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Selling Your Software - 2BrightSparks Interview

The story of a business founded on freeware...
Tuesday 5 December 2006.
 

For 2BrightSparks it all began with one man and a freeware utility. In just three years the business has grown into a successful company with six employees. What’s the secret of their success? Huw Collingbourne tries to find out as he speaks to the man who started it all, Michael J Leaver…

HC: What’s the story behind 2BrightSparks? When, how and why did you create the company?

MJL: Around three years ago (2003) I was working in a software development business that produced resource management software for hospitals and other healthcare providers. Everything was written in Delphi 5 and I’d been using Delphi since version 3. One problem I had was keeping local backups of the source code and other documents. There were freeware backup programs available at the time, and of course you could easily write a batch file and use xcopy; but being a typical developer (i.e. I wanted things done my way) I decided it would only take a few hours to cobble something together, and so wrote the first version of SyncBack.

I made it available on my personal website and was surprised to find out other people thought it was worth using. It remained free but I accepted any and all donations via PayPal. Mike de Sousa, now a director at 2BrightSparks, was the first person to make a donation and we started chatting via email. I soon discovered Mike could do many things developers like myself can’t, e.g. create graphics, design web sites and interfaces, produce help files, etc., so we decided to start 2BrightSparks but still keep everything freeware.

Later I received another donation from Richard Gascoigne, also now a director at 2BrightSparks, who lives just a few minutes walk from me, so we met up, had a beer, and talked about SyncBack. Richard was an experienced businessman who’d worked in many software companies, large and small. It was Richard who convinced Mike and myself to turn it into a real business (December 2004) and produce a version of SyncBack freeware for sale, which is now called SyncBackSE. I quit my job (not an easy decision as I had no other income) and SyncBackSE went on sale in February 2005. We currently have five employees, soon to be six.

HC: Going from marketing a freeware product to running a software company sounds like quite a big step. What motivated you to do that?

MJL: That decision was made for me once SyncBackSE went on sale and immediately began selling. I’m in the lucky position of not having to actually do the day to day management of the company. Most of my time is spent talking to customers and developing software. Richard looks after the things that would put most people off running a company: accounting, payroll, expenses, insurance, etc., and Mike looks after the web-site, non-technical support, graphics, etc. If I had to do all that on my own I wouldn’t run my own company.

HC: I see that you’ve expanded your range of software quite a bit since you started out. Other than SyncBackSE, what other products do you now have?

MJL: Yes, we also sell FindOnClick and UndeleteOnClick. FindOnClick is a file search utility which can get information on every file in seconds. UndeleteOnClick is a file undelete utility that recovers deleted files. We still provide SyncBack freeware for the budget-conscious, but now we also have a range of freeware utilities such as EncryptOnClick (file encryption), DeleteOnClick (secure file deletion), and HashOnClick (for calculating MD5, SHA-1, etc. hash values).

HC: How do you publicise and promote your software?

MJL: We’ve run occasional advertisements in some email newsletters, and like everyone else use Google Adwords, but aside from that we’ve done very little. The majority of our customers heard of us via word of mouth and we often get requests from magazines to publish our software on their CD/DVD.

HC: How important is your web site to your business?

MJL: Our web site is crucial to the success of our business. It helps sell our software by providing the downloads and information for our software, allows users to easily contact us, and supports users of our software with articles, tutorials, e-books and, for our commercial software, a support ticketing system.

HC: Did you hire a specialist web designer to build the site or did you do it all yourself?

MJL: Mike de Sousa designed the graphics and site from the ground up. Mike also used an excellent support php script created by Support Trio to base the support area around. This was found to be the best script from a user perspective, and that’s very important to us. We try hard to make the site very easy to navigate. The user needs to download and find information quickly about our products before buying.

HC: Does the site use static HTML pages or does it use a CMS?

MJL: www.2brightsparks.com has a mixture of static and dynamic web pages. The core pages are created with Dreamweaver MX and a range of graphics programs like Fireworks MX and Photoshop. These present essential information about our software products, downloads, support, and short bios and news about our company. The core pages are delivered in standard HTML with occasional Flash elements that make reviewing documentation simpler for the visitor. The HTML pages provide a rock solid foundation in terms of delivery of the site. The forum and support areas are delivered as php pages and use databases to generate content. Our forum now runs to 12,508 posts, and our support area, which we spend a great deal of our time in updating articles, FAQs etc. currently hosts 278 articles and growing: http://www.2brightsparks.com/help/.

HC: What do you do in order to protect your software from being illegally distributed?

MJL: To use SyncBackSE after the 30-day trial period you must purchase a license which contains a serial number that must be entered into the program. We have a very generous licensing policy for personal use, and we also have SyncBack freeware for people who cannot afford the very low license price. However, even with the low price, and a freeware version, we have continuing problems with software piracy. Some people simply will not pay for software and there’s nothing we can do about that. Some people can afford it, and have the means to pay, but would rather waste their time trying not to pay and put at severe risk the very data they’re trying to safeguard (many of the keygens and "cracks" are actually payloads for spyware).

When our software is purchased you receive a serial number to unlock the program and remove the trial period. For personal use we allow SyncBackSE to be installed on up to five computers/devices that the customer personally owns. For business use one license is required per installation. Aside from the serial number we perform no other compliance checks. We could lock the serial number to the hardware configuration, or check to see if any other computers on the LAN are using the same serial number, but I personally believe it would cause more problems than it would solve. This is an issue that all software companies face and is something we’ve discussed at 2BrightSparks at great length.

HC: Your products are all fairly low cost. That suggests you need to sell in substantial quantities. I admit that I’m surprised that you can achieve sales in sufficient numbers. What’s the secret?

MJL: Our secret is very simple: we listen to our customers. I know everyone says that but we really do. Just go to our public forum and take a look. Every feature we add to our software is one that was recommended by a customer or potential customer. People can contact us via contact forms on the site, our technical support pages, or the public forum. When uninstalling the software they also have an opportunity to tell us why they decided not to use our software. We’re always listening. Sales have always been high enough (since day one) that we’ve been in the lucky situation of never having to look for financing.

HC: I see you sell through eSellerate.net. Why did you decide to use that company rather than doing it yourself (with a hosted eCommerce package)?

MJL: Being a software company, and to reduce costs, one thing we always look to do is automate. By using eSellerate our sales process is fully automated from end to end. For liability reasons we also don’t want access to credit card details. They also take care of other things like mailing CDs, fraud detection, customer support with payment issues, etc. We’ve used eSellerate since day one and I recommend them highly.

HC: I’ve looked at the charges of eSellerate and they seem higher than some competitors (e. g. ShareIt). Are their costs really justified?

MJL: We believe the service they provide justifies the cost. Whenever we, or any of our customers, have any problems they handle it quickly and without fuss. As well, their reporting is excellent, and they provide value-added marketing services. We have analyzed what we would have to spend to do the same things directly, and eSellerate represents a savings compared to that - not to mention the hassle.

HC: Finally, if you were starting the business all over again, what would you do differently?

MJL: Absolutely nothing. I’ve been extremely lucky to meet the right people at the right time.

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