I've created a php script and people keep telling me its something that cannot rival popular products that they claim to do the same stuff as my product (which i disagree) and have a large support/development community established. Now i think to myself: what can a simple individual like me that never had a single sight of success in the marketing area do against a crowded market full of products have millions of hits per day? Everybody i got a review from told me: your product is useless, there's plenty out there with all kind of add-ons and support. I just made a product i thought (and still think) its somehow original because i never saw a similar one. Its not free, ow now you may think: "what kind of success you can expect from a product that isnt free? just make it gpl". Well, gpl is very nice when you dont have money problems, actually i dont have money problems, i simple dont have money, and thats a good reason to make it paid. I've just created a new product like millions of people probably do all the time out there. Now what? Throw it to garbage and live on?
You could try selling it... but if you have lots of rivals, aim it at a low price... maybe even try popping it in the BST section ^^, but it's a little late to just throw it away now... how do you know it won't be a success unless you try to market it
You must be pro in area, for which you have made a product. Like if you made some SEO tool, you must have positive SEO experience. And it must be good!
Let me talk a bit about my product. Imagine a gallery (Images). Imagine a forum (Topics). Imagine a link directory. Imagine an article directory. In my product i put all those items and a single common directory. Crazy isn't it? It has a bit of Category Management, Content Management and Web Portal.
Well tell us, how can it compete against these products? WordPress/bbPress PHPNuke PostNuke And the hundreds of other 'all in one' CMS platforms out there?
If you have too big competitors, then you should rethink about making it to be free. Giving something for free is never free. I am sure that wordpress guys make lot of money, even if they give their product for free. They advertise hosting programs and many nexcomers would buy hosting through their affiliate links etc If you don't believe that you can compete with other guys, then you don't have anything from keeping your product priced. You'll still have no money, if you can't sell it. By giving it for free, you can make a list, where you could advertise your futured products, advertise your links in templates/scripts, making your site popular and then selling links, monetize it through adsense etc, etc.. On the end, its all up to you. But free is never free, if you want that
If you really want to make a good product, Focus on yourserlf, not others. And do something that the big companies dont do so people will want yours because other companies dont have it. If you focus on yourself, you will be sucessful one day wakeing up to see you just had 150% amount of people than last week!
Christian Little: Whatever product you create you always have something to compete against. Well the biggest difference from my product and theirs is that theirs are A, B, C or D and need plugins (sometimes from 3rd parties) to become ABCD. My product's core is already ABCD. bleh lol I think the probability of creating brand new product, a new original idea not created by nobody else in today's internet is mostly the same chances of winning the EuroMillions lottery: they say the people that dont play have nearly the same chances of winning as the ones that play I can set up a demo of my big talk as soon i can be sure i'am not banned for any promiscuous rule related to this particular set of pixels (oh, i'am sorry, i mean forum) regarding remote advertising of foreign html based protocol code sets (oh..i mean remote website)
I personally have hard time imagining all that as one piece. I can imagine but I don't understand its functionality. Can you explain in more detail ?
Plenty of free crap out there, just make it free, and ad-support it. That's what I'd do, unless it were custom. You could try selling it as a product with a limited number of copies for a hefty price ($100, per say).
If you've given free copies away, and got bad feedback, probably time to move on to the next project. Make sure you think through what you've learned from it, so you can do better next time.
You might want to give it away for free during a "beta" stage, and once your software gets a following (gets popular), then charge people to upgrade and get cool new features, bug fixes, etc.
Your software looks terrific. A few ideas: Add a link to your site in the footer using a good keyword (for SEO purposes) List the requirements on your website (mysql, php, etc.) generate some discussion by giving away some free copies in exchange for an honest review on Digital Point or the user's blog
Get on clickbank, find affiliates or JV partners or email list owners to promote for you (you can try and convince them by offering a higher than usual commission - eg 75% - and try make the money from the backend), use PPC, write a killer salesletter
I just made some sells, i think people see a good opportunity to have a simple product with easy to use useful features all built-in without having to spend a month reading the manual to know how things work. Now i would like to do some marketing, which is the best solution to spend the money i won in efficient marketing?
You can try creating a web site to promote your script. Start off making the script free. Work hard marketing your site and then once your site is popular enough you can charge for your script. It will take a long time to make money though. Most people fail. Its not easy.