I've been a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals for many years and recently was elected to the Board of Directors. I spoke to Dennis Reinhardt, longtime member and technology enthusiast about the Association. His replies might surprise you:

1. What is the ASP and what does it stand for?

ASP is an acronym for Association of Shareware Professionals, a non-profit Texas corporation. Its purpose, as spelled out in its bylaws is to strengthen the future of shareware (try-before-you-buy software).

3. How does the ASP help software professionals?

Primarily, the ASP helps software professionals by providing a forum for discussion among peers. The ASP newsgroups are closed and confidential. Many consider the newsgroup discussions the primary benefit of the ASP. The actual benefits are specific to each discussion and any ASP member can start a discussion addressing exactly the topics they are interested in.

That said, the majority of members participate in our newsgroups infrequently or not at all. Those members receive the ASPects newsletter and President's email message, each approximately monthly.

Members often offer each other member discounts. You need not be a member to offer a discount (but it does help the acceptance of the offer to be a member and have access to any discussion about it). You do need to be a member to take advantage of an offer.

It is helpful to know what services are available and just being part of the ASP community allows you to find out what others have done and are doing to advance their businesses.

4. Is the ASP just for developers?

The membership is drawn from all industry participants and includes E-commerce vendors, download site operators, marketing consultants, attorneys, other organizations, trade show organizers, developers, and other industry participants. The ASP is open to all industry participants. Per our bylaws, at least one of the President or the board Chairman must be a developer member. Numerically, we estimate that 90% of members are developers but this is not a hard statistic. Developers are the core of our membership but the ASP is open to all in the shareware industry.

6. What initiatives is the ASP working on?

Our most important new initiatives right now are concerned with growing the member base of the organization itself and consist of web site modernization, an upcoming blog, and a nascent outreach recruiting project.

ASP membership levels are a balance driven by members who leave the shareware industry and those who enter it. There are other reasons but those are the main ones why members leave or join the ASP.

The ASP has been passive about recruiting new members and has seen its membership numbers decline slowly. As this global slowdown unwinds, it becomes imperative to the health of the organization that our numbers start growing again.

We had an program testing initiative which we decided to discontinue and so that does not qualify as something we are currently working on. The PAD standardization is ongoing and active but with incremental improvements envisioned.

Many organizations are finding that they are re-trenching nowadays and it is with no embarrassment that I note the ASP is working on projects which strengthen it. Unlike other organizations, the ASP has a very strong balance sheet and will continue to be a communication resource for whatever economic environment we find ourselves in.

7. Given the rise of social networks such as Facebook, how does the ASP fit in and compete?

Some have called the ASP a walled garden. Conversations take place privately among ourselves and are treated confidentially. Our members can share concerns and solutions among ourselves without those conversations leaking to the larger public.

New members are screened to insure they are members of the shareware industry. All members must subscribe to the ASP Code of Professional
Conduct.

The ASP is not free. It costs $100/year to join and $100/year to continue membership. Many members subscribe to the Supporters level of membership, which is $250/year.

It terms of total members, a paid subscription cannot hope to compete with a free account such as Facebook. Rather, the ASP caters to those software professionals who excel at shareware marketing or want to.

That said, ASP members can and do participate in many social networks. If the topic is suited for a large number of participants that are not carefully qualified, a social network is a good place to hold the conversation. If the topic is suited for discussion among selected peers, the ASP newsgroups are a good place. If there is overlap, hold the discussion both places.

The ASP fits in by providing a distinct environment ("walled garden" if we must) and coexists rather than competes because it is providing a different environment.

10. Where can people find more information and meet ASP members?

The ASP web site at www.asp-shareware.org has further information.

Many ASP members attend the annual SIC conference and this is an opportunity to meet members. You can find out more about our members year-round by visiting the ASP download site where we feature software produced by our developer members and links provided by our other industry members.

Far and away the best place to meet ASP members is by joining the ASP. For years, the ASP had maintained an open to the public newsgroup. We have recently taken that down because the public newsgroup was a poor reflection of the internal discussions that it was becoming an embarrassment.

If you want to meet ASP members, there is really no substitute for joining.

11. I hear the ASP will be at the Software Industry Conference this summer, are there any special events planned?

At SIC, we traditionally announce the new Hall of Fame inductees at the ASP luncheon chosen by the ASP Board of Directors. The presentation and the luncheon itself qualify as special events. Note that the Hall of Fame award is not automatic and in the past, no inductees have been named. Past inductees can be seen here.

The CDC - Center for Disease Control and WHO - World Health Organization are putting out a lot of information about the Swine Flu. There are even Twitter accounts that keep update information on the Swine Flu. Also a number of RSS feeds for Swine Flu are available. All of these can be directed to your cell phone so you can get the latest information on your mobile phone!

You've worked hard to perfect your application - it represents the end result of hours of planning, coding, debugging, and polishing. Now that it's done, you need to get the word out on the street about your fantastic product, especially if there are other competing apps that aim to serve the same audience.

