Do you care what others are saying?

Do you care what people are saying\thinking about you? Most of people do, but not me. I don’t like to shave often and wear brand new clothes and shoes. Maybe, sometimes I’m looking like homeless man : ) Kidding.

I don’t need new mobile phone and cool car. Actually, I don’t like cars, I’m a bit scary about driving a car, I prefer to drive on taxi or bus. What I’m trying to say is that I’m totally don’t care about what people (which I don’t even know) may think\say about me.

Today, I was wanted to find good reviews about my software on the internet and put it on my website. I have found only few good reviews and the others were surprisingly negative. I even found people who blame that software have Trojans. Frankly speaking, I just wanted to re-write my programs : ) This was a big surprise to me, since every second-third support email I get is “wow, I love your program” and even emails with 1–2 pages about how customer loves my program. I have plenty of fans which are buying software 2–3 times because they just loved it I even got few donations. I’m feeling pretty good about it.

So, what’s the point? Don’t judge too quickly. 90% of these people who wrote these negative reviews about my software actually didn’t downloaded and tried it. The same about people who judge you about your appearance, if they will talk with you 5 minutes they will think quite different things about you.

P.S. My software have nice user-interface and usability : )



Now playing: The Beautiful Mistake - fragile fingers (the 23rd)

Refunds

If you have high volume sales, refunds are occasionally happening. There will be always unhappy customers which can’t get software working and can’t give you steps to reproduce the problem(s). Even, if you give them answer how to solve the issue, they may still want their money back.

I have had approx. 4–5 refunds per 1000 sales. The problem is that eCommerce (for example Plimus) are charging you for additional fee per refund ($15 for Plimus). So, if customer wants to get his money back, you lose 1 sale + $15. Not a big deal, but who wants to pay additional money for nothing.

How can we save this money? Just ask unhappy customer if the have PayPal account and if he does, send him money back from your PayPal or credit card. In such case, unhappy customer will have his money back and ecommerce will not charge you additional fee.

Little math:

Per 5 refunds = 15 * 5 = you save $75

Hope this will help you.

Video marketing

Today, internet is living in the era of online streaming video. Such, major video websites like YouTube, MetaCafe, Google Video have high volume traffic on their websites and every internet marketer wants to take a part of this tasty cake.

Currently, I’m working on video promotion to my new software product. It should be funny, short and to look nice. Then I will post this video to major video sharing websites using VideoPut. Providing description with link to my website. After first month I will share statistic data in this blog.

Benefits

• Video sharing websites have high volume traffic and people hungry are for videos.
• This video may be shared with others (word-of-mouth)
• Can be good positioned in social network websites (digg, delicious, etc)
• Links to your website from pages with high PageRank will affect your SEO.
• It is almost free.

Disadvantages

• It is not easy to create good video clip. Will need to hire designer to make video.

Statistics is comming soon.

Startup success

Few of my friends are currently working on their startup projects online. Some of them creating software products, some of them selling other stuff online, and others are creating affiliate webs.

For most of them it will be their first own business. They are still working on their full time jobs which they hate and startup is kind of hobby and a dream that it will success and they will be able to quit their full time job.

I have made my first software product one year ago after coming back from the vacation. I have noticed that I have loan ~ 5 times of my monthly salary and no money left. This was a really bad time for me. I was working 8–10 hours a day on a job and more 4–5 hours on product. I developed it very fast. In less than month I have made release. Three months later I have no loan and some really good amount of money in the pocket. Today I thought what would it be if it won’t success. I believe I would give up that time. I still remember the feeling of 1st sale and 1st refund : ) I was working very hard (like Ant I believe) that days, doing a lot of stupid stuff and zero experienced in internet marketing. Nowadays, I’m working 2–3 hours a day on existing products and creating new product. This is kind of hobby too.

What I want to say is that 1st startup should have success, at least little success. If it fail it can make people give up and came back to the old-fashion job and did not finish started deal. It may take years to understand that it was not end of the world, but simple experience. First sale\revenue should be as soon as possible, it may be even few bucks, but it will make your engine working hundred times faster.

Now playing: Benumb - Live At Fiesta Grande 1997

Very nice advertisement