey!!
I just want to advice from you that m a marketing executive from software and website developnment company!! how can i increase my clients through twitter if i am a new one and have no links??
REPLY SOON!!
Thanks!!
NavRattan Goyal
Hi NavRattan,
With twitter you have to start building your list before you can market to them. Start looking for twitters that have lists that fit your target market and start befriending their followers. Keep your tweets interesting and helpful for their audience and you’ll soon see your list grow.
I specialize in writing accounting software. Usually I name each after the profession that it is supposed to serve e.g. JB-BANKING, JB-PROJECT, JB-CLERGY ETC. There are about eight of them. Marketing is the problem. With very little to expend on marketing, I have not been able to push the software into the market. None of the software is considered a failure yet. The only one I have marketed is working successfully in a few micro-finance banks here in Nigeria. I will definitely welcome resellers.
Hello!
I am new in marketing field.Tell me some basic tips
Case #14: Payroll software
Contributor
Guillermo Arias
The product
Payroll software – Postgre SQL payroll and human resources software
Why it was judged a commercial failure
I could say in my defense that it is not totally a failure, because currently it is sold, but not in a quantity that we can think about it as a succesful software, it barely covers the costs, furthermore it demands lots of support.
What went wrong
Not doing market research first. It was a heart driven made software.
The support customers demand is so big that profits are barely visible.
Small niche.
Current customers are small businesses some like mine.
Time/money invested
Not any at the beggining because i made in my bedroom at nights, but now i would say it is US$ 1300 monthly, it is big money for my country economy.
Current product status
It is sold but not with profit levels i expected.
Any regrets?
Yes, time partially wasted.
Lessons learned
Do it, if you feel like doing it.
Start with market research.
Make your best effort.
Jump from the boat as soon as you can.
Hi,
This is a nice post, really. As I am about to be the next case here, I found this post, and agree with some of these points here. But I wonder what I should do to be better next time. I have some concerns below:
– Some of you say about marketing from day one. That may be right, but what to show ? If I have something to show, I dont waste a lot of time developing it.
– Market research: I did spent time to research by Google, but is that enough and correct ? Of course, I dont have money to spend on official research. I do think about face-to-face surveys, but I dont think people are willing to spend time for me, unless they get something from that.
– No regret: nobody here regrets about what he/she did. Me too. We did learn something, or a lot of things. It worths starting like that. But we spent our sweat and our intelligence on those softwares, and now we realize that we cant sell. It’s a waste if we just throw it away like that. Somebody might need them, love them, even though not enough for a sale. Can we put on somewhere so at least our intelligence is not wasted, like open-source ?
I will be glad to hear your ideas.
Duong
Hi Doung,
One way of marketing your software would be to include a link to it in this post. Then we could check it out and maybe give it some love 🙂
I don’t think you should market before you are done with your software, but from the day you are done you should start.
You need to do enough research so you can relatively safely say that there will be an interest for your product. A sure sign is if there are other similar products out there that has been selling for a while.
Of course, if you spent a long time developing you shouldn’t just throw it away. By all means offer it as open source.
All the best,
Peter
Hi Peter,
That’s a fast reply, thanks.
My software is a construction management system (the scope is big). I finished 2 out of 4 packages of the software after more than 1 year, each package can be delivered separately but still work together if customers want to use all.
As my software and website is still in Vietnamese, not English, so it might be on later time. Anyways, I already prepare English version for my software, only translation needs to be done, so it will be available soon.
Until now, after finishing my software, I’m about out of money, and start to thinking of stopping. I did spend time showing up to customers during many development phases. I received positive feedback, but that’s all. They still think that is incompleted. And I still dont know whether those are real appraisals or just their politeness.
I’m reluctant to continue. It will cost a lot of more money for marketing, without knowing that customers will need it or not. I dont regret, but just wonder whether that’s the only way to go.
Regards,
Duong
Hi doung,
I am a software marketing guy (INDIA). i am currently associated with a company which develops and markets software products in india as well as in foreign countries more than a decade. i personally feel that if you could look to grab the indian market, we welcome you for the needed. i am damn sure that if we tap the market here with the landscape in the development of the construction through out the country seems to be attain its growth in a healthy basis. if we could combine hands, my team s damn sure to get some possible returns to your current scenario.. Regards, Ashok
Hi doung & ashok,
@ doung i do have a construction management system software called Architect’s Site Management 2010 i’ve spent a lot of time developing it. i’m facing same problems as you do.
i’m thinking of selling the source-code can some one guide me.
I have been writing software for the retail glass industry for over 10 years. Being in the industry for 20 years, all of the applications I wrote were used by me first.
