Jon just released his 3rd Vi emulation product, ViEmu for Word & Outlook. It's pretty cool stuff. I like the price point as well, not too cheap. Good job on his part realizing that he's the only game in town for this type of thing (I would guess right?).
It's been a while since the last time I posted some UserScape sales charts so I thought it would be a good time to bring everyone up to speed. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to put them together, but a few posts by other ISV's lately got me motivated to get on top of it.
The charts pretty much speak for themselves. The trend has continued upward at a very nice pace. This month is by far our best ever. I don't have hard evidence as to why, but I think it's a combination of a few things. The first relates to my previous post about adding the hosted trials and the installer. The other piece is a few adjustments I've made to HelpSpot over the past few releases to address common installation and usability problems.
Transactions and trials have also moved up steadily along with the average dollars per transaction.
Revenues:
*[This image was lost to time in my blog transition]*
Transactions:
*[This image was lost to time in my blog transition]*
Trial Sign Ups:
*[This image was lost to time in my blog transition]*
Ben just posted an interview he did with me on his Startup Spark blog. Ben did a nice job with it and I especially enjoy how he sets it up for his readers, provides a summary and does a nice job with the formatting. Thanks Ben!
One of the problems with HelpSpot has always been that it has a pretty big list of requirements. You need a web server, PHP, a database, Zend Optimizer all installed and running smooth. Granted there are a lot of organizations out there that have this all setup and ready to go. It's not a very unusual setup, just a pain if you don't have it.
A bigger problem is if you're a help desk manager and you have no power over IT. You can't tell them to install these things just to try some software. Even if you know your company has this software all setup it's often .... unpleasant .... to deal with IT, especially for trial software which you may not even purchase.
I was OK with these limitations in the early versions of HelpSpot. In fact I thought they were a benefit in some ways in that it kept out people who weren't ready to get dirty with a new software product. Now though, HelpSpot has matured. It still has a long way to go, but it's definitely ready to reach out to less technical customers. Part of doing so it making it easier to try HelpSpot. With that goal in mind I've kicked off a couple of new programs in the past few months which have really helped out a great deal.
The first initiative was the creation of a Windows installer for HelpSpot. The installer will install Apache, MySQL, Zend, HelpSpot, create your database, setup automated tasks and get you ready to roll in just a few clicks. It will also hook into IIS and MS SQL if you prefer that over Apache. It's not perfect yet, but for the most part it works very well. The great folks over at BitRock put the installer together and did some custom work just for HelpSpot to add the IIS/SQL Server hooks. If you're looking for an installer for your application I definitely recommend you check them out.
The installer is great, but still requires server access. What about the poor help desk manager who wants to know the product he wants to purchase before approaching IT? Well for him there is now a hosted trial option. When you sign up for a trial you can request that it be hosted on UserScape servers. Nothing to setup or install. You get an access email and you're off and running with your trial.
In the one month hosted trials have been available they've been a huge hit. There's already been about $7,000 in sales directly attributable to the hosted trial option. In fact, it's so popular that I've just ordered a big beefy Dell server to take over for the old and small server I rented from my colo facility.
I have to say that I highly recommend providing a hosted trial option if you sell a (downloadable) web based software product. I also want to emphasize that this is nothing like a "demo" that's open to everyone and is a big mess. Each hosted trial is custom for just that company and gives them a fresh clean installation with their own email account and is fully configurable.
One of the things I'm enjoying most is that since implementing this I'm doing a lot less installation support. Rather than folks trying to get something installed which they don't have the time, ability, or inclination to do they're using the hosted option. This is great and means less support for me and a better experience for them.
In an unrelated note, if you're in the market for a new server you should head over to Dell in the next week or so. They're running a bunch of specials. I received 2gb of free memory, faster drives, a free RAID controller, and since my server cost more than $4000 when I put it in the cart they gave me $1000 off instantly! It's practically free.
Looks like Ben will be starting a niche competitor to HelpSpot aimed at the Active Directory community. Ben has been a HelpSpot customer from very early on, it should be interesting to see what he comes up with here. Of course creating help desk software is probably one of the top things I see MicroISV's with an IT background blog about making just after bug trackers so we'll see if he makes it to completion. I'm wishing him luck (seriously)!
Eric Sink has another one of his very insightful articles up. Basically about how all of "us" believe the little world we read and participate in every day is all there is and we're so so wrong. I was actually thinking about this same issue the other day as I realized I commonly recommend people to products I've never even used based on this little web ring we've created. It's like a little bizarro world and it's remarkable hard to break out of.
I always notice this when I find a new blog. It seems like so much work now to start reading a new one. I have the ones I'm comfortable with, the ones who all link to each other and share a sort of common understanding. Starting to read a new blog just feels like so much work because I don't know their world, when they link to Bob do they always link to Bob? Is Bob someone I should be reading? Can I understand this blog without delving into Bob's? I usually end up just leaving the blog because I don't feel I have the time to devote to a new one.
I guess by linking to Eric now I'm only digging myself deeper in eh?
WikiSeek the new search engine by the founder of Wikipedia just launched. Seems pretty cool, I'll probably try it out for a bit, seems pretty good so far. Of course the most important thing is that HelpSpot is #2 in the organic position and #4 overall :-)
Netflix attempts to fight BlockBusters Total Access with online downloads. Unfortunately this is not going to help them one bit. Nobody but the largest dorks are interested in watching movies on their computers. Hooking your computer up to a TV is also a non-starter. No ones computers are next to the TV, nobody wants to crawl behind the TV and hook them together (nor do they know how). Sure this is the future at some point, but the future isn't now.
Once the cable companies put this in the set top boxes in a complete manner (not the bogus integration and offerings they have now) then it will work. I still think they'd be much better off bolstering their DVD offerings and somehow making them more appealing than BlockBuster.
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.
The Instigator Blog by Ben Yoskovitz
Startup Spark also by Ben, but in some type of partnership it appears.
Lots of interesting links/posts. The one on exit strategies was particularly interesting.