I recently found out my role is being moved to the UK. Not a huge deal but as much as I like the company I'm working for, I can't find it in me to uproot the family. So I'm back on the market and find myself sending out resumes and getting my head back into the 'interview' game.
One of the dilemmas I always find myself in is how do I ensure I'm dressed appropriately. A good friend and former recruiter always suggested you should dress one level above your interviewer and if you don't know how they dress then wear a suit and tie. This is pretty solid advice if you're a banker, investor or accountant. Me? I'm in the software and internet-based world and I can say that this advice has burned me in the past. Nothing worse than showing up for an interview with the CEO and have this go horribly wrong. Me: Slacks, tie and sports jacket. Him: 'Holey' blue-jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket. A minute into the interview and he asks "so, do you dress like this all the time?"... Didn't get that job.
I wish I didn't live in a world where my clothing options and lack of a leather jacket didn't impact my employment opportunities but here we are. How you present yourself is as important as what you present and to be competitive, you need to do some research on the companies you're interviewing at.
There are two, supper easy ways to find out what would be appropriate to wear at an interview. Firstly, go to the company website and check our the 'management' page. Here you'll normally find photos of the CEO and company leadership. The marketing department is usually pretty keyed into the culture of the company so you'll normally find the management team wearing something they would find dressy, but appropriate. And that is what you're shooting for: formal, but appropriate to the organization. If they don't have any photos, you can always search for their names in LinkedIn and see what they're wearing there.
On the odd occasion that the leadership are photo-phobic, you always have the ability to pop into their office a couple days before your interview to drop off your beautifully printed CV. The receptionist is the person the company presents to the world and will always be dressed appropriately.
Last word of advice: I don't suggest stalking the leadership to find out what they're wearing, as this might come up in the interview later...
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Saturday, June 25, 2011
QuiBids and Darwin
I've spent that last couple days watching QuiBids and I have to say I'm impressed. The greedy capitalist side of me says "why didn't you think of that" while the savvy consumer side screams "Warning!". And honestly, there are two very different sides to QuiBids depending on your how you approach it.
QuiBids is an auction site that allows you to buy iPads, gift cards, trips, waffle irons, golf irons and just about anything else under the sun. And they sell all these products at cents on the dollar. For example I just saw a Nintendo Wii package (normally retails for about $200) sell for $4.99! The person that won only had to pay $4.99 for a $300 product... well, kind of.
In QuiBids you need to purchase your bids and each bid cost $.60. If you buy a package of 100 bids you pay $60 up front. Each time you bid, it costs you real money. For the Wii package above, the individual had to bid 120 times (each time you bid, the auction price is increased by $.01) and since it sold for $4.99, we know there were 499 bids (it starts out at zero cents). In real money, the winner of this deal actually paid $4.99 plus $.60 per bid (120 bids = $72) for a grand total of $76.99. Still a really great deal right? Well, yes, for the person who won. This product had twenty other people bidding on it and all of them (499 bids minus the winners 120 bids) paid out $227.40 in bid fees. Fees they don't get back. They paid to bid, not to win. When you look at some of the auctions, its really crazy how long and drawn out they go on for because even though the action counts down, every time somebody bids, it add 10 to 20 seconds to the auction. Literally, these can go on for hours and hours. A Joola Quattro Table Tennis Table sold yesterday for $33.56. That's 3356 bids for a grand total of $2013.60 in bid sales for QuiBids. All for a product that retails for $500 and QuiBids buys at wholesale for $300. That's a whopping profit of of over $1,700 for a single auction. A Callaway Razr Hawk Driver worth $370 retail sold for $30.56 and did over $1800 in bid revenue for QuiBids.
QuiBids makes it fun too. They have achievements with badges and everything. The 'More Bid Combat' badge, 'Running Riot Badge' (no, not for Vancouverites) and 'Going Rouge' badges are awarded for aggressive bidding. Their site is slick, easy and engaging. Its a little bit like gambling because its competitive, exciting and there is risk and chance involved. Will the people I'm bidding against give up before me? Each bid you make, makes you more committed financially to winning the deal. As I said above, I might win the Callaway Driver for $30 but everybody else has already invested $1,600 to win the same product. I'd hate to invest 100 bids just to walk away empty handed (and $60 bucks less in my pocket).
