旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � HomeCraft's Small Business Journal 넴 � SPECIAL ISSUE 넴 � The 1992 Summer Shareware Seminar 넴 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸� 賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽� 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � EXPERIENCED TRACK SESSIONS 넴 � 넴 � Hints From The Pros II 넴 � 넴 � Part I 넴 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸� 賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽賽� MODERATOR: All right, everybody. We've got an all-star panel for "Hints from the Pros II". This is, by far, the largest panel, and to make it manageable we're going to split it in half and change panels mid-stream. This particular session goes on until 5:00. There will be a break at 4:15. This panel is also the most fun of all the panels because it's a free-for-all. Most of the sessions will basically be open to the floor. There will be some discussion of topics varying from stem to stern of the shareware industry, and you'll be able to get some advice, maybe, or some secrets from the guys that are arguably leaders in the field. I'd like to introduce the panel. What we'll do is start at my far left and each person can introduce themselves. BOB WALLACE: I'm Bob Wallace from QuickSoft. We do PC-WRITE. We've been doing that since 1983. PARIS KARAHALIOS: Paris Karahalios from Trius, Inc. We're the developers of AS-EASY-AS and DRAFT TOYS, and we've been in the business since 1986. JIM PERKINS: My name is Jim Perkins. I'm with FormGen and Gold Medallion software. At FormGen, we're developers and publishers of FormGen Plus, FormGen Fill, and Procopy and DUP. We're also the marketers for Commander Keen and the Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter, and the pending Wolfenstein game. At Gold Medallion we are shareware rack vendors. KEN McGINNIS: My name's Ken McGinnis. I'm with Expressware Corporation. Expressware was started in '84. We have five products, our File Express, our database program. We have the Express Calc Spreadsheet. We have Express Check home checkbook/ business checkbook application. We have On Side, which is for sideways printing. And Express Graphic, a business graphics package. I'm the Vice President of Expressware. SCOTT MILLER: Hi, I'm Scott Miller. I'm with Apogee Software Productions. We publish games. MODERATOR: All right. The intent of the session, of course, is to allow people in the industry to have access to some of the more well-known authors and companies in the business. Perhaps to discuss business issues, marketing issues; perhaps to ask for hints or tips that are useful in overcoming some of the hurdles that they've faced in the past. Basically, there's a number of areas that all of these companies are involved in. There's marketing and sales; there's production; there's financing; there's staff and support; and all of these areas are open for this particular session. I guess I have a few questions I'd like to ask the panel to start with. I'd like to talk about the importance of product quality, and the importance of programming, and I guess the quality of programming in the products. Would someone like to lead off in that area? BOB WALLACE: Sure. Quality is very important, which means testing. If you're the programmer, you really want someone else in charge of testing because, subconsciously, there are areas of the program that are weak that you avoid. Or areas you just don't think about. Obviously, if you think something might happen then you'll program for it. It's the things you don't think about that can hit you. So you need a testing program, and get everybody in the company doing it. All the employees and everybody you can find. That's alpha-testing. In beta-testing, it's important to have a group. We usually have 120-130 people who are enthusiastic about your product who can do testing. Building and debugging code is useful. PARIS KARAHALIOS: If I may expand on what Bob said: I think ten years ago you could write a mediocre program and, if you marketed it correctly, you might be successful. But now both retail and shareware markets have become so competitive that, besides marketing the product very well, the product probably has to be very fast, very efficient, very good; and then you have to market it to make it successful. So things have changed. Shareware is no longer, "Okay, it's not as good as the retail, but at least it's not as expensive." That is not holding any more. That was something that people used as a reason to buy shareware - not any more. ANOTHER PANELIST: It's also important, in order to put bread on the table, you've got to put the product out. So you want to test that product, set a date for delivery, and make sure that you meet that delivery date. And it's always good, from a marketing standpoint, to make sure your developers understand that you've set up press releases; you've announced to the public your gonna release this product; and that you've tested it sufficiently many weeks before you release it - not many hours before you release it. It's critical that you do release it. Don't forget that you have to do that. KEN McGINNIS: I'd like to add to that. All of our products go through beta-testing where we use a lot of our customers. We collect the names as time goes by - the people who call with a lot of questions or report problems. We'll ask them if they want to be added to our beta-test list. We'll send out about 100 copies -- that's about how many beta sites we have for each product -- and several months of letting them use the program really helps a lot. They