Dear readers.
This will be the last post on PS:refocus.
The posts about ebusiness and entrepreneurship moved to PatrickSchweizer.com, my new personal blog about IT development, entrepreneurship, ebook creation and some other matters.
Thanks for sticking around and see you maybe on Jaeger & Schweizer and PatrickSchweizer.com
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One of the most impressive things I experienced on my first visit to the US (I was thirteen) were the free samples at the supermarket. My cousin and I would go along with his parents grocery shopping for the sole reason to enjoy the free seafood samples. It was something I had never seen in Germany before.
Free samples are a pretty simple and straightforward marketing strategy. Offer something for free, get a potential customer hooked, then charge money.
This already worked pretty good in the past. But with digital goods it will become even better. The limiting factor in the past was that the samples had to be produced and that cost money. Therefore they were limited. The costs for copying digital goods however are next to nil. Therefore its easy to shell out free digital samples.
One thing with giving things away for free however is that a customer may not value them as much as if he had to pay for them. Its hard to explain to a customer why he should pay for something that he used to get for free before. Think of email services for example. We expect them to be free.
A way to get around this problem is to put a price tag on a product and then to give it anyway away for free to a limited group of people who will (hopefully) act as multipliers. Smashwords, the ebook platform does exactly that in the form of coupons. The books have a price but the author can chose to give out coupons and set a discount from a couple of cents to completely for free.
That is exactly what we are doing with our new book. If you are interested in traveling, you can get a free coupon of my second book (written together with Sherrie) here.
More on this topic:
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Amazon is not only the world's biggest book seller but also the biggest ebook seller. But a competitor is rising: Smashwords. Smashwords was founded by Mark Coker and provides a platform for self published ebooks. They distribute the ebook to all major retailers (except Amazon) and provide self published authors with great help to get their books out there and widely known. The platform offers social media integration, reviews, recommendations, an affiliate program etc.
But even Mark says: "Odds are, even with the marketing and distribution benefits listed above, if you do nothing else you are not going to sell many books".
But he does not leave it not at that. He gives (and explains) 31 tips on how to market your book. It starts with very simple things such as putting your book link into the email signature but also gives some not so obvious advice such as coupons. He explains how giving away a book for (partly) free can increase the sales. We will try the coupon idea on Sherries book and see how and if it will work.
Its a very easy read, targeted at non technical firm people. But nevertheless I think its a interesting read for any ebusiness entrepreneur. Although ebook marketing is a very specific niche many of the marketing concepts and ideas can be applied to other ebusiness.
Download it here for free.
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Sherrie has worked for the last 4 years as an English teacher in Germany. Thats how she made her money but thats not what she really wanted to do. She always wanted to be a writer. Being a writer, and not only a writer but a financially successful writer, is tough work. I am glad I'm a programmer, so much easier ;-)
Sherrie writing in an Mongolian ger
But that said I think it hasn't been a better time to become a writer then these days. In the old days you had to find a publisher to become successful (end even then it was hard). A publisher is basically a gatekeeper, someone who judges whose writing is worth printing. They were needed because making books and shelf space was very expensive. Only the best (or better: those who were considered to be the best) made it into the stores. When you think of it, it is was a very feudal system.
A privileged few got to decide what was suitable (and sellable) to the masses. This was necessary though as printing books and the shelf space they occupied was expensive.
But now in the era of print on demand and, even better, ebooks, the rules have completely changed. The system has been democratized. The costs for shelf space is zero today (think Amazon)*). There can be as many ebooks out there as we wish. Everybody can publish one thanks to ebook services like Amazon KDP or Smashwords. On the other side, with the Internet and its social media, it has never been easier for authors to reach out for new readers and to connect to them.So Sherrie has made her choice. She started to write and is battling to become a successful author. I think this is a brave decision. Not very many people live their dreams and try to make them come true.But why am I writing about this? While I was looking into the whole ebook business and the
selfmarketing of indies (writer speak for indipendent authors, someone without a publisher) I
realized that this is in many ways is not very far from what an IT startup does. Indeed its
a very special form of an ebusiness. I learned many interesting things from the indi
book marketing. I think some of these things can be used for marketing of ebusiness
in general. More on that in my next posts.
*) More on the implications of falling costs of computing time, memory and bandwidth in FREE, a free audio book by Chris Anderson, the guy who also wrote The Long Tail:
Article:
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/07/free-for-free-first-ebook-and-a...
Direct download:
http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/free/FREE_Audiobook_unabridged.zip
Other interessting article:
Did Amazon's Kindle Create A Model for the Creative Economy?
