Hello. I'm looking to do more promotion of our product, Overseer Network Monitor. We've started an affiliate program at Regnow.com offering 30% commissions, created custom builds for affiliates, etc., and submitted to hundreds of download sites. I've also been working on improving keyword rankings on Google, but that's going slowly(currently ranging from 1-10th page for our targeted phrases, averaging around 5th). Does anyone have any suggestions for more promotion? Places to get backlinks? Venues for promoting the affiliate program? Other suggestions? I've been distracted with other [paying] projects for the past few months, and product sales have been somewhat disapointing, due to the lack of marketing. Thanks for any suggestions. -- Derek
pay-per-click advertising could get you fast (but expensive) results. as long as you've got a ROI that's reasonable and in the green I'd imagine it could very easily be worth your while though. I'd check out adwords.
Yes, adwords are definitely on the list of things to try. I've been shy on pulling the trigger on such an expensive option, though. My keywords average $10.98/click for position #1. I can bring it down to $3.23/click average for position 5 or less... That all seems quite expensive, but I may have to bite the bullet and try it. I guess I'll have to set a limit up front and see what kind of return I get with that. Thanks.
Here's a subject near and dear to my heart. Sources of information: Try searching the usenet group alt.comp.shareware.authors Consider joining the Association of Shareware Professionals and getting access to their newsgroups, excellent source of information Sites for backlinks: me (let me know if you're interested) relevant portals submit to as many software sites as possible. Most of them have no PR and will give almost no visitors but they all help. Try using one of the software submission tools for this. One of them will even rank the software sites by PR. I'd work on increasing traffic as much as possible before worrying too much about the affiliate program. General consensus is that it is VERY hard to find a decent affiliate. Plus it's a lot of work developing all the copy and marketing materials for an affiliate. So why not do the work on your own site. Plus when you are generating a lot of sales it makes you a lot more attractive to affiliates. If I was you I'd be looking for affiliates that are running relevant portals or information sites. I think most of the DL sites for shareware are pretty useless as affiliates. I spent two months working on affiliates and ended up making half a dozen sales from it. And they were all scams (using stolen CC's), with people trying to collect comissions before the transaction was refused. So I killed off the program. I've spent the last two months on elementary SEO, doubled traffic, and doubled sales. For me there is no comparison on the ROI. I'd be interested in carrying on this conversation off line if you like. I'm constantly looking for people to talk to about this stuff. You have no idea how isolated I feel down here in Australia. Take a look at this post http://www.moving-target-software.com/blog/item/13/ on my weblog. It's got a number of very useful software marketing links. Cheers,
Also, if you want to be part of an affiliate network that will get you lots of associates simply because it's part of that network, you may want to look at Commission Junction. They seem to be the grand-daddy these days, although from what I hear, a little expensive.
I would not start an AdWords campaign at $3+ CPC unless I was quite sure that I would be generating a positive ROI. I would look for different search terms where the CPC is less or just bid $.05 and take the 20th position or so if the search term is really popular.
Ack, I didn't notice that bit! $3.00 a click is madness if you don't know what your purchase / click rate is. If you want to dip your toes in the water do as Bernard suggested. Try for 0.05c per click and take whatever you can get.
Write an article about Network Monitoring, the need, and the value. You can include the details of why your product is worthy of consideration. You can even announce that you are looking for affilates. Just make sure the article has some informational value and is not just a blatant sales pitch for your product. I will publish it in my InfoPool and give you full authors credits with backlinks and your email contact information.