find things that you just don't even think about testing. Like our database program, File Express. It's a fairly large piece of code. The EXE size would be about 1.2 MEG, so there's a lot of code. With only ten people in our company, we use it a lot. All our Tech Support, they use it. I guess testing is really important to us, because, if it gets out there and it's slow and there are people finding problems, it comes back right away. It can hurt you a lot, if you don't have good software when it first goes out. MODERATOR: Some of the other things I'd like to ask about have to do with marketing techniques or revenue opportunities. I think everybody in this room is probably aware that it's a good idea to get your shareware out there, to get people to use it, and to get them to send you a registration fee. But there's many other things that companies can be doing to generate revenue. Things that will put dollars in your pocket or cash in the bank for you to use to operate your company. I wonder if the panel has any comments on things they've done outside of the traditional area in shareware. BOB WALLACE: Recently, we've been doing a lot of direct mail work using lists from other shareware companies. We find that, if a mail order customer is registered with a shareware product, they're willing to be amiable with other shareware authors. So that's something I'd recommend, getting together with other shareware companies and sending out offers. PARIS KARAHALIOS: Well, one of the things we've done - I see a lot of messages on Compuserve and I hear a lot of authors complaining, for example, that not enough registrations are coming in from Europe or from the other continents. So one of the things we did very early on was to cover the foreign markets, for many reasons. This way we would be the first kids on the block, so to speak - one of the few shareware products that would strongly market themselves in Europe and other markets. So do not forget the foreign market. It's very important. JIM PERKINS: One of the things I touched on at the last session was to make sure you're exploring all the opportunities that your product offers. There's more than just a handful of customers out there that are looking for your product. What I mean by customers is possibly the people that would license your technology to incorporate into other products. So we have gone out as FormGen and found other people that need our technology in their product. They don't feel like writing it themselves. Our technology is incorporated into some products that everyone knows about here. It's not widely advertised, but that technology brings us some very profitable revenues every month. So make sure that you're offering your technologies to everyone out there that has a need for it. KEN McGINNIS: Talking about the international market. It's been kind of a thing that as Expressware we were really successful here in the States. Our company was growing. With five products we spread ourselves out - we're always working on some product to get another release out the door. And rather than focusing in on the international business, I think that we probably missed a fair share of the marketplace. That's something that, over this last year, we've been working hard on doing: working on foreign language versions. One of the things that we have is distributors in other countries, such as England and Australia. Some of the things that we do to help support them is that all of our products have an opening shareware screen - kind of a reminder screen - and when they quit the program another reminder screen pops up. In our software now, those screens guide the shareware people in England to go to our distributor there in England to register the product through them. I think it's going to make registrations for the foreign countries and the foreign people easier. I look forward to seeing Expressware doing better in the foreign market. It's a whole new market and area that's been neglected, other than the American copies that are there. The other end of that is going into the translation and actually coming out with a German version, and a French version, and Spanish version. This is something that we're working on now also. MODERATOR: Scott? SCOTT MILLER: On the subject of incentives, I think that to be successful you need to have a good incentive for people to register your program. I find it hard to believe that people, even honest people, are there to register software that they have in their hands already. As an example of this, a friend and I went to a parking lot the other day and we left our car in the parking lot. It's one of those parking lots where you pay $3.00 and put it in an envelope. We didn't see that little envelope thing there until we came back, and it was very tempting not to go ahead and stick that $3.00 into the envelope and stick it in the box. No one was there, it was after 5:00, we could have very easily left. There's a very strong urge for people not to pay for what they already have in hand. I think you really need to come up with some creative and compelling incentives for people to want to register your product. MODERATOR: Scott, could you also elaborate on something you did quite well, and that is you have a lot of international distribution. You seem to have put a lot of emphasis onto finding local distributors in almost all of the English language countries. SCOTT MILLER: We've been very fortunate in that we've been sought out more than we've had to seek out. I think Shareware Magazine has quite a list of foreign distributors that distribute PC-SIG products. Those