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Anyone who reads unleashyouradventure.com as well, where Sherrie and I blog about motorcycle travel, may have noticed that we are on the road again. We plan to ride from Germany to Newfoundland (where Sherrie is from) and take whatever route lies in between.
Currently we are in Ulan Bator, Mongolia and I am writing this blog post from within a Ger, the traditional Mongolian nomads home.
Mongolian ger
We plan to take anywhere from several months to a year off. I am often asked how that is even possible (and of course what my boss thinks about it), as I am still employed in a small software
consulting company in Stuttgart, Germany.
Well to be honest, Klaus, my boss, didn't like the idea as much as I did. At least not as my boss.
But as a friend he said: "DO IT".
And this is something that I, as an employee ,value a whole lot. What would have happened
if he would have said "no"? Well I would have quit the job and would have went anyway.
Klaus would have lost an excellent employee (self glorification :-P) and I would have had
no job anymore.
Camping in Mongolia
I think any good boss will agree and help you. If not, you probably might want to reconsider
if you want to work for this person or company.
Riding on Olchon, Lake Baikal
As for the money I have a sabbatical agreement, that means I still get my reduced salary while not working (as I did when I was working).
But what if you don't have such a nice and understanding boss? Are there other ways of earning money while you are on a trip? This is what I want to talk and explore in my next blog posts. Or to put it in another way: How can you achieve a location independent lifestyle? I will dive into an interesting e-business niche: ebooks.
BBQ at Lake Baikal
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For a couple of months now the J&S Popup Widget has been used in real life:
ecratumSRM is a SaaS system for the interaction between suppliers and customers. It helps over 2500 suppliers to interact with their customers, they handle complaints, certifications and audits over the platform.
Here is what Christian Alsen, the CEO of ecratum has to say about the J&S Popup Widget:
"After years of fiddling around with a variety of online help systems and tools, we finally came across the Popup Widget. This app rocks because you can implement it into your web app like 1-2-3. Every non-technical editor and help-desk guy can write and edit text in an instant. Greatly recommended for all inline help you need to communicate to your users without driving them through ticket systems, help desk software and so on."
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Unfortunately my Widget project has slowed down a lot. Other stuff took over my time and attention and since June I have begun to ride my motorcycle the long way to Newfoundland (more on www.unleashyouradventure.com).
But none the less, the project is still alive. And it has a new name: J&S Popup Widget.
And a new place: It moved to Jäger & Schweizer Ingenieure, the SaaS company I run with my partner Jens.
And a new website: popupwidget.com
Greetings from Mongolia
Patrick
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A couple of months ago a package with a book inside showed up in the mail. The cover said Joel on Software
I must admit, as soon as I started to read the book I was hooked. The chapters are pretty random as they are taken from his blog and cover different topics for software developers, everything from character encoding to how to hire a developer. The book is over 10 years old (which is in the software world a very, very long time). Therefore even more credit to Joel since most topics still apply today.
What I like about Joel is that he doesn't get into the flame ware. Is Linux better then Windows? Is Java better than .com? Are apples better then carrots? Is blue better then green? Joel looks sees things with the eyes of a pragmatic developer. Maybe because he once worked for Microsoft ;-)
But Joel doesn't only focus on the technical site but also on the business aspects of software. Most books do only either, but Joel combines both and therefore makes for a good read for entrepreneurs and developers with a business sense.
The book is definitely for software developers but also for people who have to deal with software and software developers in general. Particulary the section on how to bribe software developers. Highly recommended.
PS: @Christan, thanks for the book :-)
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I believe in the release early, release often approach. You don't have to make assumptions about the problems in the real world. Don't spend your time imagining problems and fixing them. Release your Software and you will know. If there is a problem fix it fast.
This is of course not possible with the classic waterfall model. But I guess if you read my blog you don't believe in that anyway.
All right lets get started! To try the alpha release of the Popup Widget I found a perfect little use case. My girlfriend blogs about traveling in unleashyouradventure.com. There she maintains a pack list that we use when we go on motorbike trips. So far its just a list of all the items. But it would be nice to know for each item why we chose it over another item. Why is it this specific grill, cooker or tent? Believe me we have spent lots of time thinking about what to pack. There is not much space on a motorbike.
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Do you have a healthy IT project that you are sick of? Here are some simple tricks on how you can get rid of it.
If you have implemented all these tricks you can almost be sure to have reached your goal: the project will be dead, or at least much more expensive then before.
Blame the downfall on the lazy and expensive development team and show your boss (with some impressive power point charts) how much you have done to get the project on track, including all the restructuring stuff.
Open a champaign bottle and get ready for your promotion. Happy managing!
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