Steve Harris writes a great blog post about the value of third-party software distribution. It’s a sad story about hard work, third party promotion, and little monetary reward. The software in discussion is a successful Mac utility called Together. His lack of money quote:

Having gained nothing in material terms, the final argument in favour of massively cheap bundles was that it’s an investment of sorts. While not all users will stick with the application, many will potentially upgrade in the future…

The total made as a result of the bundle deal so far, before fees, is around $1150. One could argue that this is money I wouldn’t have earned otherwise, but it doesn’t exactly cover those two months of work. That time could have been used to produce the 1.3 version (that actually did increase sales) much sooner. This situation also snowballs, because the longer an app does not have a certain feature, the more you hear about it.

His accounting of the promotion is rather matter of fact, and distressing. He participated in a distribution model that promised all his success would be on the come. None came.

He did lose two months. That cost, especially in a product as ephemeral as software, could have been highly significant. If Leopard had been released on schedule, maybe his product would have died. These promising distribution deals can be rationalized as having no cost or no downside, but that is rarely the case.

Bands are relentlessly promotional given a stage for the night and a $220 share of the door. That opportunity, I understand. It even sounds similar to the one offered Steve Harris / Together. What is the self-promotion opportunity for a software developer? I can’t imagine there was one.

What is the downside of a bad night for a band? Not much other than the hangover. Downside for a software product? How about web-savvy angry software users that spam support forums with heinous complaints?

The KIT-Together utility is successful. It’s recent upgrade to the software was well supported by users. Steve notes:

Having put the best part of this year into that version it is a relief that every user I’ve heard from tells me that even if it’s not perfect, it’s a very capable application and a compelling upgrade.

The Utility has been well reviewed.

I would argue that self-promotion, good reviews, and word of mouth are the raw materials of successful promotion. People selling promotion get all of the gravy, usually leaving only table scraps. At least, that is the point I want to make because I see it happen to musicians, writers, artists, etc. far too often.

Thanks to Daring Fireball for citing Steve’s blog post.