Karelia Software

A couple of months ago I wrote a post suggesting that indie developers set up a customer mailing list. I figured that it is such an important topic that it was worth revisiting.

This post is a sort of grab bag of suggestions and tips.

There are so many good reasons to have an email marketing list:

• If somebody comes to your website, or downloads your application but doesn't buy it right away, they can join your mailing list, and get to know you and your company a bit more. And then, perhaps, become a customer.
• You will have a base of current and potential customers to notify of your upcoming products and releases.
• You can cooperatively promote your fellow indie developers' software programs. By introducing cool software to people on your list, they will appreciate you, as will your fellow developers.
• You can provide tips and tricks for the users of your software.  Even if your subscriber doesn't own the software you mention, they will see that you are proactive and helpful to your…

This interview with Rich Siegel, President/CEO of Bare Bones Software, is the fifth in a series of interviews I've held with indie software developers about marketing Mac software. Previous interviews: Oliver Breidenbach, Jacob Gorban, Jean MacDonald, and Kevin Hoctor. (Is there an indie developer/company you'd like to see featured here? Leave me a comment and I'll do my best to feature them!)

Rich Siegel is the founder and, after all these years, still the President/CEO of Bare Bones Software, known for its long-standing BBEdit and more recent Yojimbo. He lives in Rhode Island with his family, including four parrots (two of whom he claims are "too smart for everyone's good"). Like most indies, Rich works out of a home office, which presents interesting opportunities and challenges. He enjoys music and can claims to be able to use dangerous power tools without injuring himself or others. His personal website is absolutely not www.richsiegel.com.

I cornered Rich over email and managed…

Just a quick announcement in case you missed it on Twitter or other blogs: Macworld Expo '10 will have an online "Indie Developer Spotlight" in which any application that is discounted for 20% off can be listed on their "indie list" page during the expo, between February 11 and February 13.

Just go to this page and get yourself signed up. One note: you will need a URL to visit, not just a coupon code. (For Sandvox, we were able to supply a URL to our store with the coupon code pre-entered.)

It looks like it's not too late to get a stand at their Independent Developer Pavilion — what some call "Tiny Town."

Here's a quick post with some suggestions for press releases. I hope they are of use. Please leave any comments afterwards about your experiences or ideas.

1. Make your press release interesting enough that people will want to publish it.

When you publish a press release, some websites will just automatically pick it up and publish it as-is, even if it's not that interesting.  However, you should try for more than that — the more respectable publications will only pick up the interesting stories, so give them something to write about!  This goes for Twitter also; if you have an interesting story, people will tweet about it!

2. Topics for a press release

Obviously when you release a new app, you'll want to send out a press release.  But there are so many more opportunities to do something newsworthy and announce it.  Updates to existing software titles.  Announcements of new people on your team.  A special sale (especially if it's interesting somehow).  A milestone you are celebrating. …

I had read recently that it's a good idea to connect with people on Facebook. We've been using Twitter a lot (come follow @karelia!) but wanted to get more of a presence on Facebook as well.

I set up a facebook page for Karelia Software (If you are reading this please stop by and become a fan and write something on our wall!) and started looking around for ideas on what to put there. I've found a few Mac software companies, and some other organizations, with some interesting content, plus a bunch of ideas for making an effective Facebook page.

Why do all this?

Having a Facebook page for your company is a good way to connect with people who are interested in you. Yes, you should have a mailing list, and use Twitter, and hopefully an online forum or discussion email list. Facebook is just another channel. There are ton of people who are on Facebook constantly, so why not connect with them too?

When you make some update to your facebook page, your "fans" get notified of the update. So…

Some recent discussion on the MacSB discussion list prompted me to write a few words about the importance of blogging as a marketing tool.

I've mentioned blogging in previous posts here, and it came up as a marketing idea in a recent Mac SB thread. A couple of negatives suggested about blogging is your customers may not know what a blog is, or that your niche is so narrow that there isn't much you can post about regularly.

I believe that these negatives are far outweighed by the positive aspects of blogging. Especially when you consider that the potential audience for a company/product blog are not your current or potential customers (who would be wandering around on your website), but searchers — and, via extension — the search engines.

Let's look at this this way. People are out there, searching for what you have to offer. Perhaps most of them are using really obvious terms, and in your keyword research, you've made sure that your product's home page works in those terms into the…

Andy Brice, developer of the app "Perfect Table Plan" for Windows and Mac, has made a talk he did available online. It's called "Marketing for µISVs — Embracing the Dark Side?" Clearly he comes from the PC world more than the Mac world to use such a term, but his presentation has some good points that the indie developer who is new at the idea marketing — especially the reason why it's a useful activity — should see.

His presentation on marketing was a lot less rushed than my five-minute Blitz talk at C4, so he gets to cover a lot more ground. First he dispels seven "myths of marketing," then goes into a number of marketing concepts. His presentation goes a bit too heavy into the concept of branding, which really doesn't apply (as he admits) for the small developer. He shows a lot of examples of "positioning" from the non-software world, but it's food for thought in any case. His insights on pricing are extremely interesting; that's an issue that we all have had to go through.

I think…

I got an email this morning from a developer of a Mac application. I quote it here, though I have replaced the names and URLs to protect the guilty.

Dear Sir,

We have gone through your website([URL OF MY PERSONAL BLOG]) and found good postings on your website, just wanted to appreciate you on a well presented, and informative web site related to different products posted on your page. We want our Macintosh product (XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX) to be reviewed and posted on your webpage.

Information about the product can be found at: http://www.XXXXXXXXXX.com/

Our product review would provide good quality content to your blog and it will also help us.

If you are interested to review our product we can provide you full version of our software and license key as well.

We hope an early and positive response to your site. If you have any queries then please feel free to mail us

Thanks for your time and consideration

Emailing relevant websites and offering your product for them to review is…

Jacob Gorban founded Apparent Software in 2006 with the release of ImageFramer. Starting with programming as hobby since the age of about 12, on multitude of platforms, he made it a part-time business in 2006, alongside his career in electronics engineering. In early 2009 Jacob partnered with Kosta Rozen to take Apparent Software to the next level. Lately Jacob has left his day job to concentrate fully on Apparent Software. I was able to ask Jacob some questions about how they do marketing; Kosta stepped in as well to answer a couple of questions near the end. Please forgive Jacob for using the term "MicroISV" — I think the term "indie" is much more approachable, but that's just me….

DW: Can you tell us about your marketing activities?

JG: I must admit that I started this business without much real-life knowledge in marketing, as a developer. But I do love reading business books and blogs and listening to podcasts on these subjects to educate myself.

The first couple of years I've…

I met Jean MacDonald and the crew from SmileOnMyMac at a developer gathering at Chaat Cafe in San Francisco a few years ago during Macworld Expo. She is a partner at the company and primarily handles marketing and PR.  Prior to joining the SmileOnMyMac, she operated Well-Tempered Web, an independent web design and online marketing firm. She also taught web design and online marketing at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon and as a member of Geekcorps in Ghana, West Africa. Smile is one of the few indie companies that I know of to have somebody on staff dedicated to marketing, so I thought it would be useful to pick her brain for how they do it.

DW: What kind of marketing activities do you handle?

JM: Our website is the locus of our marketing efforts. We are continually refining and enriching it so that it's easy for site visitors to learn how our products can help them. We work hard on driving traffic to our site, via search engine optimization, advertising, and PR,…