are people you might want to contact. You might look at what other big authors or successful shareware programs have listed in their products and seek those people out and see if they would be interested in distributing your product. You might look at the foreign distributors at Apogee, listed in all of our games, and write them a letter to see if they're someone that might want to distribute your product also. You can find these places everywhere. MODERATOR: Thanks. Does anybody here have any comments they want to make about the biggest headaches they have in their business, or mistakes that they've made in the past that perhaps other people would want to avoid? BOB WALLACE: I think the biggest mistakes you can make -- we made them -- are first: hiring the wrong people, and second: not hiring the right people. The hardest people to hire, I've found, are marketing managers. I think it's because you can't always judge them by their appearances -- because, if they're good, they appear good. But I've had just terrible luck with people who claim to be marketing managers that were total flakes. I did have one very good one. Good marketing managers are much more analytical than you might think at first. The problem we've had with not hiring was just not hiring a President soon enough and my not letting go soon enough and going back to programming. PARIS KARAHALIOS: No mistakes here. <> No, I'm sure I wouldn't have to think for too long for a whole list of things that we could have done better or should have done in the first place. I think one of the biggest mistakes we made is delaying an upgrade for one of products for about two years. That is the biggest mistake you can make. If you don't keep your product in front of your customer's eyes and you don't capitalize on the fact that you have a number of registered users that most likely will upgrade, you're making the biggest mistake. We did that once, but we've learned now. I think, typically, eight to twelve months is a good time for an upgrade, and estimates will vary but we found that to be a good time period. JIM PERKINS: Well, I don't care to share any mistakes that we've made. << Smile >> We've made a number of mistakes. I think one of the most important things that you have to remember is, you have to keep your customers informed about what you're doing. And if you don't keep them informed about what you're doing, they're going to look for other products that will do something that your product apparently doesn't do. The other thing is to not concentrate necessarily on chasing a commercial product that you see as an industry leader. Offer something different. We've spent and did spend, and some others spend, a lot of time chasing some very large or comparably large competitors in their market. It's just plain not worth it. Those competitors - you don't know what's going on behind the scenes with them, but if they're adding more and more features to get a PC magazine review, or to have the most features of any product in the product comparison, you may be making a big mistake. It's more important for you to find some important features your customers like. Go after those, make sure that they're the best in the industry and don't worry so much about what those guys are doing. In a lot of cases, those guys are losing a tremendous amount of money, whereas you can make a lot of money going after the customers that have spent money with you already. KEN McGINNIS: I guess running your own business ... I guess every day there's mistakes that can be made. I think some of the big ones that affect your customers are the ones to try to avoid. This morning Bob said that running out of manuals and having a 30- day window where there's no products being shipped ... that can really hurt a company. I think planning and keeping things going in those ways are really important. Another thing mentioned is waiting on your upgrades. File Express, in going from version four to version five, took us almost three years. It was just way too long. It was kind of announced almost a year earlier. It should have been out, but because of other products - we had to squeeze in an upgrade to Express Check and some other things. Some of the customers were calling and were asking. Don't ever tell them when you're releasing your next version because, just do it, work on it harder and try to get your products out faster. Otherwise I think you lose a big market share if you don't work on it really hard and keep your products upgraded, because the upgrades are great. There's a lot of money tied into those upgrades to keep your company going, and your business running. SCOTT MILLER: We've made three big mistakes. First one is, initially we didn't get a big enough P.O. Box. It doesn't cost that much to get a big one from the start, so I would recommend doing it. Another one is, we didn't get ourselves a logo until recently. I don't know why it took so long, but I think it's important to establish some sort of company identity with a logo, so I would recommend getting one. And the third one was... The third one was that I forgot to write it down. MODERATOR: That's okay Scott. Actually, it's kind of interesting that a lot of the stories you've heard are fairly common throughout the industry in companies big and small and in other industries as well. I feel that one of the biggest mistakes happening in our industry is that, as we're programmers by nature, we know that it's relatively easy for us to program and we tend to do the easiest things first. I don't know how many people I've met over the years that said things to me like, "Well, I can't send you the latest version right now because I've got one more bug to fix" or "I'm just going to add a new feature, and in a few weeks it's going to be even better." It's because they're focusing on their programming and they're forgetting to sell their product. That's certainly the largest mistake in my opinion in the shareware business. Because, if you don't sell your product, you're not going to survive at all. All right, during the rest of the time up until 4:00, I would like people to be able to ask their own questions as well. So feel free during the discussion, at any time, to come to the microphone, and you can get us off in a new direction I may not have thought of. