Bill,
A very good and thoughtful analysis. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Paul Looney
On Aug 25, 2009, at 12:37 PM, William Marriott wrote:
There are many reasons why we opted to make revMedia a free
product. I'll detail some of them here:
1) Students. To be candid, the greatest source of our current
customers is former HyperCard users. This community is aging, and
we must appeal to the next generations. Students, especially those
in high school, often do not have credit cards. So we want to make
it easy for them, as individuals, to acquire a great tool to learn
programming -- and enjoy both immediate and long-term results/
success. On a broader level, we want to make it very easy for
schools and other educational groups to teach Rev to students. Free
enables that.
2) Ubiquity. We definitely want revlets popping up all over the
place. We'll be crafting nice "made with Rev" badges and other
sorts of programs to encourage the viral distribution of Rev-based
content. One of our greatest challenges right now is simple
awareness. People don't know we exist, much less our distinct
benefits relative to other Web coding options. Adobe and Microsoft
have enormous advantages in this arena. Adobe Flash is available on
just about every platform out there, including some mobile ones.
Microsoft Silveright benefits from a vast installed base of .NET
Programmers and their usual marketing machine. Anyone going to a
Microsoft page gets prompted to install Silverlight, for example.
Our advantage in being free lets people spend the time to learn our
capabilities and produce great content with our tool.
3) Great content everyone can see. We have witnessed some truly
amazing Rev solutions over the years, but we need more of them.
Increasing the number of people using Rev ensures we will get fresh
blood, new ideas, beautiful graphics, innovative applications.
We're hard at work at renovating services like revOnline (like we
did in 3.5) to make it easier for people to share and promote thier
Rev-based work. Furthermore, it's far easier [and safer] for
newcomers to see Rev in action when they can just click a couple
times to install a plugin, then enjoy fast revlet downloads, as
opposed to downloading and extracting/installing a standalone
application.
4) It's 2009 and the Web is all about FREE. As Richard Gaskin has
pointed out, the dollar cost of a license is the smallest expense
associated with using a new product. What is truly expensive is
time, attention, and effort. In order to earn consideration, we
need to rethink how people learn about our product. A free trial
version isn't enough; 30 days isn't enough. 10 lines isn't enough.
However, a nicely capable free edition (revMedia) that publishes to
the Web (today's most relevant "platform") is a great way to get
people into the "Rev lifestyle" and our unique mindset of programming.
5) Revenue. It's a numbers game, and we already know a certain
percentage of people who get our trial version buy the product; a
certain number of people who buy revMedia upgrade to revStudio; a
certain number of revStudio users upgrade to revEnterprise.
Increase the number of people using Rev, and you increase the
number of people buying Rev. We do not expect there to be any
cannibalization of revStudio or revEnterprise sales, as these
products have distinct capabilities for serious/professional users,
such as: database facilities, the data grid, the ability to use
externals, the ability to remove/replace RunRev branding on the
loading screen; the ability to make true standalone apps for
Windows, Mac, and Linux, etc.
As you might imagine, we've done a considerable amount of number
crunching, analysis, and planning on this front... it's not really
about philosophy. We're confident this is the best path to
dramatically grow our user base and ensure a vibrant future for
revTalk, a language we all have come to love and rely on.
- Bill
RunRev marketing guy
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