I just took a look at your website, it's pretty nice, and like mine, obviously designed by a programmer. A general observation of the website is that you are selling features. The general marketing principle is to sell benefits. Take a look at my front page and the first sentence or two for each product. I get a lot of positive feedback on some of this copy telling me it's a real attention grabber. I really tried hard to enunciate the 2 or 3 of the key benefits my customers get by using my software. Here's your front page: Lot's of technical jargon there that I'm sure means a lot to someone. What it doesn't tell me is what benefits I get from using your software. More generally it doesnt say why I would want to use network monitoring software. Here's something you might work with... 'Got network problems? Looking to increase reliability and improve customer satisfaction? Why not try Overseer!' 'Monitor your critical IT systems while on the move! Overseer can increase your system reliability by making you aware of failures no matter where you are, via email, pager, cell phone, or net send. ' Or something. I'm no expert at these things. Of course try to work your targetted keywords into the copy.
A couple of ideas: 1) advertise on download sites - much cheaper than adsense 2) submit to all of the download sites - fastest way is to make a PAD file, then search for "submit pad" on Google, Yahoo and submit to all that you find. If your pad is listed at the Association of Shareware Professionals, new download sites may automatically pick it up and notify that you have listings with them 3) check some of the other PPCs (searchfeed?) 4) get more out of the current traffic. I have 2 interesting papers from the share-it network that explain how to increase your revenue by 25% by using discounts' mailing lists. Ping me, and I'll e-mail them to you. 5) more SEO wouldn't hurt - example: you link to your home page using anchor text "Home". You can put keywords there etc.
PAD files are used to describe software programs. It is basically an xml file with fields like file name, version, descriptions, etc.etc. When you submit to download sites, you just give them the pad file, they parse it. Much faster than manually entering all that info. Plus, when you make changes to the pad file, you don't need to resubmit it because most download sites periodically re-download the pad file from your server.
I joined the ASP and the TPA(http://www.trialware.org). I'll have to watch and participate in the newsgroups as well. Absolutely. I'll PM/Email you. I've been using TSubmit from the TPA. It's not automated, but it's free and it has a huge list of sites. Yes-- generating more traffic directly to my site is definitely my goal. It's just the 'how' that's evading me at the moment... ;-) I have 31 affiliates signed up-- many for numerous months now-- and not one has sold a single unit... I've been working on SEO, but haven't nearly doubled my SE traffic from it... Absolutely. I'll PM/Email you. Thanks. I placed it on my list of things to review(can't do it now). -- Derek
Yes-- I looked into CJ, simply due to their popularity, and it was extremely expensive-- I believe it was 5 figures just to get setup, IIRC. -- Derek
True. I setup a very small trial adwords campaign, but I'm not expecting much of anything from it. 20th position is probably about equivelent to my actual search results, though. It'd seems odd that the words are so expensive, unless they're really that valuable to someone... -- Derek
You make some good points. I'll have to do some work on some marketing materials, I guess. My target audience are techno-savvy sysadmins, however-- so I'll need to have some 'technical jargon' in there for them... -- Derek
True-- I've considered that. It's hard to know which sites are really worth the money, however. And some are still very expensive-- $100-200/month... Yep-- I've submitted to hundreds of sites, and I'm always watching for new ones and submitting. I hadn't tried the search engine 'submit pad' search-- I simply use the download site lists available at the TPA and ASP-- that, and download site owner's signatures from postings in forums... PPCs? Sure. I've already considered discounts, but haven't implemented any yet(aside from one here or there for 'special' customers). Email me at . Thanks. Yes-- I definitely need to work more on SEO. I've done a lot of links and HREF title tags and such on my site, trying to gain in a few keyphrases, and it's worked to some small extent. I'm not sure how I'd change the 'home' bit on my site without hurting the basic navigation... At this point, I think I need to start focusing on off-site SEO-- linking strategy, etc. Any specific suggestions on SEO are greatly appreciated, however. Thanks. -- Derek
Here's some simple SEO you can use to leverage off of the popularity of Shawn's forum. When someone searches for your software are they going to search by its name, or by some other term? I'd suggest some other term, perhaps 'network monitoring software' or something. I'm not sure what, you'll know better than me. Soooo, why not change your digital point signature to use some key words you want to target, rather than your product name. Perhaps someting like: Sensible Software, low cost Network Monitoring Software This will give you some nicely targetted back links.