10 Sure Tips to Selling Softwares Online
The Software industry is one of the biggest globally. It is estimated that the software market would be worth USD 650 billion by 2023. Clearly, you could potentially make a lot of money in the software industry.But you don’t have to be a tech genius or a software programmer to make a lot of money with software. You can just retail software. There are already many companies who instead of programming their own software, just retail them instead.
For example, there are the Apple and Android stores for software apps and Steam for game apps and software.
These companies make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars just retailing software. So, as said, there’s good money to be made from softwares.
But there’s one big issue you need to know before selling softwares: you have a lot of competition, It is estimated that there are already 7.5 million online sellers of software.
Here are some tips to increase your chances of success in this business:
Table of Contents:
Advantage of Selling Your Softwares Online
Software Selling Tips:
1. Plan Your Online Software Business2. Do Quality Control
3. Upload Your Softwares On Multiple Platforms
4. Offer Free Trials
5. Offer Money-Back Guarantees
6. Write Documentations
7. Utilize Feedbacks
8. Provide Sales and Customer Support
9. Market Your Software Business
10. Offer Freebies
Final Words
The Details:
Advantage of Selling Your Softwares Online
Before we start, there is a good reason why you should only consider selling softwares online versus any other means, for example via portable storage mediums like CDs and DVDs:
1. Simplicity: Unlike selling softwares packaged in physical medium, selling software online doesn’t require a brick-and-mortar store and/or warehouse, doesn’t need inventory, and also doesn’t need physical delivery. Software is stored, sold and delivered purely online.
2. Global Reach: When you sell software online, your software products can be seen by anyone who have access to the internet. This means that unlike a physical store where your market is restricted only to a certain territory, your online store has global reach.
3. Cheap Cost: Selling softwares online is very cheap. You usually just need an online presence and you can already sell and deliver software. This is unlike a physical store where you have to pay store rent, salaries, office furnishings & supplies, and so on.
4. Speed of Execution: With an online software store, delivering your softwares to your buyers could be as easy as pressing a button in your keyboard.
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1. Plan Your Online Software Business
1.1 Research What’s Selling: Your main reason for selling softwares online is to make money. To make money, you need to know what software products your potential customers are willing to pay to have.
You can use Google Trends and free and/or paid online industry studies and reports to know what softwares people are buying in large numbers.
1.2 Study Your Competitors: Softwares that sell in large numbers attract a lot of sellers. If you are just starting out, it pays to study the business tactics of the best software sellers, so you can adapt their winning tactics on your business.
1.3 Identify Your Target Customers: No matter how large is the software market, you cannot possibly hope to sell to all software buyers. You should select your target market so you can efficiently concentrate your limited capital, time and resources.
1.4 Don’t Niche Down: Contrary to what many so-called experts advise, you shouldn’t select a niche for your software business. As the Apple and Android Store has proven, being a general software marketplace is your best chance to earn a lot of money from softwares.
1.5 Test Your Software Business First: Don’t initially commit a lot of capital, time and other resources in your online software business. Test first if you have the right setup for your software business.
Only after you have tested that your software business can survive and even succeed, should you allocate more resources to it.
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2. Do Quality Control
Software products are notoriously complex to create. It usually takes a long time to create one, usually taking between a few months to a few years to complete.
It is not unusual for softwares to have “bugs” in them, or software errors. These software bugs are very hard to detect that often, they are only discovered after the software has been in use for quite a long time.
Your software bugs might be the result of an honest mistake or some other reason, but whatever the reasons are, your customers expect to buy a bug free software. You have no acceptable reason to sell a software that has bugs.
The more bugs your software contain, the more is the likelihood that your customers would reject your software products. So, quality control must be a priority of yours.
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3. Upload Your Softwares On Multiple Platforms
You should upload or make available your software products to as many online software marketplaces as possible.
In fact, many search engines have a ready list in their search results for online marketplaces where you can sell your software products.
For example, simply using the keywords: “best places to sell software” in Google Search would bring out a curated list of online software marketplaces.
But you can also sell your software products on your own online platform, like your own website or blog.