And this is where the greedy capitalist side of me says "wow!". I spent a couple of hours monitoring some bidding and here is what I've found when I looked at a sampling of completed auctions:
Based on the auctions I dug into, QuiBids is making an obscene amount of profit. And this is just in the first month of operations. As it takes off and gets some traction, I'm betting this company could give eBay a run for their money. Amazon for that matter to. Buying something online is normally as much fun as doing laundry and QuiBids has come up with a way to make if fun, addictive and, if you're an auction winner, a great place for a deal. I also find it a bit frighting because it combines so many compulsive behaviors like casual gaming, shopping and gambling all into a single experience. And lets be clear that this business model relies on those compulsions. QuiBids is the opposite of Groupon and other social dealz sites. Where those programs rely on the crowdsourcing to help initiate and secure that same crowd a deal, QuiBids is more crowdfleecing. Groupon is socialized deal making for the many and QuiBids is survival of the fittest (and by fittest, I mean that person willing to stick it out till they win).
Will I be using QuiBids to buy stuff? No, its a rip off unless you have the fortitude to fight tooth and nail to win the auction. Do I wish I thought of QuiBids? Hells yes.
~ chris
QuiBids is an auction site that allows you to buy iPads, gift cards, trips, waffle irons, golf irons and just about anything else under the sun. And they sell all these products at cents on the dollar. For example I just saw a Nintendo Wii package (normally retails for about $200) sell for $4.99! The person that won only had to pay $4.99 for a $300 product... well, kind of.
In QuiBids you need to purchase your bids and each bid cost $.60. If you buy a package of 100 bids you pay $60 up front. Each time you bid, it costs you real money. For the Wii package above, the individual had to bid 120 times (each time you bid, the auction price is increased by $.01) and since it sold for $4.99, we know there were 499 bids (it starts out at zero cents). In real money, the winner of this deal actually paid $4.99 plus $.60 per bid (120 bids = $72) for a grand total of $76.99. Still a really great deal right? Well, yes, for the person who won. This product had twenty other people bidding on it and all of them (499 bids minus the winners 120 bids) paid out $227.40 in bid fees. Fees they don't get back. They paid to bid, not to win. When you look at some of the auctions, its really crazy how long and drawn out they go on for because even though the action counts down, every time somebody bids, it add 10 to 20 seconds to the auction. Literally, these can go on for hours and hours. A Joola Quattro Table Tennis Table sold yesterday for $33.56. That's 3356 bids for a grand total of $2013.60 in bid sales for QuiBids. All for a product that retails for $500 and QuiBids buys at wholesale for $300. That's a whopping profit of of over $1,700 for a single auction. A Callaway Razr Hawk Driver worth $370 retail sold for $30.56 and did over $1800 in bid revenue for QuiBids.
QuiBids makes it fun too. They have achievements with badges and everything. The 'More Bid Combat' badge, 'Running Riot Badge' (no, not for Vancouverites) and 'Going Rouge' badges are awarded for aggressive bidding. Their site is slick, easy and engaging. Its a little bit like gambling because its competitive, exciting and there is risk and chance involved. Will the people I'm bidding against give up before me? Each bid you make, makes you more committed financially to winning the deal. As I said above, I might win the Callaway Driver for $30 but everybody else has already invested $1,600 to win the same product. I'd hate to invest 100 bids just to walk away empty handed (and $60 bucks less in my pocket).
And this is where the greedy capitalist side of me says "wow!". I spent a couple of hours monitoring some bidding and here is what I've found when I looked at a sampling of completed auctions:
- QuiBids has about 400 auctions complete per/hour
- I averaged these out and based on what I tracked, QuiBids is doing about 10,000+ bids an hour.
- Even though I've used examples of where the bids revenue is way higher than the product price, they do have about 40% of their products selling at less than their cost (bid revenue + sale price - product cost). Take into consideration though that QuiBids does not pay retail for these products and their losses drop significantly.
