Category Archives: Increasing Revenue

How To Boost Your Profits By Outsourcing Your E-Commerce

By FastSpring | Published: September 29, 2009

by Gordon Graham, Editor, SoftwareCEO Originally published www.softwareceo.com, 9/29/2009. Building a website for your software firm is one thing. Developing an entire e-commerce system to sell software over the web is another. Ask any developer, and he’ll tell you, “Sure! I can do that in a few days.” Ahhhhh… would you believe 18 months? That’s
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An Interesting Strategy To Cut Down On Refunds

By FastSpring | Published: September 11, 2009

Recently a vendor who sells software asked members of the Business of Software forum “Do you wait a while before issuing a requested refund?”.  Ken White, one of FastSpring’s Dedicated Account Managers, had an interesting response based on his experiences with a software firm he’s been involved with over the years: “Not everyone will like
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Introducing Mail-In Rebate Promotions For FastSpring Vendors

By FastSpring | Published: August 12, 2009

Did you know rebate checks in 2008 totaled over $6 billion?  It’s a hugely successful and popular merchandising tool.  We just released a new feature for online vendors that increases profits by offering a mail-in rebate to your customers instead of a coupon. This is the first online-based rebate service of its kind, and it
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What Is A Typical Visit To Sale Ratio For Software Vendors?

By FastSpring | Published: May 1, 2009

Andy Brice, a friend of FastSpring’s and the developer behind the SuccessfulSoftware.net blog, recently compiled data from a group of small software firms to analyze their conversion rates from visit to download, visit to purchase, etc. You can see the results from his survey and see how your site’s conversion rates compare with others by
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Best Practices For Using “Buy Now” Buttons

By FastSpring | Published: March 31, 2009

For “buy now” buttons, it’s helpful for the button to be a bright color (e.g. red), to be large enough on the page to be highly visible, ideally to be located above the fold.  When possible, it’s wise to have a purchase link on every page of your site (this link could just be in
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How Should You Price OEM Bundle Deals?

By FastSpring | Published: March 17, 2009

If it’s indeed the typical software/hardware bundling arrangement, you’ll likely be expected to accept a per unit fee ranging anywhere from $.10-$1.00 per unit bundled, depending on the OEM partner, the anticipated unit volume, etc. Assuming that’s the range you’re presented with, you’ll want to ask the OEM partner to justify that kind of rate
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Magazine Covermount CD Software Bundles

By FastSpring | Published: August 21, 2008

Recently a consumer software publisher said they were approached by a big German PC magazine requesting to feature the software product on the PC magazine’s covermount CD. The magazine asked to bundle a fully functional version of the software product. No compensation was offered. What should the software company do? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to
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Bundling Software

By FastSpring | Published: July 9, 2008

The question has come up a number of times — I’m a software company and I’ve been asked by a 3rd party company to bundle their software along with mine, should I do it? I’ve managed a number of bundle deals in the past, including a little time spent working with the Google toolbar bundle
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Republishing Deals Offer Smaller Software Publishers Ready Access to Global Markets

By FastSpring | Published: June 10, 2008

[Guest authored by Alison Simpkins of Access International. Access is a FastSpring partner that helps grow software publishers' revenue through their international business development team.] If expanding into international markets is a key element of your overall growth strategy then you’ve probably already considered some of the challenges that adapting your software application for new
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Fighting Fraud FastSpring-Style Can Increase Your Revenue

By FastSpring | Published: June 6, 2008

Over the past few months, we’ve been getting a large number of companies signing up for FastSpring who are complaining about how their former e-commerce provider was handling fraud. We’ve heard from a few of our own clients who have stated that once they switched their e-commerce over to FastSpring, sales increased 10-20% simply because
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