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4. Offer Free Trials
These days, competition in all types of industries is so intense that in order to attract customers, you need to offer something that your competition does not.
For example, many software sellers offer free trials. As an example, let’s use Canva which is essentially an online design tool software.
You can use Canva for free, but if you want to use the premium features of Canva, then you have to pay their subscription fee. This is called the “freemium” model.
But you don’t have to follow this popular sales model. You can just set a limited time trial for your software products.
For example, you can let your potential buyer use your software product for 30 days, after which, your software product would stop working unless your potential buyer buys it.
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5. Offer Money-Back Guarantees
The reverse of free trials are money-back guarantees. In this sales strategy you persuade your customers to buy your software products outright with the promise that if they’re not satisfied with your software products, they can have their money back.
But you should also not let your customers abuse your sales promo. You should set limits on just how much time you’re willing to allow your customers to return your software products.
For example, a 30 day money-back guarantee is not unusual for software companies to offer to their potential customers.
Make sure that your software products have a deactivation feature which would deactivate your software product once you have returned your customer’s money, should they decide to return your software product.
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6. Write Documentations
Make sure that your customers and potential customers are well informed regarding your software products.
You should prepare documentations which explains the features and how to use your software products.
These documentations not only serve as your marketing materials, but also as customer service materials. For example, instead of contacting you personally, your customers can just refer to your documentations if they want to learn how to use your software products.
This saves you time from having to constantly interact with your customers even though you’ve made the sale already. You can create written, audio, and/or video documentations and upload them online.
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7. Utilize Feedbacks
Don’t think that the usefulness of your customers end once they’ve bought your software products.
For one, a customer can become a repeat customer and buy more software products from you.
But there is another way that your customers and other people using your software products can be useful to you: they can help spread the word that your software products should be bought.
Make sure to remind your software buyers to leave a positive feedback online for other people to read. Your buyers are a sort of free marketing agents who can work in your favor.
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8. Provide Sales and Customer Support
Not many potential customers will buy your software product outright. Often, they would have questions regarding your software products and would desire to contact you.
But often, many companies and not just software companies are guilty of not being available for their customers during the time they actually need them.
For most potential customers, this could be a dealbreaker, resulting in the loss of a potential sale.
The same goes for being able to provide customer support. If your offer lousy customer support, your customer would not become a repeat customer and might even spread the word that your software business is no good at all.
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9. Market Your Software Business
You can’t grow your online software business unless you do marketing for it. Marketing is what tells potential customers that you are selling software products. Here are some types of online marketing that you can do:
9.1 Content Marketing: You could market your software products in your blog or website. You can also market your software products through social media, podcasts, videos, and so on.
9.2 Email Marketing: It takes a while to build an email list, but once you’ve built one, your email list is yours and yours alone. You can tap this list repeatedly as well. If you’re selling something online, you definitely should create an email list.
9.3 PPC or Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Although it costs money to implement, PPC can offer you instant results. This is because your ads are placed by search engines directly on relevant user enquiries.
You can drive traffic straight to your platform and even steal eyeballs from your competitors. Also, your competitors might also be paying for PPC as well. So, you should do it as well.
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10. Offer Freebies
This is already standard practice for many sellers offering digital products online which includes softwares.
For example, many ebook and audiobook sellers give away a part of their ebook and/or audiobook catalog just to give their potential customers a “taste” of their digital products.
For a software example, let’s say you’re selling accounting softwares, you may want to giveaway your invoicing software for free, which is a small part of your accounting software package.
I think you can see the logic here. Once they got a taste for it, your customer will end up wanting more than just your free invoicing software to process their accounting needs and would likely buy your complete accounting software product line after a time.
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Final Words
The software industry is a huge industry, though only a few decades old, it has surpassed many other traditional industries in terms of earnings.
This is why many companies and individuals have entered the software industry, of which many don’t make any money at all from their software products.
So don’t think that selling software is a “get rich quick scheme”. It takes a lot of planning, hard work, and most of all, luck, to succeed in the software selling industry.
The tips discussed in this article are tried and true tips applied in many retail products and not just softwares. Following the tips discussed in this article would increase your chances of succeeding in the online software selling business.
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