- In my sample of 20 transaction QuiBids made approx $4k in top-line revenue for about $900 in products (again, retail price, not wholesale).
- In none of my samples did the buyer ever pay more than the value of the product (auction price + bid cost).
Based on the auctions I dug into, QuiBids is making an obscene amount of profit. And this is just in the first month of operations. As it takes off and gets some traction, I'm betting this company could give eBay a run for their money. Amazon for that matter to. Buying something online is normally as much fun as doing laundry and QuiBids has come up with a way to make if fun, addictive and, if you're an auction winner, a great place for a deal. I also find it a bit frighting because it combines so many compulsive behaviors like casual gaming, shopping and gambling all into a single experience. And lets be clear that this business model relies on those compulsions. QuiBids is the opposite of Groupon and other social dealz sites. Where those programs rely on the crowdsourcing to help initiate and secure that same crowd a deal, QuiBids is more crowdfleecing. Groupon is socialized deal making for the many and QuiBids is survival of the fittest (and by fittest, I mean that person willing to stick it out till they win).
Will I be using QuiBids to buy stuff? No, its a rip off unless you have the fortitude to fight tooth and nail to win the auction. Do I wish I thought of QuiBids? Hells yes.
~ chris
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Cable Guy (or lack thereof)
My wife and I decided to shut off the cable for the summer. I know, its a vain attempt to promote that our kids get outside and enjoy the summer but honestly, its was as much for the two of us as it was for our children. Turning off was simple (although the cable company did protest). What we found out was that turning the cable back on was much, much harder.
Everybody has a horror stories about waiting for telephone or cable service repair people. The standard "we'll be by between 7am and 8pm on Wednesday" is pretty standard. At least you know they'll come by... or will they? In Vancouver we've traditionally only had one cable provider and that was Shaw Communication based out of Edmonton Alberta. That single provider had a monopoly until some deregulation allowed in some much needed competition. Last week my wife decided to turn the cable back on and was told that a service person would be out to our home on Friday between 1 and 5pm. Firstly, why do they need to send somebody out? In this day and age why can't access to the existing cable services (already in place) be toggled remotely? Anywhoo, the wife waits around but unfortunately we had to take off to a dinner party at 5:15 and, you guessed it, the cable guy showed up at 5:30.
Ok, kind of crumby but no worries, we phone and they tell us he'll be back on Saturday to hook us up. I wait around all day and sure enough, no cable guy. We phone Shaw at 7:45pm on Saturday night and they assure us he is still on route. And now I'm pretty perturbed. We phone again (now this is part of the story where the rubber hits the road as they say) and again, we're hit with half-heated promises of service follow-through. In fact, we phoned Shaw on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and each time they apologize for the misunderstanding. Each time they also tell us that somebody will call us back shortly to explain/recommend solutions. Nobody ever calls us back. Never. What worse, they tell me that this is my fault. They say:
I've now just got off the phone with another poor service rep who again tells me somebody will call me back, but now its too late. The wheels have come off this service experience ride and I've just decided that my hobby for the next 30 days is to make the cable guy rue the day he decided to piss on back and tell me it was raining.
So here is what I'm going to do:
Christopher Hennebery
Everybody has a horror stories about waiting for telephone or cable service repair people. The standard "we'll be by between 7am and 8pm on Wednesday" is pretty standard. At least you know they'll come by... or will they? In Vancouver we've traditionally only had one cable provider and that was Shaw Communication based out of Edmonton Alberta. That single provider had a monopoly until some deregulation allowed in some much needed competition. Last week my wife decided to turn the cable back on and was told that a service person would be out to our home on Friday between 1 and 5pm. Firstly, why do they need to send somebody out? In this day and age why can't access to the existing cable services (already in place) be toggled remotely? Anywhoo, the wife waits around but unfortunately we had to take off to a dinner party at 5:15 and, you guessed it, the cable guy showed up at 5:30.