I have had some successful freelance gigs directly from my software, but sales of any specific product I’ve sold never amounted to enough to pay for itself.
It’s hard to do it all yourself, especially if you have a day job, but it’s also hard to find someone who is as interested in your vision as you are.
I’m planning to focus on a couple of products and combining that with a direct mail campaign to glass retailers in the industry.
Hi All,
I just recently finished developing my software, which is math software for kids. I’ve built a site, which also took
more time than I expected, put it all, including payments,
design, server side coding, etc. is a project by itself.
But I’m very pleased with the results, and I now started to
investigate how to market it. What I did find is that you have to invest a LOT of time to do so, and it never ends, you can always work on better SEO, add more links, add more content to your site, add more affiliates, optimize campaigns, and on and on… my intent is to have a passive income and concentrate on developing my software for the next versions and I find myself spending the time learning marketing. For one man, it is a huge amount of time to push a software project from scratch while needing to make a living for himself during that.
I didn’t see that anyone of the cases above has used a 3rd party to do the marketing.
I would like to hear your opinions or advices what to do from here, especially with consumer software.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Congratulations to Gmath, it looks fantastic.
I think the problem with outsourcing the marketing is that you don’t know what to expect or what to pay for the services because you aren’t sure of what’s needed. In my opinion the best way to go about it is to try it out yourself first, then hire or outsource. That way you have an understanding of the time commitment and can evaluate if the services you hire are good or not. I also think that the costs for these services are way above what you can afford if you are just starting out.
For example some SEO companies initial startup fees are above a thousand dollars. It’s hard to pay those kind of fees when you are unsure of how your software will do.
But I see on your pagerank and visitor numbers that you are off to a great start and seems to have gotten into the marketing very well.
I’d love to hear more about how you are doing in the future.
Best of luck,
Peter
Thanks Peter, you’re straight to the point, that’s what I thought, actually that’s what I’m doing, probably from not having a choice due to this high marketing costs as you mentioned.
It’s a lot of stuff to read and gather information, and I would love to have the direction of where to go and what to do from a marketing expert who is specialized in this kind of product type, and even better on the educational market.
But until I will find one I’m doing it all as you said, it gives me also more control over my project as I’m becoming more of a business owner than a programmer.
I’ll update here once a while about my project,
BTW the site is http://www.gmath.com, I haven’t mentioned it before.
Thanks,
Mark
Hello,
I am new software developer. I created software to organize, manage and assist with paying down debt. The reason I designed the software because I was trying to pay off my debt and keep up my with bills, so I included information that I would like to know about my debt. During my spare time I developed forms, reports and charts using Microsoft Office Access during research online. There are a lot of great features. Can someone check out my website and my product. There is a 30 day trial and instructions are included with the software and on the site.
Sorry, I forgot to mention the site…www.candh1.com
Hello
I am sending Invitation emails regularly and i have extended the trail period for them,and giving follow up calls regularly ,more over the cost is very cheap its only for 7000rs in Indian currency.for one year.
The problem is like they have only registered but they are not using the software.
The process which i follow Currently is:- I do cold calling for the new customers but no one gives me good response,
2, I try to fix an appointment with the registered customers no gives me convenient time
Go through my CRM once:-www.smartrealtoronline.com.
My officials are screwing me,to make sale
Please Peter help me out in this ,ill be very thank full to you at least i make one sale by using your tips and suggestions.
Regards,
Sunny
Hi Sunny,
You have to seriously ask yourself if they want this software. Perhaps you should focus on another product. Seems you are doing a lot of correct marketing work, but still doesn’t sell so maybe it’s the product. If it’s this difficult to sell then you will not sell many.
Best of luck,
Peter
PS. Please don’t post the same comment in several places as this will be flagged as spam and removed and you will not be able to post in the future.
Hi Peter
Just come across your post recently while doing some marketing research for our new software http://www.spycam-watcher.com/ that is a full featured DVR for webcams & network cameras.
We are a small software developing company in New Zealand (means tiny budget for marketing). We have been developing and selling software for IP/Security Cameras http://www.netcam-watcher.com for a number of years and haven’t done too badly until the credit crunch in 2008/2009 that our sales have been shrinking and shrinking.
We’ve just launched this low cost Spycam (with optional iOS component) early this year but it has been very slow. Everybody seems to be better at web-positioning/SEO nowadays. We even used 3rd party to do press release but don’t seem to get any impact. We have been trying to get it reviewed by bloggers but not very successful. How can we get it reviewed? Should we go down ‘paid review’ route? Do you have any tips for us? Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks & regards
Kay