An Interview with Daniel Jalkut, Red Sweater Software

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:28:54 -0800

This interview with Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, is the sixth in a series of interviews I've held with indie software developers about marketing Mac software. Previous interviews: Rich Siegel, Oliver Breidenbach, Jacob Gorban, Jean MacDonald, and Kevin Hoctor.

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!)

DW: Can you tell us some of the marketing activities you do?

DJ: I consider marketing to be a very soft art and try to market my products and business on as many fronts as possible, but in a fairly casual way. For some reason the phrase that pops into my head right now is a play on the title of that book you recommended about A/B testing. “Always Be Marketing” sounds like a pretty good catch-phrase for the kind of attitude I try to keep in mind as I'm developing the relationship between me, my company, and the rest of the world.