Ok, kind of crumby but no worries, we phone and they tell us he'll be back on Saturday to hook us up. I wait around all day and sure enough, no cable guy. We phone Shaw at 7:45pm on Saturday night and they assure us he is still on route. And now I'm pretty perturbed. We phone again (now this is part of the story where the rubber hits the road as they say) and again, we're hit with half-heated promises of service follow-through. In fact, we phoned Shaw on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and each time they apologize for the misunderstanding. Each time they also tell us that somebody will call us back shortly to explain/recommend solutions. Nobody ever calls us back. Never. What worse, they tell me that this is my fault. They say:
- They couldn't get access to the cable box because I live in a gated community. Wow. Just wow. Not only don't I live in a gated community, but my house is 100 years old and we've left the side gate open for the last 3 days giving the cable guy full access the cable box, power box and even the kids sand box.
- They came by on Sat but nobody was home. And again, wow! Sat in the house the whole day (didn't even go out back in fear I wouldn't hear the doorbell). Still the side gate was wide open.
- We'll call you back. Four times they said this and yet nobody has given us a call at the writing of this post (day three of our first call).
I've now just got off the phone with another poor service rep who again tells me somebody will call me back, but now its too late. The wheels have come off this service experience ride and I've just decided that my hobby for the next 30 days is to make the cable guy rue the day he decided to piss on back and tell me it was raining.
So here is what I'm going to do:
- Set up a Facebook page called: Shaw Cable: I'm Tired of Your Horrible Service! http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=149537638407522
- I'm going to write to all the senior leadership at Shaw Communication including their board of directors (yes, getting their email was pretty easy)
- Write letters to all of the local and national newspapers, blogs and advocacy organizations
- I'm going to give Telus (the competition) my business and make it my goal for the next 30 days to drive as much business away from Shaw as possible.
Christopher Hennebery
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Death of ESD
So I've seen the future and it does not include Electronic Software Distribution. It does not include any type of process where you are downloading bags of bits into your desktop and then install those applications onto your system. Cloud Distribution is commonplace but it was only recently that I've recognized that digitally distributed software/games, as a means of distribution, is coming to an end. Companies like OnLive are and will take hold of the distribution channels over the next couple of years. Any company who serves the older processes (like DRM companies or ESD empowering organizations) should take note.
Like water, distribution always follows the path of least resistance. Any channel that reduces barriers to acquisition will, eventually win over on older, more cludgey methods. The internet itself is the best example of this. Just go ask a newspaper person. The biggest threat right now is how existing companies will transition from desktop to cloud. This is disruptive change and could prove to be a huge barrier to some organizations. The core competencies needed to create a desktop application are not the same as creating a web based service (SaaS). This, at least in my mind, creates both risks and opportunities depending on where you sit within that dynamic.
Me? I plan to release something very disruptive...
Like water, distribution always follows the path of least resistance. Any channel that reduces barriers to acquisition will, eventually win over on older, more cludgey methods. The internet itself is the best example of this. Just go ask a newspaper person. The biggest threat right now is how existing companies will transition from desktop to cloud. This is disruptive change and could prove to be a huge barrier to some organizations. The core competencies needed to create a desktop application are not the same as creating a web based service (SaaS). This, at least in my mind, creates both risks and opportunities depending on where you sit within that dynamic.
Me? I plan to release something very disruptive...
Friday, August 08, 2008
Great article from ZNet's Mary Jo Foley on Microsoft's Money moving from the physical box to the digital download... completely. They state that this does not mean they're dropping all boxed product but its a reality of the changing market for Microsoft Money. This is great news and its fits nicely into what I've been talking about for the last four years.
Microsoft to stop selling boxed copies of Money Plus by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley -- Microsoft has decided against releasing a 2009 version of Money Plus, its personal-finance-management software. The company also is planning to discontinue selling Money Plus as a boxed software product at retail -- but insisted the move shouldn't be interpreted as an immediate move away from shrink-wrapped PC software.