For many developers, the only marketing effort that they will ever undertake is the development of a website that showcases their software application. This approach, however, is less than ideal because websites take a while to become established on the internet - web traffic in those first few weeks of existence will be very low, almost nonexistent, and small developers need to start making sales immediately if they are to survive to fight another day. Those sales will not be forthcoming if you're waiting for Google to index your site (it can take a while). And no matter how well-designed, your site won't have a very high search index ranking if no other sites link to it, which is highly likely since no one knows about it.

Twitter represents a real opportunity for small shop developers to promote their software, but only if your relationship with the Twitterverse is carefully established and cultivated. There is a world of difference between "marketing on Twitter" and "effective marketing on Twitter". Here are some tips on doing it the right way.

1. Register, then Follow Your Key Demographic

Your journey through the Twitterverse starts, naturally, with registering an account and profile name. Try not to pick a profile name that's overly cold and corporate, but do try to tie your profile name back to your company or the product that you're developing, so folks will associate your Twitter account with your product or service. Be sure to fill out your Twitter profile with a brief description of yourself, your product, and a link to your website.

After you've endured the arduous process of selecting your Twitter name, do a quick keyword search across the Twitter service and start following other Twitter users who do what you do, or are otherwise part of your target demographic for your software. Developing graphics software? Follow folks who are employed as graphic designers, or who design graphics software. By following their tweets, you may just learn a thing or two that makes your software even better. When you start following someone, they'll be notified, and, after sizing you up, may start following you as well. This is how you build your Twitter audience. The best Twitter networks focus on a core group of people allied together around a common theme.

2. Be Open, Be Yourself, and Use Twitter as a Sounding Board

Not counting the Twitter accounts of sites that offer breaking news, daily discount offers, and other "in-the-moment" opportunities, businesses that view Twitter as just another electronic billboard are missing the point and are often puzzled when they don't attract many followers. Successful users of Twitter attract followers because they do and tweet things that interest people, or otherwise offer a peek into a lifestyle that others may not see everyday.

You should start your Twitter account well before you plan to launch your software application, keeping your tweets professional (no vulgarity, for example) but personable, dropping hints about yourself in ways that demonstrate that you have quirks like everyone else. In other words, be a person on Twitter, and not a corporate presence or a PR intern or a robot that spews status reports about the latest build. When you reach a level of comfort with Twitter, and have developed some followers, start tweeting about your application, and how its development is progressing. It even helps to tweet about drawbacks, hurdles, and disappointments in your software development. The point is this - get people interested in you, and they will also become interested in what you do.

Keep tweeting about the progress of your application (along with the usual quirky details about your life), and you will build buzz for the application's release. If you run into a coding problem, ask Twitter! Inviting the counsel of others makes them more likely to be personally invested in your success. It also helps you to build a better network by connecting with others who may be running into the same issues.

3. Promote Your Launch and Encourage Feedback

This is where a lot of companies start on Twitter, and this is where they fail. A company will register a Twitter account, and within an update or two, they're literally screaming at people to buy their product. Since no one knows who they are, and it's obvious that they've created a Twitter presence just to sell things, they get no takers. But you, having built up a measure of credibility on Twitter, now have an audience of followers who've followed the evolution of your project from drawing board, to coding, to debugging, and now - at long last- to launch day. You may want to consider offering a discount to customers that purchase your software using a link that you post to Twitter, or holding a contest to give a free copy of the app away to your 500th follower. No matter what, it's your launch day and you should have fun with it.

Recruit your Twitter followers to help you spread the word of your launch by re-tweeting your launch announcement, and keep them updated throughout your first few days with tweets reporting how well your sales are progressing. You don't have to divulge specific numbers, but something along the lines of "Incredible first day sales! Thanks to everyone" will be appreciated, and further help to put yourself out there as a real, live person behind the Twitter account. Solicit advice and questions from those who buy your app, and be sure to respond promptly - you can use their suggestions as a starting point for the next version, which will give you even more to tweet about after the launch!

Using these tips, you can continue to accumulate greater numbers of followers, keep your existing customer base updated on your progress, provide immediate customer service, and generate buzz leading up to the release of each new version of your application.

Obstetricians today can monitor critical patients remotely using an iPhone, Blackberry or other portable communication device thanks to a software application developed by locally-based AirStrip Technologies.

The application sends real-time wave-form data and information to these mobile devices, giving the doctors the ability to make vital decisions on patient care without having to stand at the patients bedside.

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We spoke to Josh Fox, marketing professional and founder of MediaCell about an alternative way to make your money from software sales: Ad-supported Software.

1. Tell us about MediaCell and what you do?
Media-Cell matches software publishers and developers with companies looking to distribute their marketing and research applications. This is accomplished via bundling, where the bundled applications are offered during the download/install process. Many factors are taken into account when matching up entities, including but not limited to type of applications offered, geographic distribution and volume of the publisher's download activity. We also act as coaches and consultants, as we have a vested interest in our partners' ongoing success.