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Something we haven't talked about today is Procomm, for example. They're very successful. They were out when all the modems were sold in the market, I guess, bundling. Without going into detail of what we might do or anyone else might do, what's your opinion on bundling? MODERATOR: That's a very good point. Does anybody on the panel have some experience they want to share? BOB WALLACE: We've done some of that. Communication programs are particularly good for shareware - and also any program that helps a particular piece of hardware - so a modem and a communication program, a laser printer and a font program, or something like that is useful. Bundling deals are worth going after. You can actually start by saying, "We want $10.00 a copy for every copy you give out," and then you go down to $5.00 a copy, then you go down to, "Well, why don't you just put a copy of our shareware disk on your machine?" and then you can say, "Well, actually, we'll pay you a quarter a piece if you put..." SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: That's the question, I guess. If it goes down to that and the thought process is, for example: use a laptop company. There's more laptops going out there. It makes more sense to even buy them nowadays, instead of a desktop - in some cases. If you can get your software on there -- obviously if you have commercial packaging and you can use that -- it helps them as a promotion. Maybe they'll buy it from you for $5.00 a package and you hope to put it on all of their systems. Obviously it helps. Everyone who buys a laptop is already a money spender, and they're happy to buy your products, especially if you have an upgrade to go to. But if you can't get that, maybe the next step is try to get the shareware on there. And hopefully, you'll have a good enough impact for that to happen. MODERATOR: Jim, do you have some comments on that? JIM PERKINS: Well, I think that bundling can lead to some other things as well. It may lead to licensing your whole product to somebody who thought they might want to bundle the product with their product, but may discover that your product is very, very good and is comparable to the line that they've got already. They may want to package it up as an individual product, spend the money on terrific packaging, advertising, PR, whatever the case may be. Then go and sell it as their own product, put their name on it and sell it as their own product. And there's nothing wrong with that, because you've already done the development, you've already done manuals, and you could put the product into millions of more locations, literally millions of more locations, as a result of their marketing power. So the bundle can lead to that as well. Everybody knows that FormGen -- various versions of FormGen Fill and FormGen II can be purchased in the range of $9.95 to $279.00. Of course, there's a value relationship there, but we only carry three of the 22 form products out there ourselves. For the rest, the work is done by somebody else. So consider that when you're considering bundling as well. MODERATOR: So, you're talking about licensing. SAME PERSON ON THE FLOOR: I have another question. How do you approach these companies? You have to obviously select something like laptop people or whatever. How do you approach them? MODERATOR: Let me just interject here before he answers that. There's a couple of strategies for bundling that you may want to consider, if you're going to get into bundling deals. One is that you may want to go after bundling as an idea to generate direct revenue. Which means that the bundling agent actually pays you a price for each copy that he puts in and you derive your revenue from that fashion. The other side is using the bundling agent as a vehicle to put your software in the hands of more people -- where you do not charge them anything for doing the bundling, but you make your money back in registrations or some other method after the fact. Those two strategies are quite diverse, and the fact is that many of the hardware products in the computer businesses right now are very much becoming commodity products. And selling a deal where you're going to derive direct revenue can be very, very difficult, because it means that the marketing manager on the other side - and the hardware company - has to face a situation where he's going to reduce the amount of profit he has in order to get the sales. Or he may have to raise his price, which is highly undesirable. So, if you're going to approach it in that way, you're not likely to meet up with the same kind of success as the second way. But you will have to put some strategy in place to make sure that you are going to derive some revenue in the second half. Sorry, now, Jim or does somebody want to... BOB WALLACE: You were wondering who to approach. You know who I would approach is: either