~chris
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Hidden Sundials
I was searching in Vancouver for a car rental dealership and bumped into this massive sundial on top of a mall near Chinatown. It’s the International Village Mall off of Pender Street. In looking at the Google maps for the area I turned on the satellite view and discovered a huge sundial on top of the mall. I consider myself pretty well informed about my own hometown but I had no idea this clock existed. As you can see, it looks like the satellite tool this photo at about 9am. The massive residential tower to the south-east of the clock actually acts as the sundial. Very cool, especially when you consider that nobody knows about this?
Monday, March 17, 2008
Xbox no to Blu-ray, yes to digital distribution
As per my previous blog about Bill Watkins poo-pooing the whole Blu-ray/HD thing, Microsoft announced they're not adding Blu-ray to their Xbox lineup. Why not? Microsoft predicts that the new Blu-ray will be irrelevant in 12-18 months! Booyeah! This is mostly due to the fact that they'll expect their customers to download the products directly out from Xbox Live. Link via Slinux
~chris
Friday, March 07, 2008
The Quiet Revolution
Fast forward – April 12, 2011
“Its not really all that difficult to figure out how the retail software industry got into this mess. It started with Steve Jobs announcing the release of the Macbook Air at MacWorld in Jan of 2008. This was the first big push of a major computer maker to promote 100% reliance on digital distribution. The MacBook Air released without an optical drive and soon after that all major PC makers were release their own versions of ultra thin laptops… that could not load DVDs or CDs. By Nov 2009, 80% of the laptops being sold without a DVD/CD drive. This created a bigger and bigger reliance on downloadable software.
At almost the same time of the MacBook Air release Amazon was testing the waters of Electronic Software Distribution with Turbo Tax. Later in 2008 Amazon would release a complete catalog of digital distributed software products to compliment their eBook, music and movie e-distribution. iTunes followed suit in 2009 with a massive catalog of downloadable Mac and PC software games available through iTunes. Every major games publisher clamoured to get their titles into Valve’s digital channel, ‘Steam’.
And retailer’s were left holding the bag (or box as it were…). Boxed software diminished faster than physical record sales in the early 2000’s and consumers now had very little choice when it came to securing digital product. They could either go directly to the publisher or through iTunes/Amazon channels. Publishers also had it difficult as both Apple and Amazon forced the publishers to reduce their margins as a condition of gaining access to their online stores.
Demand for software was bigger than ever and very quietly, a handful of companies like Apple, Amazon and Valve cornered the consumer software market.”
“Its not really all that difficult to figure out how the retail software industry got into this mess. It started with Steve Jobs announcing the release of the Macbook Air at MacWorld in Jan of 2008. This was the first big push of a major computer maker to promote 100% reliance on digital distribution. The MacBook Air released without an optical drive and soon after that all major PC makers were release their own versions of ultra thin laptops… that could not load DVDs or CDs. By Nov 2009, 80% of the laptops being sold without a DVD/CD drive. This created a bigger and bigger reliance on downloadable software.
At almost the same time of the MacBook Air release Amazon was testing the waters of Electronic Software Distribution with Turbo Tax. Later in 2008 Amazon would release a complete catalog of digital distributed software products to compliment their eBook, music and movie e-distribution. iTunes followed suit in 2009 with a massive catalog of downloadable Mac and PC software games available through iTunes. Every major games publisher clamoured to get their titles into Valve’s digital channel, ‘Steam’.
And retailer’s were left holding the bag (or box as it were…). Boxed software diminished faster than physical record sales in the early 2000’s and consumers now had very little choice when it came to securing digital product. They could either go directly to the publisher or through iTunes/Amazon channels. Publishers also had it difficult as both Apple and Amazon forced the publishers to reduce their margins as a condition of gaining access to their online stores.
Demand for software was bigger than ever and very quietly, a handful of companies like Apple, Amazon and Valve cornered the consumer software market.”
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Selling boxed software online... Nuns in a tree fort...
