The Business of Software

First off can I just say the writing is not my thing so if the following has grammar or spelling errors be kind.

I have just had goCRM on the website giveawayoftheday, and as promised I have looked into the process and posted some data.

I guess the first question is

Why
goCRM is doing well but I have come to a point where things are a little stagnant. I have been thinking for some time about what to do with the product next (not development I have that planned for the next year or so). I have a day job and goCRM is done after work and at weekends so direction is not always that simple.

As far as I could see I had three options.
1)    Develop the services side of the business and try to grow the business. This requires me to become a consultant and go visit sites and install goCRM.
2)    Try and continue with my current working and target users that will install and configure the software themselves.
3)    Get someone else to do the customer facing work and keep the development going.

Number 1
I quite frankly am not that keen on. I don’t want to be traveling around and I feel that my time is better spent improving the software.
Number 2
All well and good but where to I get people to pay for the software and be smart enough to setup a system. I know marketing marketing marketing…
Number 3
goCRM had 280 customers and not that many on our support plan. I did not feel that I could get someone to do this without losing cash.

So I decided to try and get some more users and try and do the marketing marketing until I could afford to move on.



How
I had been watching the site for a while www.GiveAwayOfTheDay.com and contacted them regarding goCRM. The offered the next day and I agreed.
They required a free version that can only be activated for a 24 hour period. No problem because I have a Voucher Code system build into the buy process of my website.
I gave them a little text from the site a setup file and created a voucher code and waited for 8:00 am the next day.

Choices
Software on the site is usually non-commercial use, no updates and no support. Now if someone wants to use an application in the business world they need to know that if a serious problem occurs, help is at hand. So minimal support is a must, if things are broken then they need an update to fix the problem and finally goCRM helps people run a business putting a non-commercial limit on the download would just be ridiculous. I did however limit the upgrades to the current version (2.x)  and support to email only.
I believe goCRM was the first software to offer these on giveawayoftheday.

Results.
The downloads started at 8:00 00:01, seriously people must be hitting F5 to see what’s being offered next.
We had some simple instructions on the site that and a few did not bother to read. So I did get some admin work sending out keys. Perhaps SOME is a little understatement I spent hours resending keys and had approximately 500 emails asking simple questions like “I do not have the email can you resend the data” or “Does goCRM have an API” all of which I could reply to fairly quickly.

Over the 24 hours we had the following results:

Total Registrations was just under 4000.
Total Incorrect Registrations 600 (requires 20 seconds of my time to send a key). I fixed these and resent out the keys ASAP.

Website Traffic for goCRM Website
Total Unique Visits 12014
Total Visits 16177
Total Hits 36923
Total Files downloaded 9316
Total Bandwidth(Kbytes)  68737896 (the setup.exe was hosted by giveawayoftheday so the usage is mostly goCRM TV viewers).

Looking at the new users details I think about 70% of the downloads are businesses in my target market. Far higher than I originally thought.

Most Visited Page /Buy.cfm ( the registration page )
Highest Exit page /TV.cfm (the free online movies)

I am in the process of signing up 4 resellers and have had emails from 13 companies that are looking at upgrading the free single user for a multi-user version of goCRM. One wants 30 users!

So what’s next?
Well things are now different for goCRM. I have a much larger user base so a few things I wanted to do should now work.

My To-Do List.

1)    I am setting up a forum for support. Now with all those people I no longer think it will sit empty with no movement. Our fogbugz will help with that. Hopefully the user base will start to support itself.
2)    I need to stay on top of the people that have shown a real interest in purchasing more goCRM  I am thinking of these as a highly qualified lead and will not let them go cold.
3)    I have some real interest in resellers that can sell and support goCRM. I intend to make the most of what has been offered.
4)    I have had some truly fantastic comments from people (some bad ones too! But 80% of people liked the software)  and I will be adding them to the comments section of the website.
5)    Now I have 4000 + users I am going to display the number of registered users on my website.
6)    I offer an enhanced support contract and I am going to offer this to all the users.
7)    When Version  3 of the software comes out everyone will get a discount code to upgrade. 

Final thoughts.
I now have some smart customers that can guide me on requirements for goCRM in other countries. As a person from the UK I have limited experience of what need to be added to goCRM for say the US so now I have someone that will help develop the software. I intend to listen to these people whenever I can.

New users should see an application that other people are running and support (via the forum) that comes quickly.  Hopefully this has gone some way to help goCRM cross the chasm. In any event it’s been fun.  I am fairly please with the way things are going, but have to admit its hard work doing this part time.

I downloaded and registered it last night, but never got the key.

Chris - go for you for doing the write-up.  This is the first time I've seen details like this for GAoTD. 

Out of interest, did you also consider putting goCRM on BitsDuJour?

DanH can you PM me your company name and I can sort out a resend of the serial.

I sent the PM.

<<Out of interest, did you also consider putting goCRM on BitsDuJour

We were on bits but some time ago. The software was at a very early stage (and a little flakey) and bits had just released.  So I do not think they had the kind of trafic they get now.

I would consider doing it again. Perhaps I will mail them to see if they are interested.


Dan do you have a code now?

Thank you for writing down your experience, I'll consider GAoTD when I get to v1.0 (well, perhaps 1.1 ;o).

And thank you for the goCRM license as well!!

"Dan do you have a code now? "

Nope

Dan check your smam filter but just in case
301-42919-1502-41116

The code will only work for your company name.

I did check the spam filter...nothing in there.  The only email I get from you are the emails you send through the forums.

Thanks for the key.

Guess the intention wasn't to have your customer support spill over into the forum.  On the plus side, just goes to show: Where there's a will, there's customer support :)