look for the title "Product Manager" or Marketing Manager". PARIS KARAHALIOS: If I can expand a little bit on that. On the two types of bundling that you're talking about, Randy, we always try to bundle our fully registered packages, with hardware. Although we don't totally abstain from it, we shy away from bundling shareware copies. Simply because shareware has a problem. Let's say someone buys a shareware copy, they feel they own it or they bought it. It's true more so, I believe, with bundling. If someone buys a hardware system and there's a shareware diskette there, the user gets a strong feeling of having bought the software. So when we do it, we make sure that the hardware vendor clearly explains the shareware concept. It's very important. MODERATOR: All right. Does anybody else have something to add to that? Okay, next question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I'm Ward Mundy. We have a database called Wampum. You stole all my thunder. If I could have a dollar for every mad buyer of a PC that has called us because they got an early version of Wampum, that blew up on a PC that they bought - and the dealer told them that they owned all the software on the PC - I'd be sitting up there instead of out here. But I would think long and hard before I entered into any other bundling agreement for a shareware product. Not to discourage any particular vendor, but they do what they can to sell their hardware and they're not real careful in describing where the software came from or what the terms of use are. MODERATOR: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that, and that's, I think, why you need a strategy for generating the revenue for the second side. PARIS KARAHALIOS: And Randy, you said that if someone has to pay you even 25 cents, the person who's selling the hardware has to give you a portion of his profit. Well, that's true, but you have to convince him that by allowing you to distribute a shareware copy - in those few instances where you will authorize it - they are adding value to their system. So it makes their system more desirable than the system sold over the next person. MODERATOR: All right, next question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Scott, I wonder if you would follow up on your comments about getting people to send in money - register - for something they perhaps already feel they own. What incentives have worked for your company? SCOTT MILLER: It's pretty generally well known that what we do is release games in three parts. Releasing the first part in shareware, which is sort of a hook technique. If they like that game, they can order the remaining two parts. That's probably the key to our success. I think there are ways that it can be applied to other types of software. It might take a whole panel to discuss all the ways, but that's the trick to our success. I think that, if there's some way to add extra functionality or add-ons or something -- just so there's a good reason for the user to want to register and get extra goodies. MODERATOR: Next question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I do software, by the way. I want to get ...<< unintelligible >>... what you expect from us as a vendor in bundling to let that customer know exactly how you want ..<< unintelligible >>... We put our notice out front just like in our catalog, but I'd like a little more in particular what you -- how would you like us to present it to the customer? MODERATOR: What kind of software bundling do you do? PERSON ON THE FLOOR: I work with Bernoulli Disk. Are you familiar with it? MODERATOR: Yes. PERSON ON THE FLOOR: We buy a Bernoulli drive and our shareware disk is what comes with the product. MODERATOR: So you're providing a shareware bundle, basically, with a Bernoulli drive? PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Right... MODERATOR: I see. And your question is, what would the shareware community like to see? PERSON ON THE FLOOR: Exactly. PARIS KARAHALIOS: If you're interested - as a matter of fact after the meeting I can give you a copy - we have developed a standard agreement that we have everybody who bundles Shareware copies sign with us. That very clearly specifies what we expect from that vendor. MODERATOR: What are the highlights of the agreement, Paris? PARIS KARAHALIOS: Okay. For example, just like for a disk vendor, we want to clearly have some sort of printed documentation with the system that explains the shareware concept. PERSON ON THE FLOOR: It actually comes with the disk? PARIS KARAHALIOS: Absolutely, absolutely. With a hardware package, whatever it is. We make sure that, for example, they don't put it underneath some menu program so that our opening screen is bypassed, or it's very obscure, or whatever. MODERATOR: That hides the Shareware... PARIS KARAHALIOS: Absolutely, that hides the shareware to our customer. These are very simple things, but unless you clearly state what you expect, you cannot enforce them. But I'll give you a copy if you're interested. BOB WALLACE: One thing we've done occasionally, which I think can work well, is going to the shareware company -- if you're not buying a lot of shareware -- just a few things -- and work out a deal where we would send you a master of a coupon. A letter saying, "Thanks for using our evaluation copy. We'll give you $10.00 off the registration price because you were so good to buy a Bernoulli Box. But you must do it by..." some cut-off date. Include a coupon, and that subtly explains this was only an evaluation copy; you have to send the money in to get it. But that can be a good call