New Version Potential
I recently released Llama Carbon Copy v1.2. I'm extremely happy with how the user interface changes turned out. I've uploaded my PAD file to hundreds of download websites, but I haven't yet started my AdWords or SEO marketing campaigns.
Here are the download numbers (since Sept 23rd, 2007):
Visitors: ~500
Downloads: 95
Sales: 0
While these numbers aren't going to accidentally crash the internet, they are pretty good compared to what I was getting before I made the adjustments to the user interface. I'm encouraged by the download numbers and visitor counts this month especially because I haven't started any marketing.
I am in an extremely tough market. Llama Carbon Copy is backup software. Everybody has already told me that this is the worst market to get into because there is so much entrenched competition. I almost believed the critics and started to wonder if this was the right software to be working on. Then, something happened. I got an email from a customer. It read, in part:
"One of my pet peeves is overly complicated software. The engineers typically get so carried away with their ideas of features that they think people might want that they never stop to ask what real world people actually do. "
This energized me. My software was specifically designed to be simple. It is the simplest possible thing that could work for real time backup. It's even simpler to use than some freeware. This customer indicated that he thought the user interface was easier. That's my value proposition. I have an easy to use product with no fluff.
Most backup software products these days are written for programmers and other IT workers. I thought there might be a market for a product that was for normal people that just wanted to keep a copy of their work. Those people don't need compression. They don't need a complex mechanism to schedule their backups. They don't need to do more than just copy their files when they change to a USB drive or other external hard drive. I wrote my software with this in mind. Of course, when I showed it to my programming peers, they said that it didn't do enough. Naturally, it's not for them.
My intention is to make one final alteration to the product. It is something that I was not sure if people needed or not, but I've heard now from a couple of customers that it is needed. Once I make that alteration, I am going to be very careful about what other things I add to the product. I do not want to turn away users seeking an automatic person backup system.
Here are the download numbers (since Sept 23rd, 2007):
Visitors: ~500
Downloads: 95
Sales: 0
While these numbers aren't going to accidentally crash the internet, they are pretty good compared to what I was getting before I made the adjustments to the user interface. I'm encouraged by the download numbers and visitor counts this month especially because I haven't started any marketing.
I am in an extremely tough market. Llama Carbon Copy is backup software. Everybody has already told me that this is the worst market to get into because there is so much entrenched competition. I almost believed the critics and started to wonder if this was the right software to be working on. Then, something happened. I got an email from a customer. It read, in part:
"One of my pet peeves is overly complicated software. The engineers typically get so carried away with their ideas of features that they think people might want that they never stop to ask what real world people actually do. "
This energized me. My software was specifically designed to be simple. It is the simplest possible thing that could work for real time backup. It's even simpler to use than some freeware. This customer indicated that he thought the user interface was easier. That's my value proposition. I have an easy to use product with no fluff.
Most backup software products these days are written for programmers and other IT workers. I thought there might be a market for a product that was for normal people that just wanted to keep a copy of their work. Those people don't need compression. They don't need a complex mechanism to schedule their backups. They don't need to do more than just copy their files when they change to a USB drive or other external hard drive. I wrote my software with this in mind. Of course, when I showed it to my programming peers, they said that it didn't do enough. Naturally, it's not for them.
My intention is to make one final alteration to the product. It is something that I was not sure if people needed or not, but I've heard now from a couple of customers that it is needed. Once I make that alteration, I am going to be very careful about what other things I add to the product. I do not want to turn away users seeking an automatic person backup system.
posted by Josh at 8:57 AM
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