Hi everyone,<p>I've written a bit of software that I needed. I have packaged it and attempted to market it. http://www.virtsync.com<p>With a few hundred dollars spent on LinkedIn and Google Adwords, there have still been no downloads of the evaluation version.<p>Is the site broken, or did I just have a unique need? (I would have happily spent the $49 that I'm charging, if the software had already existed.)<p>Is there a way to turn this software into a profitable service, perhaps like rsync.net? Or should I just forget it and get on with the next project?<p>Any comments on the site, software or future direction would be very welcome.<p>Thanks,<p>Chris.
$49 per machine is a pretty high cost, particularly for something which is new and untested.<p>I'm no expert, but my gut feeling is that for this kind of tool - you need to offer a more 'enterprisey' offering. The way budgets for the kind of places that this tool would be useful are allocated, $49 for a single utility for every machine it might need to be run on is something that sysadmins might have difficulty explaining.<p>Bear in mind that the idea of syncing is not novel, and most sysadmins have built their servers around the current tools and constraints available. They are likely to look at your utility and think 'that's cool, but it's not worth the cost: what I have now works even if it takes longer, and I'm not paying anything for it'.<p>If you asked me to pay $49 for a faster version of rsync, which I then had to incorporate into my tool-chain, I'd probably just forget it. The cost of changing to a new utility is more than just the cost of the utility itself.
You may find interesting this presentation from patio11 "Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It" <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who-would-rather-be-building-stuff/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who...</a>
Why not market a Windows version? As a Linux user, I'm accustomed to getting stuff for free. rsync also isn't as ubiquitous there so you don't have to complete with a free offering.
I think $49 per machine is a lot. But the software interests me. The one thing I'd like to see is a speed comparison between rsync and this product. Also, is the underlying technology something that could be licensed?<p>For example, at CloudFlare we are generating 20GB of log files per minute and we need to move these around. Finding a fast way to do that is important. Clearly, CloudFlare could pay $49 per machine without a problem.
It seems to me that being "way faster than rsync" is not worth $49. Also there is no comparison / explanation on the site of how it is faster than rsync.
You've conducted a single experiment and found out that the LinkedIn and AdWords adverts you ran put nobody in your funnel. This is useful data. Come up with some more ideas for experiments to run and run those. Pivoting after a single marketing experiment though? Too soon.
Pick up a phone and call 50 offices, push through to SysAdmin. Happy to break down why, but for now, try this.<p>Alternatively, but more difficult, track down some local IT integration specialists, resell through them.<p>All it costs is your time and possibly phone bills.
Split test and try some new pricing models. This seems like something that should have the core free, with paid upgrades and paid support for large clients.
Random idea: but if your service is so good but addressed to technical people, why not put it out for free (or even open source it) and offer paid support?