Great feedback, thank you everybody. I really like to idea of doing a mini screencast / animation which loads straight up, I'll explore this one.
Yes, I don't really have any contacts in the Mac world, either developers or journalists, so I'm going to have to do a lot of reaching out.... hmm, and I just want to get on with building my next idea! Thanks again, Ben On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dan Wood <[email protected]>wrote: > First off, I'm impressed overall with your website. I agree with some of > the comments that have already gone by but overall it's very polished! I'm > also impressed that you have an email list signup on your site. It might > help to make it a bit more clear what *problem* people have that your > software will solve, though, especially "above the fold." I'm thinking you > might want to polish your screencast a bit -- get a $40 headset for better > audio quality, and work off a script so that the presentation is more > organized and there are fewer "ums." If you think you could sum up what WF > does visually (without audio), you might want to consider modifying the > static image of the app on the screen to instead be an auto-playing, > looping, silent mini-screencast (with captions to show what's going on) so > that just from loading your web page, somebody will be able to immediately > see what this is doing. I've been experimenting with this on my own site, > using a modified "Video for Everybody" > http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody so that the movie plays > with the HTML5 <video> tag, with reasonable fallbacks if not available. > > Anyhow, on to your question about contacting a blog. I think that the > approach you are taking ... trying to put a single egg into a single basket > ... is probably not really going to get you anywhere. Even if you get a > nice write-up about the launch, a bunch of in-bound links from that day is > not going to last for very long. > > Take a look at your assets, and see how you can make use of them, and > especially leverage things. Contacts you have in the Mac developer > community? Bloggers you have been in touch with in the past? Fellow active > users of other apps? Followers on Twitter? Existing members of your email > list? Time between now and launch to build up some excitement about the > product? (What I referred to as "salting" in my profile of Viewfinder's > launch -- < > http://www.karelia.com/mac_indie_marketing/viewfinder_from_connected_f.html > >) > > If you don't have much of the above, I think that now is a good time to > start working on building up some of them. If it takes "cold call" contacts > with mac journalists and bloggers, then do it -- but plan on reaching out, > personally and individually and non-sleazily, to LOTs of them, and offer > them previews of your app (either as downloads with a promo license code, or > maybe you could do an iChat demo, or something like that). Be liberal about > this! Some of them may think the app is cool and spread the word about it. > If they are linking to you pre-launch, be sure you have your email list > collector front-and-center so that people who are interested will be > notified the moment it comes out -- maybe offer a pre-launch discount or > something. > > What can you do, or offer, to get as many people onto your email list so > that when launch day happens, they are informed about and ready to buy? > What other developers can you work with, and perhaps work out a deal where > they will notify the members of *their* list about this cool new application > that's just being launched, and what special deal their readers are going to > get for perhaps signing up for your email list (pre-launch) and/or buying > your app (post-launch)? > > I think that the Mac software market has gotten so crowded nowadays that > one can't just show up and be a wallflower, hoping somebody will notice > them. That might work once in a blue moon, if your app is so mind-blowing > that a single person can't help tell all their friends about it, but most > software is not *that* exciting. > > Just my two cents' worth. > > > On Mar 3, 2010, at 3:50 PM, Benedict Lowndes wrote: > > > Hi MacSB, > > > > My first Mac app is nearing 1.0 and I'd like to start promoting it more > > widely. > > But how do I do that? > > > > I had thought I'd email one of the large Mac blogs where they feature > apps > > and invite them to review it. At first I thought of TUAW, but after > > reviewing their recent posts it seems like they actually don't often > feature > > Mac OS X applications, now I'm thinking about MacWorld. > > Is it naive to think I could just email one or two and expect to get a > > response? > > Can anyone recommend a site with an engaged Mac audience who might be > > suitable for my product? > > > > Also, I've seen you all give great feedback to others on the presentation > of > > their products, so I'd be really grateful for any feedback on WindowFlow, > > see: http://windowflow.com > > > > > > Thanks! > > Ben > > -- > > Ben Lowndes > > Technology Solutions, Web & Application Development > > > > http://lowndes.net > > Phone 0409 184 787 > > > -- > Dan Wood > Twitter: http://twitter.com/danwood > Karelia Software Sandvox for the Mac > http://www.karelia.com/ > > He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to > perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really > cooperating with it. Martin Luther King, Jr. > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------ > > MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 > Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: > http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > -- Ben Lowndes Technology Solutions, Web & Application Development http://lowndes.net Phone 0409 184 787 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/macsb/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/macsb/join (Yahoo! 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