Yes, that's my analogy. Selling boxed software online and then shipping it to the end user makes as much sense as Nuns in a tree fort. I mean c'mon! At Macworld J-man announced the Macbook Air... a sexy little laptop and guess what? No optical drive! The only way you're getting software on that bad-boy is to either buy an external drive or, wait for it.... download it! We are moving quickly and steadily towards a point where the very idea of building a digital product, moving it to a physical piece of media for transportation only to convert it back to digital for use on our PC will seem as sensible as renting movies via the post office (wait for it...).
The best quote of January comes from Seagate CEO, Bill Watkins. He's being interviewed by Wired Magazine and they ask him about the battle between BluRay and HD... "Well maybe Blu-Ray won, but it's a meaningless victory. ... Because guess what: People are going to download everything." You rock Bill.
~ chris
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Integrated ESD with TigerDirect.com
A shameless plug indeed!
Ok, so I'm somewhat biased since I work for Protexis and had a hand in getting this service live, but it's quite a milestone. One of the biggest drawbacks of traditional Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) was that it was confined to the Software Publisher's online stores or Affiliates. IE, you could not purchase an downloadable version unless you went through the publisher. Thats fine if you shop that way, but most of us shop through larger online stores.
Online retail stores like TigerDirect and Amazon are huge and until now, none have offered ESD integrated into their catalog. You could not browse and add hardware and downloadable software to your cart and then transact. Very odd indeed but true.
TigerDirect is revolutionary in that they have integrated an downloadable software catalog into their existing offering allowing their customers full access to ESD. They can purchase a 19" LCD and a copy of CA's AntiVirus and after completing the transaction they get the LCD shipped and an email sent to them with the URL and keys to download the CA product.
Very cool.
~chris
Ok, so I'm somewhat biased since I work for Protexis and had a hand in getting this service live, but it's quite a milestone. One of the biggest drawbacks of traditional Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) was that it was confined to the Software Publisher's online stores or Affiliates. IE, you could not purchase an downloadable version unless you went through the publisher. Thats fine if you shop that way, but most of us shop through larger online stores.
Online retail stores like TigerDirect and Amazon are huge and until now, none have offered ESD integrated into their catalog. You could not browse and add hardware and downloadable software to your cart and then transact. Very odd indeed but true.
TigerDirect is revolutionary in that they have integrated an downloadable software catalog into their existing offering allowing their customers full access to ESD. They can purchase a 19" LCD and a copy of CA's AntiVirus and after completing the transaction they get the LCD shipped and an email sent to them with the URL and keys to download the CA product.
Very cool.
~chris
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Disney acknowledges the 'Piracy Business Model'
Anne Sweeney (Co-chair at Disney) gave a keynote address this week at Mipcom. Ms Sweeney's main topic was content piracy and Disney's new stance on accepting the fact that this in not a plague, as so much as it is a competing business model.
On the subject of content, she had some very interesting and maybe even prolific ideas: "Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."
So I've always been a big fan of the content/king thing and I've understood that this was a stepping stone to the big goal of full convergence. Conversation is also a stepping stone, but its more in line with web 2.0/3.0 ideals. MySpace is a great example of this. The content on MySpace would not be worth nearly as much, if not for the fact that its magnified by the connections into other people's content. Those conversations and shared environments are force multipliers!
Original link Boing-boing
~ chris
On the subject of content, she had some very interesting and maybe even prolific ideas: "Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."
So I've always been a big fan of the content/king thing and I've understood that this was a stepping stone to the big goal of full convergence. Conversation is also a stepping stone, but its more in line with web 2.0/3.0 ideals. MySpace is a great example of this. The content on MySpace would not be worth nearly as much, if not for the fact that its magnified by the connections into other people's content. Those conversations and shared environments are force multipliers!
Original link Boing-boing
~ chris
Monday, August 28, 2006
Windows Marketplace receives a facelift
More than that, Windows Marketplace has added enhancements to their interface including true integration into the Digital Locker. Digital Locker allows Windows OS users to manage their downloads, recover and re-download content from publishers and online retailers.
All of this is good news for the ESD industry because it centralizes the download process and it gives exposure to relatively unknown titles. The big caveat is that software shared or sold in the Marketplace needs to be Windows compatible, which makes perfect sense considering the environment.
