Selling Digital Products

I spoke at the first Dev.Ocean event in Ascot talking about how we launched and support Perch.

Transcript

1. Selling Digital Products The story of Perch CMS Rachel Andrew Dev.Ocean, November 2012
3. So what is Perch?
4. A Self-hosted PHP & MySQL CMS.
5. A simple use case
6. Complete control of your design and mark-up
7. Bootstrapped from our existing service business
8. Do what you know
9. Build something that you need.
10. We need “a really little CMS”
11. ... other people might need this too
12. Bootstrapping is easy if you can do most of the work yourself.
13. Use evenings, weekends, downtime in your business to work on your product.
14. For us, the code came free.
15. What can you do that only costs your time and not money?
16. Pay for things that matter most
17. We paid for User Interface design work.
18. We paid a solicitor to create a software license.
19. We paid for top quality hosting for the marketing site.
20. Balance the “Minimum Viable Product” with the fact that first impressions count
21. Perch was making a profit after 24 hours
22. Your brand is incredibly important in a crowded market.
23. People remember we are the CMS with the bird.
25. Great support is free marketing.
26. We offer unlimited, free support.
28. When deciding product pricing, take support time into account.
29. Listen to your customers
30. What will make the most difference to the most people?
31. Be open to change but don’t forget who you are
32. Supporting self-hosted software
33. People have terrible hosting
34. Lack of server resources
35. Baffling configurations
36. People want to host PHP on Windows
37. Web hosts passing the blame
38. People have crazy working practices
39. Stop developing sites in sub-folders! http://allinthehead.com/retro/352/stop-building-sites-in-subfolders
40. People don’t understand what is related to your product.
41. We have to use what is commonly available
42. Put your customers first
44. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” - Henry Ford -
45. thank you. @rachelandrew rachelandrew.co.uk grabaperch.com edgeofmyseat.com