The Business of Software

Hello Dear Members,

Our product RecentX is on Give Away Of The Day (http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/recentx/) today.

The response has been great. I am loving the comments from the GAOTD users.

Some experiences:

Today's RecentX promotion was a surprise for us. We were not intimated about the promotion in advance (unlike BitsDuJour). GAOTD did not request us to review the promotion page. So, we encountered the following problems:

1. They did not show the discount coupon code of another product (NoteZilla) that we advertised along with RecentX.

2. They openly displayed the registration code after installation. The product was supposed to be registered in background as agreed via email communication.

But GAOTD has been very responsive. And they fixed #1 immediately.

Fortunately, we could fix #2 from our side so that the same registration code does not work from tomorrow onwards.

Thing to remember: Always ask GAOTD for a review before the final promotion day.

Thank you.

Thanks for posting those comments. I've been curious about GOTD and what people have felt about them.

BTW - I like the program! Had to kill it on the first run (this is not uncommon), but it was immediately intuitive and nicely presented. :)

good experience, thanks for sharing

I'd like to see if this generates any sales.  Let us know about that please. I'm not convinced this type of giveaway generates sales. I think you get enough bad reviews to do some damage infact. I'd like to learn otherwise though, as it is easy no cost marketing.

We went down the GAOTD route some time ago. Our first day experience had similarities to yours, but without the problems - very good response from commenters, lots of website traffic, email queries, etc.

This extra activity lasted about a week, dwindling as time went on, but when it came to sales, it was a very different story. There was a slight increase in sales over the next 2 months, and by slight I mean only about 10 copies above normal each month. At the time, we though it was great, as there was so much interest, but when we looked at the figures and translated it all into hard cash, we very quickly realized that the entire operation had been a waste of time.

6 months later we had a serious mention in the mainstream press. This generated for us about 10% of the downloads that GAOTD did, and about 300 times the sales. The effect of this is still ongoing.

The lesson for us, was that giving something away for free to ordinary users who are expecting something for free, gets you nothing. All the talk about 'increased exposure' and such phrases was just wrong. Far better to struggle and fight for 'real' notice and attention from people expect to pay money for quality software.

My product was given away last month and even I've noticed a slight (about 10%) boost in sales activity since then. I've also noticed that I get a steady stream of referrals from the non English versions of the GAOTD site (they translate your product info into multiple languages).

You do need a thick skin to promote your product there though! Be prepared for comments that point out all the freeware alternatives to your product, false virus and trojan alerts, etc etc.

The GAOTD voting system is seriously flawed as it's possible to vote without even downloading the program. If your program doesn't have wide appeal you'll also get plenty of thumbs down as there's no voting option for 'I would not find this type of app useful'. Personally I think some people visit GAOTD every day and just give everything they see a thumbs down just for the hell of it. :)

I don't think I'd list my product there again.

Make sure you get paid. They never paid me.

On the plus side, I can attribute one sale from GAOTD. It came in just after the giveaway ended. I guess the guy REALLY wanted it. :)

I believe you have truly misspelled on the RecentX tab on your site ("Truely extroardinary Program").

Actually, I'd go one step further and suggest replacing that text with some that actually describes the application (as you do for the tabs that describe your other applications).