An Interview with Justin Williams, Second Gear Software
This interview with Justin Williams of Second Gear Software, is the eighth in a series of interviews I've held with indie software developers about marketing Mac software. Previous interviews: Gus Mueller, Daniel Jalkut, Rich Siegel, Oliver Breidenbach, Jacob Gorban, Jean MacDonald, and Kevin Hoctor.
Justin Williams runs the one-man software shop called Second Gear Software. His products are Today and Check Off. He obsessively blogs at CarpeAqua and it also very active on Twitter.
DW: Can you tell us some of the marketing activities you do?
JW: I'll first confess that I'm not entirely comfortable with my marketing activities at this time. Part of this is due to me not really having much experience with it, but another part is that like many, I have a negative connotation to the word marketing. I am so bombarded with marketing and advertising (good and bad) every day that I always second guess what I do in terms of marketing.
(1) Newsletter: This is my favorite marketing venue. I send out a monthly newsletter that highlights what I've been working on in the past month as well as offers some tips for using both Today and Check Off. I recently added support to both apps to prompt the user to subscribe to the newsletter on their first launch, which has offered a nice uptick in the amount of subscriptions.
Daniel Jalkut is the founder and de facto CEO of Red Sweater Software, where he develops MarsEdit, a blog editing app, and several other products. On his company blog he writes about marketing, software development, and the general thrills and perils of being an indie Mac developer. When he's not painstakingly developing — and marketing! — his company's products, he enjoys playing guitar, running, and endlessly striving to perfect the home-baked pizza.
(I've actually known Daniel — at least online — since before he became an indie developer, when he worked at Apple, probably around 2002. Even back then, there was a red sweater!)
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