How'd you market your product?

Hey all,

Thanks for the encouraging feedback! It really does help.

Steve, I hadn't really considered my local market. I'll spend an hour or two tomorrow creating a list of web designers and developers in Omaha and contacting them to see what invoicing system they're currently using and if they'd be willing to use something that's, in my opinion, better than SaaS as far as flexibility is concerned (my product can be downloaded and hosted on customers' web servers).

And I wish I knew your name, Lowengard, but your suggestions are very helpful. I think that my market, specifically, is anyone who does custom WordPress theme development. One of the differences with my application is that, after purchasing, customers have access to the full source code and can download and install it on their web server. I didn't like turning down projects because other online SaaS invoicing applications (the competition) didn't allow much for customizability.

As far as pricing, that's a little shot in the dark. I'd love to price it similar to activeCollab as a one-time fee, but how do I build in support into the fee without alienating those who don't want to pay for it? If it's offered as a separate add-on, I don't think people will necessarily pay for it, but will leave them frustrated if they're forced to purchase it before calling me. Similar to Apple; I love their products, but don't like their support fee for Apple Care. I can't have it for free.

As an example, a competitor charges around $50 per month for a comparable service, or $600 per year. Should I charge more, less or the same? I'm considerably smaller than them, but offer something I think is very unique and in demand: open source invoicing (although I want to shy away from using that because "open source" means "free to download and install" in most cases, whereas my application is commercial open source).

I've pondered selling the application on credit so the $299 to $599 or so one-time fee is easier to manage. Perhaps $199 deposit and then divide the remaining balance over two-to-three months? The disadvantage to me is that the full source code will be provided, even before customers pay the full fee (I do not want to encrypt or encode any files).

What are your thoughts?

Cory