Re: Directory of Mathematica Add-Ons
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg87574] Re: Directory of Mathematica Add-Ons
- From: David Reiss <dbreiss at gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:33:19 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <ftkbev$bvl$1@smc.vnet.net> <ftmtvk$4pa$1@smc.vnet.net>
You are absolutely right. Of course one can distribute a package oneself as I do (in addition to doing it through WRI). The advantage of that is that one then does not have to share the revenue for those sales. And it is easy to set up payment methods using PayPal and Google Checkout (see http://scientificarts.com/worklife/purchase/ ). And there are other services that also are usable for sales of software and shareware such as kagi (http://www.kagi.com/index.php). The key problem really is marketing. One advantage of the Wolfram Partnerships group is that WRI then is an additional route to marketing presence. But in my offering of http://scientificarts.com/worklife the most difficult thing that I find is getting people to try it. And this has lead me to learn more of why, in the real world, active advertising is unfortunately essential. So the real question in my mind is how to get Mathematica users to try applications that are offered. There are very few routes to marketing Mathematica applications--very few places where Mathematica users congregate. And in those places (and remember that an application developer usually does not have a marketing budget--I don't-- significant revenue is needed to support such a budget) one has to find a way to convince the users to give the application a try. My experience is that very few do try. My experience with my application is that of those who do try, a significant percentage do buy the product. Of course those of us who develop products are often not marketers by personality type. I suppose that I could, for example, email the members of this group individually and ask them to try my application, but I generally think that that is wrong to do unless there is a good and open reason to do so. So that's the key issue in my mind: getting to the potential customer and getting them to take the time to try something out. In my case there is no financial barrier: mine is a very low cost product. In summary, offering the products on-line is easy, and one could indeed create an aggregation site. But if people don't try the products they won't purchase them. And the question is how to get the message broadcast that it's ok to try out these products? (There is the technical issue of how to create password protected products and with those, trial versions. I've solved this for myself, but there is no intrinsic method in Mathematica itself at this time.) So (shameless plug--one has to be a bit shameless in selling things): give http://scientificarts.com/worklife a try... what's holding *you* back... : - ) Best, David A WorkLife FrameWork E x t e n d i n g MATHEMATICA's Reach... Trial Version at: http://scientificarts.com/worklife/ On Apr 12, 7:08 am, AES <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote: > In article <ftmtvk$4p... at smc.vnet.net>, David Reiss <dbre... at gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Contact the Wolfram Partnerships group... > > >http://partnerships.wolfram.com/ > > Interesting and useful. > > But, as with any major product or system or vendor, could be useful to > also have a totally _independent_, non-Wolfram-controlled users' group > or organization -- such as the web now makes so readily possible.