mini site marketing experiment update
I thought I'd update everyone on the progress of my mini site experiment. You may recall that back on October 4th I launched a mini site called Open Source Help Desk List. It's a singe page site that lists the primary open source help desk solutions, while also containing a small pitch for HelpSpot. So far I'm happy to report that it seems to be a success. The site has sent hundreds, perhaps thousands of new users to various open source help desk packages. At the same time over the past 3 months the site has generated just under $7,000 in sales for HelpSpot. Not too shabby for a days work. I expect both numbers to increase as more links to the site show up and it's search engine indexing improves.
I think this could be a new type of collaboration for commercial and open source project to undertake. More exposure for their work while also providing an opportunity to offer commercial alternatives to people who may be interested without building a spam filled, adsense supported page. I'd also note that the feedback I've received from several of the open source projects has been universally positive, which I'm very happy about.