February 2003

Hi ,
Welcome to February's Software Marketing News. Additional marketing news can be found online at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com

SIC
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Registration is now open for the 2003 Shareware Industry Conference scheduled for July 17-19, in Rochester, NY. This year regular conference registration is $129.00 US. Early registration, which is open until April 1st, 2003, is $99.00 US. If you register at the conference, the price is $149.00 US.Conference registration includes admittance to all conference activities including educational sessions and evening receptions.

At the same time you can also sign up for The Educational Software Cooperative luncheon which is $17.00 US as well as the Association of Shareware Professionals luncheon which is $20.00 US. These are open to the public and you need not be a member to participate. T

he Shareware Industry Awards banquet, which is on Saturday night, will be $35.00 US. The banquet menu is a four course meal of soup, salad, main entree and dessert. You can choose from a beef, chicken, or vegetarian entree.

more info - http://www.sic.org

KEEP PASSWORDS SAFE
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Many sites allow you to have your login/password stored in urls (so you don't have to type it each time) if the site you are on times out, you may be left with the url in your browsers memory, which means that the url may show up as a referer in the next site's logs! If your session expires be sure to close your browser before you continue surfing.

KEYWORDS IN BROWSERS
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IGN is billed as the new "RealNames" replacement. The big difference is that IGN requires a browser plug-in, the number of people using the plugins is debatable. IGN claims to have over ten million users/day with over 100,000 downloads of the software every day, this figure is disputed by other sources. With single word phrases selling for $ 5,000.00 advertisers are eager to confirm those numbers. How or where this plug-in is downloaded is unclear.

RealNames had a contract to resolve keywords in the IE browser. When the deal with Microsoft fell apart the RealNames contract was terminated.

The concept behind IGN's technology is similar to RealNames but will have less penetration because of the required plug-in. Netscape has a similar program but with a much smaller market more info on IGN

NEW AFFILIATE RESOURCE
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Controversy appears to have spawned a new resource for affiliates. The popular affiliate boards abestweb.com recent controversial discussions regarding Gator type services, as a result a new message board has been created.

Affiliate Boards - http://www.affiliateboards.com

SUMMITS
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RegNow has planned a series of summits, there are going to be 2 kinds of summits. The first is a day long event hosted by RegNow, RegSoft, DigiBuy, and Simtel.net. The second are 3-4 hour round table discussion over food. The creation of this knowledge based event, breeds new ideas for your business. Discussions about industry practices are important to expanding your marketing processes.

Expect to participate in the roundtable discussions allowing you to share and receive insight and learn about obstacles to avoid when implementing new processes. March 1st 2003 in Houston, Texas is the first stop! You can register now at http://www.regnow.com/summit.html registration. If you can't make this one don't worry, there are a number of cities where Digital River will be hosting Roundtables.

Please direct any questions regarding the roundtables/summits to Jessica Dewell

SCHMOOZE
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The 2003 Spring Schmooze will be a semiannual gathering supports having fun, networking, and sharing knowledge. Amidst the 'shop talk' groups form each day during breakfast that make plans to explore and conquer Vancouver's sites and hot spots!

Digital River will host a round table discussion to kick off the weekend. Over food and drink, we will discuss many industry topics that include: § Where to find new traffic?
§ How to monatize current traffic better?
§ How to maximize benefits of an affiliate program?
§ What's the future of download sites? .and much more!

The weekend event starts the evening of March 27, 2003. The Granville Island Hotel serves as the home base, and group discount rates are guaranteed until Feb 28, 2003. To attend, the registration fee is $25 [this covers snacks and a T-shirt] per individual. To sponsor the event, the registration becomes $75 [includes a banner on the Schmooze site and company name on the T-shirt] For Schmooze details about the hotel, registration, etc. please visit http://www.regnow.com/schmooze/vancoverschmooze.html for more detailed information.

OVERTURE
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Freeserve, the UK's #1 ISP and portal, has renewed its multi-year agreement with Overture UK as the exclusive provider of paid search listings.

Overture UK in expanding their affiliate partners, reaching a wider audience. In order to do this Overture UK is instituting a price increase, raising the minimum bid from £0.05 to £0.10, beginning 6th February 2003. The new minimum will be instituted if any changes are made to the bid price. All new bid minimums will be at £0.10.

AFFILIATE OPPORTUNITIES
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NotePage now has an affiliate program for their popular SMS and text messaging software! Details can be found at http://www.emspagingsoftware.com/affiliates.htm if you have a download site or complimentary product and are interested in promoting NotePage's software be sure to check it out, it has a great conversion rate and has potential to be a great earner for aggressive affiliates!

BUNDLE PARTNER OPPORTUNITIES
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Each month I'll be including blurbs about developers looking for potential partners from Software Bundles feel free to contact the developers directly if you are interested in pursuing a relationship.

Atmorex Fluids - http://www.atmorex.com - Atmorex is looking for a partner who interested in distributing bundles of plug-ins, filters and effects for Adobe products: Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, etc. contact atmorex@atmorex.com if you have an interest.

Hotbid - http://www.profit-ware.com - ProfitWare is looking for someone who sells ebooks geared toward online auction sales or auction listing and managing software contact stephanmiller@profit-ware.com for details.

CTube!, LiveWire! Broadcast, IM Speak! - http://www.eastbaytech.com EastbayTech is looking for complementary products for cross-promotion like bandwidth optimizers, audio or video players, others contact sales@eastbaytech.com for details.

SOFTWARE BUSINESS
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After a very successful conference in 2002, Software Business 2003 in Boston will bring the software industries' leaders together for over 40 sessions on the strategic, financial and technology issues of today. Speaking abstracts are being taken until February 20.

NEW SUGGESTED SITES
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Tech Support Supply - http://www.tech-support-central.com
Voicemail Software - http://www.voicemail-software.com

Thank you for your continued interest in softwaremarketingresource.com
Sharon Housley
Software Marketing Resource - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
NotePage, Inc. - http://www.notepage.net
Trusted Messaging - http://www.trusted-messaging.com
Monitoring-Software - http://www.monitoring-software.net
Messaging-Software - http://www.messaging-software.com
Instant Messaging Software - http://www.instant-messaging-software.com