to action on the customer's part. ANOTHER PANELIST: And that's good perceived value, too. They may perceive that they aren't getting much value by getting shareware on that disk when there isn't a special coupon involved or some discounts involved. With a coupon, they feel like they're getting something of value, and obviously, you'll sell more disks. MODERATOR: Next question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I'd like to go back to the incentives for the shareware buyer. What does the panel think of the idea of fixing the program so that at some point or under some circumstances, he gets a message on the screen that says, "You can keep on using this program. It will do anything you want it to do. Except after this particular file, give us a call and we'll show you how to reload it." Or something like that. MODERATOR: Now there's a question. BOB WALLACE: It's a good marketing approach. I wouldn't call it Shareware. MODERATOR: Yeah, okay, do you want to elaborate on that just a bit, Bobby, because I think... BOB WALLACE: In shareware, the principal is that you get fully running software, and people do... FROM THE FLOOR, INTERRUPTING: I can argue with that... People put out what they call their shareware version, and then the incentives are for the "real thing" where you've got color management, and you've got file management; we've got 18 other facilities that we'll send you with the manual,... BOB WALLACE: Well, you're talking about a time limit, or number of uses limit, or something like that? FROM THE FLOOR: Yeah, well, at some point, obviously, you're in some position where the user is accidentally using the package... MODERATOR: I don't know if there is a definitive answer to that question. I think there may be some validity to such a strategy, but I can say that to my knowledge none of the main producers of shareware use that kind of technique. Certainly none of the large companies that are represented by this panel use techniques of that sort, and I'd have to correlate those two facts together to conclude that may not be the right thing to do. BOB WALLACE: There's a subtle psychological thing. It would be easy to get around, obviously, just get another copy, and then the counter is reset to zero. But in a more subtle way, it sets up a game between you and the user saying, "Okay, well, I'm going to try and stop you from using this." And the user says, "Oh, well, I can get around that." Some of the shareware users are sophisticated enough to get around that. It kind of loses the very open - we're depending on the honesty approach. One thing, as far as incentives and crippling and things like that: we fell into it accidentally and I don't know what to think about it. We wanted a Thesaurus in our word processor. We don't have time to develop a Thesaurus, you can't do that from scratch. So we went to Houghton-Mifflin and said, "Oh, we want to buy your Thesaurus and license it." And they said, "Okay, fine," and then we told them we're a shareware product, and they said, "Well, we don't really want you to put it on shareware. Your license doesn't really extend that far." The product comes on four disks and then there's a fifth that has the thesaurus stuff. And the fifth disk isn't shareware. We would make it shareware if we could. But it is a subtle form of crippling, I guess, but it's one that... COMMENT FROM THE FLOOR, DIFFERENT PERSON: Actually, the term that come to mind is Hostageware, as you described it. We've got your file and if you want it, call this number and we'll tell you how to get at it. BOB WALLACE: Well, there's that approach. I'm talking about more functional limits. The other thing that people do, fairly often, is say, "Okay, if what you get is complete and runs well, and you can use it, most people will consider that shareware. And then if you register, you get something else which is not shareware, a separate product." So it's different than a product that can't print or every time you print the header says, "You owe us money." There's a difference between, if you have something that is useful and is a good product, then that's important. ANOTHER PANELIST: I think that's the key, and I also think that - personally - if you list your restrictions up front and not surprise the user, you're not going to piss them off. By listing your restrictions up front and making sure that your program can be very well evaluated, and I think adding more functions to the program later on -- I think that it's a very reasonable marketing strategy. MODERATOR: All right, next question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Momentarily I'm going into the lease/rental business, and of course, the future market's in CD-ROMS. There's not one major disk vendor like PC-SIG, Public Brand, that has not put out their CD-ROM disk only to find out that an individual either had or was going commercial - and they take them back. But once those items are pressed, you people represent those 400 programs in shareware. Once that thing is cut on a CD- ROM, it's in there. It's locked in. You change your mind about what you want to do -- you know, that can really get around. I don't think I'd sell it. MODERATOR: And the question is, sir? QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: The question is: I intend to bundle CD- ROMS with the machines. They're going to be complete information systems. If you decide to change your ware in the future, where does that leave me? Subject to a law suit? PARIS KARAHALIOS: I don't think that what you're posing is a problem. If you have version three of our software and you include it in CD-ROM, and we decide that version six or version five is not shareware anymore, that does not affect version three that you have on your CD-ROM. That is still shareware. