Running a Business

dasblinkenlight wrote: people who want money for their software would be reluctant to sell their source code, out of fear of it acquiring a life of its own (for example, in the shape of a competing closed-source product). Very true...

Spamming is the quickest way to destroy a successfull business - voted to remove :) Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss:

They are still in business and still defrauding their customers. I just ordered PDF Editor for Mac by AnyBizSoft. The supplied link downloaded the Windows version and no registration code. They said that if I wanted anything different, I could take it up with AnyBizSoft. Maybe AnyBizSoft would come through but I'm on deadline and don't have time to wait. $50 down the drain. Beware - Digital River/regNow = FRAUD.

Since you don't have a mentor coach, but feel you need one, have you tried bringing this up your manager? Are you trying to gain experience and mentor-ship coding or running a business? If it is just coding, you can try joining some open source projects. "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" — Hunter S. Thompson

THink about it... if you are just starting out as a company, what better way to release your first (simple) product to the masses? - Free It gets attention/promotion downloads, generates interest... I am working on a project at the moment... I am planning on releaseing it free.. I am also planning on having a "complex" payware version too. its the same as downloading an evaluation version of a piece of software. -------------------------------------------------- John Crocker

You might want to think about what some places are now calling "private clouds." They primarily seem to be managed Virtual Server boxes (VMWare/Hyper-V) in which then you manage the individual hosts. This way you could structure your environment to be however you wanted. The only downside of this is that you will have to spend more time in the sys-admin role getting everything set up. Christian Mattix Force 5

shiznit770 wrote: which were done by a purely .net consultant I did this sort of work in the 90s, one man show, T&M or sometimes fixed price, do the job from design to help system and training. You are right in that it commanded much more respect, it also required a very wide range of skills and it was a fascinatng to move into different industries and solve their problems. It is still a lot of paperwork and admin, if you can keep it to a one man show it is survuvable, expand and see your coding time dissapear. Income is variable and it hurts when you (rarely) need to pass on a job b/c you are already too busy when you know you will be out of jobs in 6 weeks! I eventually went to pure contracting. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

TIP #1: Being unwilling to give the name or purpose of your software is bad marketing. Is this trialware, shareware, freeware? Do you have a way to receive money for it? I would start at http://upload.com.

I'm not sure what you are really asking here. It sounds like you want to be able to know when the TrueCrypt stuff has a new version, and then do a rebuild and repackage of your stuff to include that in some cost effective manner. Based on that as my understanding my first question is really, do you HAVE to do that each time? Is there a proven track record that as TrueCrypt makes changes your stuff has to change also to maintain functionality because there have been a consistent number of breaking changes in the past that cause you to not trust new versions? It sounds to me that one simple suggestion on your end is to establish a published schedule that states openly when you intend on keeping up with releases of related libraries that are part of your product. I think allowing the release schedule of other products that you use in your project to drive your development cycle, while possible admirable on your side, is just an unrealistic expectation to set, especially when some of those components are open-source and have a haphazard release schedule. I think it is often better in business to just set the proper customer expectations and meet THEM consistently from your end. Tell your customers that you current release supports versions x, y, and z of any external components at this time, and then perhaps set a regular schedule to evaluate all new versions and produce an update to your timeline barring any issues that are found. As far as doing this automated goes? I am not sure there is anything out there that would just do this unless you put a ton of effort into automated detection of new builds, downloads, regression testing, rebuilding, etc... Personally, THAT sounds like an entire product in it self. LinkedIn[^] | Blog[^] | Twitter[^]

Personally employing developers without giving them a second monitor is tantamount to torcher and makes you an abusive employer as far as I am concerned :) Seriously, invest in multiple monitors for your developers, and not the skimpy 19 inch ones but the nice 22 or 24 inchers too. Instead of printers, get a good PDF printer application (cute PDF is free and simple but there are others) and tons of HD space on a server for them to store those things they find worthy of 'saving' and then maybe one or two simple B&W lasers for printing stuff that is worthy of going up on the wall for quick reference. Color lasers are great for final copy, but in reality, unless you are going to really be printing your own docs, get a printing company to do that for you and just print to a PDF for them to use as a layout reference. Are you REALY going to be shipping printed docs anyway? as far as color proposals go, unless you are trying to impress the 'big boys' print the proposal, all but maybe the cover, in B&W. Anything else is just a waste as far as I am concerned. As a customer I don't really care if your proposal has a full color layout, I want to see the solution. Yeah screen shots look nice in color, but if you get in the door you can do a PowerPoint and they can see them there. LinkedIn[^] | Blog[^] | Twitter[^]

I totally agree on pricing. The lower you price your service the less valued it will be by your customers. I can't speak for plugins, but this advice should apply to pretty much anything. Just raise the price in the next version. If you overprice it, nobody will buy and you'll know fairly quickly. Then you can always lower it until you find a happy medium. I've tested this out in two industries... legal and web. There is also a book with checking out (kind of obscure) by an author named Gary Cone called "Price Doesn't Count," in which Mr. Cone argues that if there are objections to a sale, price is rarely the issue. BlunderBolt --->---->-- DUI

Hi Rozis, We are here business unit in India with team of ASP.NET / PHP / Java / SEO / Open Source / Team of developer / programmer We are looking kind of your firm for business. Thanks Mayur Shah http://www.addonsolutions.com

:omg: :wtf: :mad:

21concepts.com wrote: if there's a 5% profit margin and the default rate is 7%, then over time, I'll lose 2% rather than make 5% I am afraid I don't understand your math. As I see it you make 5% regardless. You may give up a potential 2%, but you don't lose anything. The only time you might say you were losing money would be if you had an alternative investment that would make more. For example if you could put the money in bonds at 9%, you would be losing 4% by investing it for a 5% return. If the bonds were tax free, you might even be losing 5 or 6% after taxes. But absent an alternative investment, the return is what it is. If you are trying to determine the customary margin for an industry, I suggest you do some research using the industry SIC code. There are statistics published for each industry. But use caution in applying them. The numbers may have been generated using a statistically insignificant number of samples or perhaps generated for companies that fall in that SIC, but have no real relation to your situation. And they are by definition several years out of date. The questions you need to ask yourself are; Am I satisfied with this return relative to the risk involved and could I get a better return using the money in a different way? Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com

What makes you think he'll ever get enough visibility for you se see and mock him? It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I've only just noticed this forum exists. Fancy a rum-ball? :-\ Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"