By July 15th

Part of the game that I’m playing is that I want to see how much I can do without spending any money. I hope that when it becomes truly necessary I will know to abandon that mode of operation. Right now I want to acquire an appropriate web domain and create an appropriate website. I want the product to advertise the website and the website to advertize the product. I want to make sure that anyone who has the product will know where to go to get another copy.

Anyway, that means spending money, if not too much. So how can I play the game? It is time for the company to start paying for itself. Another way to say that is it is time for me to do some of the real work. It is time to try and sell.

But it is also time to keep on trying to make sure that there is something worth selling. So I want to keep working on improving SongPiper. (I’m not settled on the name yet. If you have better ideas, let me know!)

That requires two separate goals for this session, one to obtain a certain amount of cash, and one to make some improvements. Here they are:

By July 15th of 2006 I hope to

1. Sell 5 copies of SongPiper at $20 a copy.
2. Make 3 substantial improvements in the program:
1. Improve look of flashcards using Sam Baird’s scheme and graphics or something similar
2. Enable the user to enter in their own note sets
3. Enable the user to play middle C on demand

I believe that the first goal is not too ambitious but I really don’t know yet. I don’t know how I shall go about doing the selling. Any ideas? The second goal I think will be challenging but doable given my current time constraints. What I hope is that I will be able to make many more improvements than that.

Is the focus wrong here? Should I be trying for leverage in my sales by selling to groups rather than to people?

Doug

Marketing 100

My ideal marketing scenario looks like this: you make a product and as time goes on you get feedback that you implement and the product gets better and better. Eventually it crosses a threshold such that it becomes contagious. Then it markets itself. At the same time users are forming a community around the product. They are improving it and adding value that you couldn’t add alone. It becomes a lasting cultural phenomenon.

So that’s the dream. But before it can come to pass I imagine that it will take time to find out who the market actually is. And some time to communicate with them and to sell the product. And time to optimize the product.

The trick is that right now I’m starting from scratch. I haven’t sold a thing. So I need some ideas for how to get the ball rolling. Those ideas are to be collected in this post. When I came up with 100 company ideas there came a point when I had to choose one. Marketing ideas may be different. There may be quite a few practices that will bolster each other.

This time I will collect all 100 ideas in a single post by editing it every so often. Here goes:

1. Try to ride the American Idol wave. For example have them market it! (Brad Bushman, Rick Bradshaw)
2. Get a lot of free copies out there using the internet. (Cathy Webster)
3. Get a lot of copies out there by getting them installed initially with new computers. For example if all Dell laptops came with a free copy . . .
4. Try an internet subscription model. (Spencer Cook)
5. Sell to Universities. (Heather Cook)
6. Partner with a company that already distributes in the education or in the music market. Have them do the selling. (Jonathan Jones)
7. Sell it over Ebay. (Jeff and Katie Giras)
8. Sell it using Amazon. (Jeremy Wallace)
9. Advertize using Google.
10. Make the program and then sell the rights to it. Don’t even worry about marketing. (Tom)

One thing I commit to doing: I will try and keep track of the number of copies sold so that I will know when the goal of one million copies sold is reached. I would like also like to keep the running total posted somewhere like McDonalds did for a long time. If you think that is a really bad idea let me know.

Feedback.

So I have now gotten the first copy out to quite a few people and have gotten some great feedback.

This post is to store that feedback. Here goes:

1. Make the pitch detector less sensitive to background noise. (Brad and Tiffany Bushman)
2. Make the flashcards look more professional. (Sherise Payne, Sam Baird)
3. Let the user sing the correct note for longer before going to the next flash card (Tiffany Bushman’s family)
4. Doesn’t work right on Macs yet. (Bart Bradshaw, Rick Bradshaw)
5. Let the GUI show the user the measured amplitude. (Rick Bradshaw)
6. Play a reference note so that the user can figure out where they are. (Bushmans, Gina, Sam Baird)
7. Add levels of difficulty so that beginners can have fun too. (Gina, Bushmans)
8. May not work on PCs if the users don’t have an updated JRE. (Ryan Williams, Karen Tate)
9. Enable the user to enter in a sequence of notes so that they can make their own drills. (Sam Baird, Gina Bradshaw, Bushmans)
10. Show the number of flash cards so that the user knows how fast she is progressing. (Heather Cook)
11. Create a drill to help people sing intervals. (Bushmans)

Obviously there is plenty of work to do. I intend to edit this post every so often to add further ideas and feedback.