2. How does ad-supported software work as a business model?
What's nice is that ad-supported software does not necessarily cannibalize shareware sales. What it does do is virtually guarantee that each download will be worth something. End users who are averse to the idea of ad-supported software may in fact be driven to purchase shareware versions of the software. The publisher can therefore, "Have their cake and eat it too." Another point to note is that software advertised as "FREE" tend to be downloaded several times more often than trial versions, so this should be taken into account as well.

3. What's the bottom line, are people making money with ad-supported software?
YES!

4. Lots of companies are experimenting with bundling software, as an Independent Software Vendor how would I go about doing this?
Provide as much accurate information about download activity as possible before getting started (volume and top 5 countries especially), as well as marketing methods currently employed or planned. A company such as Media-Cell will be able to determine the best fit for the publishers with this data, as well as give free advice for marketing and distribution based on a wealth of experience. We can also provide boilerplate scripts so the bundles can be built and approved quickly.

5. There are several companies who offer toolbars that you can bundle with your software, can you tell us about them and how that works?
I'd prefer not to mention any companies by name, but I can certainly share my general observations. Those who are willing to pay a bounty as opposed to a rev-share tend to be the more robust partners, who are confident in their business model. Rev-share = zero risk, and typically the rewards are far less predictable. Another important thing to take into consideration is that, to my knowledge, any and all of these companies are only going to pay for new installs. So if, for example, XYZ toolbar is already present on the end-user's machine, the publisher will not get credit for a new install. One can read into that what they wish, but those considering working with the widely known and distributed toolbars, etc. might wish to consider bundling applications that aren't as popular (so long as they pay well, of course).

6. How do you see the online software sales landscape changing, especially given the economic crisis?
There has been a steady migration toward the ad-supported freeware model. Many folks just aren't willing or able to pay for software any more unless they absolutely must have it, and publishers who used to be dead-set against this model are coming around to the idea.

7. How does software bundling play into international sales, does it work well in emerging markets?
Publishers in emerging markets have shown by far the most enthusiasm for this model, particularly those with applications that are popular in the countries that pay well, typically US, Canada & EU.

8. Ad-supported software clearly works well for online software as a service, do you see it working inherently better for that model?
I would say yes, but some hardware companies have been getting into a similar model for quite some time now. An example would be new, brand-name PCs being distributed with trial or lite versions of software titles.

9. Some people may view using ads as a turn-off to customers, what rules can you tell us for getting it right?
Be up front with your customers and offer the free, bundled versions alongside the shareware. Also, though many bundled applications are allowed to be required installs, the best advice is to make them optional during the install, keeping in mind that most people will accept and click NEXT anyhow. Choose bundled applications that are easily removed via the add/remove programs menu, and those that follow TRUSTe guidelines are a safe bet. There will always be a certain amount of false-flaggings by some AV software, so it's important to make sure that they are actually false and you aren't distributing nasty applications.

10. Do you see ad-supported sales superseding regular software sales any time soon?
From what many publishers have told me personally, this has already happened. However, this may depend greatly on the type of software being offered.

Josh Fox works for Media-Cell.net. He adds: Please feel free to contact us directly via our website, if you'd like to partner with us.

CTIA, the main industry association for U.S. mobile operators, has put its weight behind an initiative calling for a universal cell-phone charger.

The cost of sending text messages on your mobile phone while abroad in the European Union is about to fall sharply in July, when a new law approved Wednesday comes into effect.Similarly, the price of Internet downloads onto your mobile while you are traveling in the E.U. will drop, and calls made from abroad will be charged per second, rather than per minute. Currently European consumers are paying as up 24 percent too much because their calls are rounded up to the nearest minute, according to the European Commission, the regulatory and executive branch of the E.U.The European Parliament rubber-stamped the update of roaming laws Wednesday at a plenary meeting in Strasbourg.

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Criminals are willing to pay thousands of euros for a discontinued Nokia mobile phone with a software problem that can be exploited to hack into online bank accounts, according to a fraud investigator in the Netherlands.

One evening last winter, Mike Harris was watching his local TV news when he saw a segment that caught his attention: Parents were using software to monitor their kids cell phones.As more kids carry cell phones, some parents are using software to monitor their calls and texts.

Harris, an investigator for the Child Sex Internet Investigations Unit in Jefferson County, Colorado, thought the service could be a new tool for combating sexual predators.

Equipping his phone with the software, Harris posed as an underage child on social-networking sites and began luring pedophiles. He immediately got results. Since then, Harris has made 83 arrests of alleged sexual predators -- 44 of them with the help of the monitoring program.

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Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas says he does not want to change Vermonts laws to lessen the potential penalties for teenagers who use their cell phones to send sexually explicit pictures and messages.

The House is considering a Senate-passed bill that would remove the threat of a child pornography prosecution for a practice called sexting. Other laws with lesser penalties still could apply.
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