I hope this year the ASP will become even more popular (this is also the main 2010 goal of Jim Coutu, the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of the ASP) and will welcome more software authors.

A few changes have happened inside the ASP board: it has a new Chairman and 3 new members have joined the Board for a two year term. Jim Coutu from GatorData Inc is the new Chairman of the Board of Directors for this year. The three new members who have been elected for the board, that I wish to welcome wholeheartedly, are:

Don Waterfield, senior programmer/analyst at Aqumix, Inc.	Laura Look, project manager at Bitsmithsoft.	Michael C. Battilana, president of Cloanto.

A big thank you on behalf of everyone at ASP goes to the 3 members whose term ended in the Board of Directors, for all the enthusiastic work done in ASP: Henk Devos, Greg Weir and Dave Gjessing.

Get involved!

ASP depends on the commitment of professionals from the software industry. For the ASP to effectively represent you and our software industry we invite your participation. We are actively seeking passionate and capable professionals to join the ASP and serve as officers or committee chairs. Get involved at the ground level and offer your skills to help.

State of the Micro-ISV-osphere

For 2010, I think it would be a good idea to start with an assessment of your current software business situation, in comparison to the shareware industry statistics.

Our colleague Rob Ellison parsed through all the PAD files available in the ASP PAD directory (76,066 products!) and generated answers to some questions regarding the Micro-ISV-osphere state – do check it out, you might find something of interest!

So, what would you like to see ASP doing for you in 2010? Please comment below.

Happy 2010 with ASP! is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

We all know that we should be spending more time reading good books about business, sales and marketing. But it’s difficult to find worthwhile books. Here are some tips for locating the best business books, buying them affordably, and building a library that will pay dividends year after year.
Choosing Good Business Books
Amazon.com has more reviews than other book sites. But it’s often difficult to tell if the book being reviewed is relevant to the software industry in general, and to mISVs in particular.  Many times I’ll buy a marketing book based on amazon.com recommendations, only to find that the book is targeted at larger enterprises. Most of us don’t need to read about strategies that ensure that our marketing staff is communicating effectively with our manufacturing managers.

In addition, there are a lot of books whose principles simply don’t translate well into the world of software development. A better source of information is to listen to recommendations from fellow software developers.

• Read book-related threads in the ASP newsgroups;
• Read the Software Marketing Book Club postings in the Educational Software Cooperative’s (ESC’s) blog;
• There are more than 30 reviews of marketing and sales books in the archives of my Marketing Newsletter. All of them are written from the perspective of a mISV in the software development industry;
• Ask for recommendations from other mISVs, and share information about your favorite books with the community.

Finding the Books You Need
Once you’ve chosen a book, the least expensive way to acquire it is to borrow it through your local library. Here in the US, town libraries’ book catalogs are searchable online. I’m able to easily search the catalogs of 20-or-so nearby towns. All local libraries here in Connecticut have inter-library loan programs that allow you to borrow books from any library in the state, for just a dollar or two.

Online stores such as amazon.com offer discounts on most books. And you can find deeply-discounted bargains in the used-book category for many business and marketing books.

Local bookstores are a great source for recently-published books. Generally, you can spend as much time as you like checking each book, to ensure that it will be useful in your business.
Building a Library of Marketing, Sales, and Business Books
There are quite a few bookstores on the Internet that sell remainders. My favorite is Book Closeouts. Remainders are books that publishers sell at deep discounts because they printed too many copies. Or they’re books that have been returned by book stores to the publishers, and the publishers don’t want to carry tiny quantities of them in their inventories.  Book Closeouts offers more than 50,000 books at deeply discounted prices, including some really great marketing and sales books. These books are so inexpensive, it’s easy – and affordable – to build a library.

Here in the US, local libraries sell used books to raise funds. A small town library might offer 15,000 books at its weekend sale. Larger libraries can have up to four times that number. The typical mix of books is 95 percent donations from the people in town, and 5 percent library discards. While books can cost between $2 (US) each and $5 per bag, you can generally expect to pay $1 for each book you buy.

At each book sale, there are typically a dozen-or-so dealers with their handheld PDAs and phones, reading barcodes and making big stacks of books. But most of the books are bought by book-lovers and bargain-hunters. You’ll find books that simply aren’t available at bookstores. And you’ll be helping your local library. Don’t go to these sales expecting to find recent tech books. But you’ll often find great business books, and books in every category. To find book sales in your area, visit Booksalefinder.com.

