Give it away!

Does the future of software involve giving it away?

Companies will not be giving it away 100% of their software, after all how would any of them make money? Today some business models have found ways to do this, but I don't like having sponsors and or advertising in software, as i don't think this model has long term viability.

For a software company to be truly successful they have to be open to some sort of free edition.  To a fair amount of people out there this is crazy unless its a free limited function or limited trial type download. While this is will work well for certain markets,  I don't feel that it really accomplishes all it would need to in order to achieve its maximum potential.

Let me explain why.

To achieve maximum potential you need to first have people that know about your product, (as many as possible).  These people must know how it works, why its needed etc.   Not only this but they have to be fans, in fact they should be RAVING FANS

Where do RAVING FANS come from?

Some of these people will be employed by your company, some will be partners who benefit from the sale of the software either through commission or services. Some will be passive agents that just think what you are doing is cool.  There is something to be said for having each of these sets of people be fans, and each set will will need to know something about the software. But how far will this scale?

What’s missing from this analysis?

Community, Social media, and camaraderie.  This will be covered in a few follow on posts i am working on. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic so drop me a note.

Now back to this post. Let us assume that you are using some kind of social media and you have started getting your name/product out there.

Inevitably people will find you, they will be interested in learning more.  People will want to play with, experiment and test your software out.  The question is how do you better enable this, nurture it encourage it?

Achieving this will be very difficult to do if you don't have some “developer edition” or some kind of free version of your software.   Many companies out there have limited function or 30-day trials.  However This does not encourage a long term relationship.  This would allow someone to play with the software for a short period of time maybe make some observations but that's it.  What happens on day 31?  The person would either have to buy the software or let the relationship go. 

If you follow Jeff Shuey’s concept of Corporate Authenticity which connects Social Media to Enterprise Content Management systems you would know a smart company would have been having a dialogue all along. But, what about the other 90% - the not so smart companies? How should they think about Freemiums

30 day trials are perfectly fine for many cases, I have downloaded many 30 day trials and played around to get an idea of its capabilities.  But what about more enterprise type software.  In this case many of these types would not be willing to pay thousands of dollars for this software just to learn it.  this would be true even if they would make a profit from it by providing services for it. 

How do you empower these people and begin the conversation with them to take your software beyond the basics?

These people who work to evaluate your software will usually have a circle of influence no matter how small.  They will influence others about your product.  Consider David Armanos influence diagrams

Even if you manage to reach a level 3 they can in turn influence a 2 or a 1 which flows out like a ripple in water.  However to begin this ripple people need to not only find your software they have to get their hands on it, learn it, understand it, and believe in it.  The only way to get someone to that point is over time and through some kind of communication channel.  This will take longer than 30 days, (thus the 30 day trial wont work)  You will also need to take the time to work with these people and make them an ally. 

I don't want to try and make this entire entry seem like a marketing ploy, that is not my intent.  Merely 1 step in the process.  Once people have your software you still need to have avenues available to them to provide feedback and be able to establish multiple communication channels with them, establish a relationship at some level, i feel social media is one of the best places to achieve this, but much more on that later.

So what do you think?

Are you someone who thinks that a free edition is a good thing or do you view is as a risk?  Should people who really want to learn your software have to buy it?  Even if it benefits you more than them?

Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com