An obvious strength of this system is that Microsoft is partnering with multiple content providers like Protexis and AskNet. In doing so, they are not limiting the size or diversity of their titles, all of which makes it an attractive choice for consumers unfamiliar with purchasing electronically.
See the full press release http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060828/sfm036.html?.v=64
~ chris
All of this is good news for the ESD industry because it centralizes the download process and it gives exposure to relatively unknown titles. The big caveat is that software shared or sold in the Marketplace needs to be Windows compatible, which makes perfect sense considering the environment.
An obvious strength of this system is that Microsoft is partnering with multiple content providers like Protexis and AskNet. In doing so, they are not limiting the size or diversity of their titles, all of which makes it an attractive choice for consumers unfamiliar with purchasing electronically.
See the full press release http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060828/sfm036.html?.v=64
~ chris
Monday, July 17, 2006
Long Tail of Software Publishing
I think its very important for ever business person, regardless of role and scope, to constantly educate themselves on the changing business environment. My personal favorite is web 2.0 concepts. The long tail idea is one of those concepts that galvanizes some of the main concepts of web 2.0.
Long tail has several key points of relevance in business but within the publishing world, it provides some unique opportunities to delve into how a publisher can create incremental value by not concentrating on the core users or functionality of their product.
So how can you capitalize on this concept? It starts with taking a close look at how your product is used by your customers. Take the graph above and tailor it to your own business. What are the core functional interactions (TBYB, purchase etc) and what happens after these interactions are completed? What further interactions can you leverage to create more value for your customer and yourself? Even if the purchase might be the most important part of the interaction, it’s the everything else that happens after the purchase that is important to the user. The interaction should not end with the transaction, but in fact it should be the start of a long-term relationship that allows for multiple revenue generating interactions.
Ultimately, you goal is to crate more opportunities with your customer and the long tail gives you a starting point to understanding these opportunities. Here is a great blog from Joe Kraus on software and Longtail.
- chris
Long tail has several key points of relevance in business but within the publishing world, it provides some unique opportunities to delve into how a publisher can create incremental value by not concentrating on the core users or functionality of their product.
So how can you capitalize on this concept? It starts with taking a close look at how your product is used by your customers. Take the graph above and tailor it to your own business. What are the core functional interactions (TBYB, purchase etc) and what happens after these interactions are completed? What further interactions can you leverage to create more value for your customer and yourself? Even if the purchase might be the most important part of the interaction, it’s the everything else that happens after the purchase that is important to the user. The interaction should not end with the transaction, but in fact it should be the start of a long-term relationship that allows for multiple revenue generating interactions.
Ultimately, you goal is to crate more opportunities with your customer and the long tail gives you a starting point to understanding these opportunities. Here is a great blog from Joe Kraus on software and Longtail.
- chris
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Figuring out how to deliver your software to the world has to be one of the simplest choices you have to make as an independent software publisher. I say its easy because you really want to get your titles into as many channels as possible, with the least amount of fuss.
The SIIA did some research and found that more that three-quarters of the publishers they surveyed see the creation of new distributions channels as their main method of future growth.
The SIIA did some research and found that more that three-quarters of the publishers they surveyed see the creation of new distributions channels as their main method of future growth.
How do you identify those top channels or, even better, how do you identify the new channels. Are there new channels for promoting your ESD titles these days?
These are tougher questions to answer and I'd be interested in hearing your feedback. But until then here are my suggestions:
- Challenge your existing channels to meet their quotas and beyond. ParetoLogic recently challenged their affiliates to outsell ParetoLogic's top affiliate with the winner driving away a Harley Davidson motor bike. Will this work? I'm not sure but it will definitely capture the interest and imagination of their partners.
- Get back to basics and identify how your customer finds your product. Create relationships with organizations that can support this discovery behavior by either sharing the revenue or allowing for upsells. Does your product have complimentary hardware? The best example of this was my former employer, ACD Systems bundling their photo management software with Pentax cameras.
Please provide your thoughts on this challenge as I'm very interested in learning about your collective experience.
- chris
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