Finally, there are book-trading clubs online. You list the books that you want to trade, and you’re given credit for each book that other club members request and receive from you. You use your credits to request books from other members. All you pay are the shipping charges to send your book to another member. Check out Book Mooch.
The Bottom Line
Programming might be the most enjoyable part of your business. But building a successful software development business requires a lot of knowledge about business, marketing and sales. Spend a couple of hours each month reading hard-hitting business books, and watch your business grow, year after year.

How to Find Great Business Books for microISVs is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

… if you had to start your software story again?

As a software industry enthusiast, I am curious to know how others see their business development and what they would change, in hindsight and with a set of brand new 2009 eyes.

Neil on Business of Software Network asked the community a similar question (If you could wave a magic wand…) related to the marketing of software. Answers such as focus on usability, better knowledge of customers poured in (the discussion is still open).

Some even expressed their wish to get into their customers heads completely, or even in their competition’s financial reports, to see if it’s worth outrunning them anyway.

When asked the same question, some ASP members mentioned for example the need to have had a team right from the start or outsource the skills they did not have, instead of doing it all by themselves.

“If I were to start my software business again, I would find teammates and split the ownership. Or, I would have come to the realization much sooner that my dream of bootstrapping my own sweat investment into a good rate of return was not succeeding” – Mark Walsen, from Notation Software.

S Gupta from SSGIndia agreed on the necessity of partnership and even stated willingness to find such partners inside ASP “I would have started with partners with equal stake, commitments, diverse capabilities and Networking abilities“.

Riaz Faride from UpClick also stressed some interesting points on the ASP discussion lists, such as the need for community building even before the product launch and better security assessment:

“I would start working on a thin client less than 5MB in size, which will be managed by a central network (same as Cloud Computing approach). The thin client would be distributed free of charge. All the features of the software would be subscription based or pay-per-use based. In this way, I would’t have to worry about protection, because we all know that no matter how hard you try securing a software, crackers always find a way around. Most importantly, I would be able to generate recurring revenues“.

I think the “what if” question is useful even if all it does is making you stop and evaluate where you are or if it makes you admit your mistakes along the way.  Some of the mistakes and pieces of advice I frequently hear from some ASP members or other software business professionals I have interviewed are:

• Bob Walsh mentions problems that microISVs often have, such as not having a clear USP (Unique Selling Proposition) on their website, the lack of customer testimonials, being coy about the price and not presenting real contact information on the website;
• Eric Sink‘s advice is to make sure, first of all, that your software is needed out there, that people will want to talk about it and that the current customers are your top priority, even before getting new ones;
• Dave Collins warns about the failure to focus on marketing. He also recommends software authors to outsource the activities related to graphic and website design, press releases, SEO, AdWords, accounting and so on and to concentrate on development;
• Marty Cagan says that the biggest mistake is confusing customer requirements with product requirements and often speaks about good product management – I recommend taking a look at his articles from time to time.
• Nico Westerdale as well says one of his regrets is not moving faster in business development from the beginning and mentions the need to take high risks.

Andy Brice, another ASP member, even got a full presentation on the top 10 mistakes microISVs frequently make, that I warmly recommend watching.

So, what would you do differently if you had to start your software story over again? Please share your experience and lessons with us. It would be greatly helpful.

What would you do differently? is a post from: Association of Software Professionals

… the idea behind it:

This new resource is intended to help you as a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals share your experience and learn from others on various topics of your interest.

… main benefits you can get from the blog:

I’m sure many of you are advocates of blogs in general. What’s in it for you on this one?  First of all, you will know how others handled various aspects of their business, what was successful and what went wrong. You can learn from their know-how and calibrate your strategy in the right direction, avoiding pitfalls.

Secondly, you can benefit from important advertising / promotion opportunities via the ASP Blog. Don’t get me wrong, we won’t encourage or accept blatant advertising. We encourage real knowledge, tips, ideas. The more you contribute, the more your name will be associated with Software Industry Professionals.

… contributing to the blog:

Any ASP member can post on the blog. You just have to send your request to blog@asp-shareware.org and you will get further details via email.

… what you will read about:

Apart from official organization announcements, the blog’s content will be entirely generated by ASP members, so the topics and posts will reflect the subjects you consider to be important -  software development, marketing and distribution a.s.o. This said, we look forward to receiving  your suggestions regarding blog categories or any other issue related to the blog.

Last but not least, I want to renew our invitation to drop by the ASP Hospitality Suite at SIC (July 16-18, 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts). Be sure to come where you will be able to talk to us and to other members over a cup of coffee. For a more elaborate discussion and schmoozing, you can join us at the ASP Lunch!

Welcome.

Welcome to the New ASP Blog is a post from: Association of Software Professionals