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Well, at the present time in CD-ROM's Denmark has put out some of the PC-SIG, ROM 8's. And Magnavox, they continue to sell CD-ROM 10, which is PC-SIG. And that's got about 2,700 programs. MODERATOR: We're down to four minutes, sir. Maybe you could let someone else ask a question. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: Okay, but do you get anything when you put your shareware on CD-ROM? MODERATOR: No. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: You don't get a penny? MODERATOR: No. SAME PERSON FROM THE FLOOR: Well, that's something I didn't know. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, NEW PERSON: I'd like to make a comment to the gentleman who was talking about time-limited programs. One of the big reasons that we're all in shareware is because we don't pay for advertising. As you all know, advertising is very expensive. And the advertising that we do have are the vendors, the articles you read about shareware. But most important, the biggest advertising that we have is your customer. And a happy customer tells other people about it. I'm amazed at the number of registrations I get that are not from direct downloads or anything. They're people who call me up and I ask, "Where did you hear about our products?" They say, "From so-and-so." I write them down in my book and look them up later in my database and I've never heard of so-and-so. And I don't care about it either. Because that man loves the program, he tells his friends and associates about it, and that's the way shareware works. MODERATOR: The conclusion being that the recommender was an unregistered user, is that correct? FROM THE FLOOR: Right. Correct. Fifty percent of my registrations are from somebody else telling them about my program. So they are the ones that are spreading the word for me, and it's unpaid advertising. I don't pay a penny for it. It works. MODERATOR: All right. BOB WALLACE: Another benefit of unregistered users is you can really get the press interested in your product. The press are interested in the product if people use it, not if they pay for it. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: My question is: at what point do you decide to hold back on functionality or even data, if you're supplying a product that has data. Do you decide to hold back on that to be an incentive to register or go full blown out and put the whole package in? MODERATOR: I'm not sure that there's a definitive answer in that area, but I can tell you that there's a complete panel session tomorrow on incentives at 2:00 p.m. It will cover an awful lot of issues and should be pretty lively and fairly focused. I'm not trying to avoid it, but what I'm thinking of is based on the context of your question ... I'm hard pressed to see that we'll be able to do anything more than muddy the waters at this point by trying to get into it what the specifics limits of a program might be to derive registrations. QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Scott, you mentioned adding goodies that come with registration. I know you have an author BBS. Do you find that to be a valuable? SCOTT MILLER: Yes. Dan Litton, who is the sysop of the Software Creation BBS - which is the home BBS for Apogee Software - has done an outstanding job. We now have about 25 lines. When we first started, we had about three -- and that was about five months ago. We're getting about 1,500 to 2,000 downloads a day on our software, and it has really helped out a lot. We're using that now as a support BBS, and if authors can hook into some sort of home BBS, I would recommend it. 栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢 ADVERTISEMENT 栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢栢� 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 넴 Authors! You're MUCH too busy to run a BBS -- unless it can 枋 넴 can run itself! SAPPHIRE is the ideal bulletin board system 枋 넴 to support your product. Installs in seconds. Operates with- 枋 넴 out time-consuming daily maintenance. 枋 넴 枋 넴 Now available on CompuServe (GO IBMBBS; files SX405A.ZIP and 枋 넴 SX405B.ZIP). Fully-functional shareware. GO SWREG on CIS to 枋 넴 register online (ID# 293). 枋 넴 枋 넴 For complete information, contact Timothy Campbell at Pinnacle 枋 넴 Software. CP386 Ville Mont Royal QC, Canada. CIS: 70154,1577. 枋 넴 GEnie: T.CAMPBELL11 Support line: (514) 345-9578. FREE files 枋 넴 BBS: (514) 345-8654 (9600 bps) 枋 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR, SAME PERSON: Do you also utilize that to send out information to your customers? Do your customers call in? Do they use that a lot, in other words, for technical support? Are they using that for technical support? SCOTT MILLER: Not so much for technical support. Actually, we get more technical support stuff done on America On-Line, where we have another Apogee forum. But we are setting up a conference specially on our home BBS for technical support. We're also setting up a conference for a contest and stuff. So we're going to get a lot of mileage out of it. Since it's so new, we just haven't put all these things into effect yet. MODERATOR: Okay, it's 4:00 p.m. We're going to break now for 15 minutes. We're going to start again at 4:15 p.m. and go to 5:00 p.m. The panel members will be mostly around the room, so I'm sure you'll be able to ask them any specific questions you might have now. << end of part one >>