Hi,
Welcome to the August issue of Software Marketing News, an independent voice for software developers. An HTML version can be viewed at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/author-resource-newsletter58.html .

This issue is slightly shorter than normal and will be followed by the special SIC Issue next week. If for some reason you do not wish to receive the extra conference issue please just drop me an email.

A New Group for Independent Software Professionals
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In June, a new group was launched for people in software and shareware: the Association of Independent Software Industry Professionals, or AISIP.   AISIP is open to anyone in the independent software industry, from newbies to old hands, from authors to vendors. It is a calm place where people can gather, learn, and share information about the independent software industry

Members also receive discounts of 15% - 100% on various software products, can use a nice "AISIP" logo to put on their website, and have the opportunity to interact with other independent software industry professionals from across the globe.   The best part of AISIP are the private newsgroups and web forums where members can ask questions, get answers, share information, and find out what others are doing in the independent software industry. The attitude in the newsgroups/forums is consistently positive and professional. The newsgroups are private and password-protected, and they are fiercely (but politely) post-moderated to keep them clean and on-track. There are no anonymous posts, either.

These newsgroups are like a breath of fresh air.   The cost to join AISIP is only $24/year (that works out to just $2/month!). If you don't get your money's worth in the first month, you can ask for a full refund and it will be given within a day. But it is unlikely you will need a refund - this is a worthwhile new group, and the newsgroups/web forums are an ongoing source of valuable, timely information for the independent software industry professional. Join now - http://www.aisip.com  

Google & RSS
Robin Good, who is pretty web savvy dished out some advice about Google's new feature that makes it possible to add RSS feeds to a personalized Google home page. While Google got slammed from other industry professionals for being slow to implement RSS Robin points out that Google's implementation makes it possible for them to capture, index and track each of those RSS feeds. So essentially in one shot Google opens up officially to full RSS adoption and use, launches an online RSS aggregator that is easy and functional to use and opens up the door for RSS feed submissions directly to its indexes.

The bottom line submit *your* feeds to the personalized Google page. It *could* be a back door into Google.

Google Banning Directories?
There have been rumors on the Webmaster World Board that Google is revising the way that it treats topic specific directories. Personally, I don't think this is a good idea, the niche portals are valuable and contain related information in an easy to navigate location. Does these mean SMR will be banned or directories like: Digital Photo Tips http://www.digital-photo-tips.com/ or http://www.web-search-engines.net will be banned?

Technology Preview
FeedForDev
Consider signing up to beta FeedForDev, a new tool for Software developers that allow authors to actively communicate with their users, from within their software, using RSS! A beta release is imminent sign-up to receive notification.
http://www.feedfordev.com

Technology Review
I have been playing with lots of tools from partners lately and will be reporting more about them each month.

ClipMate
I've known Chris Thornton (Thornsoft Development) for years, but have only recently downloaded ClipMate. Chris is one of those guys who always provides spot-on advice in the industry forums, so I expected ClipMate to be a robust application, but it out-performed even my high expectations. The first tests were to port content from one feed to another. For some reason the standard windows clipboard gets gummed up when I try to do this. In any event, every day I find more uses for ClipMate including macro email or forum responses and signatures. The bottom line is, if you ever use the Windows clipboard, get ClipMate, it will save you time and increase your productivity.
http://www.clipmate.com

Article(s)
Short Term vs Long Term Marketing Efforts
In order to create consistent sales cycles and a positive growth trend, businesses usually engage in both short and long term marketing efforts.
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/article67.html

11 Clients You Need to Fire
I stumbled across this article, and thought that a bit of it rang true. There is something called quality of life ;-) In any event I don't know the author but he apparently knew some of our old customers.
http://www.christopherhawkins.com/06-13-2005.htm

Tips
Optimizing for Search Engine
114 tips for webmasters looking to increase organic search rank. The site isn't terribly attractive but the advice and tips is generally spot on http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

Map Comparison
This site has a very cool comparison of Virtual Earth to Google Maps
http://www.jonasson.org/maps/

Awards
SoftSummit 2005 marks the debut of the annual Summit AwardsT honoring leaders that are setting new standards in maximizing the lifetime value of their software by implementing high level, customer-centric software value management strategies in software pricing, purchasing and management.
http://www.softsummit.com/awards/entry/index.html

Entrepreneur of the Year
Could you be the next Inc. Entrepreneur of the Year? Inc. magazine is looking for its next Entrepreneur of the Year. Do you or an entrepreneur you know, have what it takes to be Inc.'s next honoree?
http://www.inc.com/entrepreneur/
http://www.inc.com/entrepreneur/instructions.html

CopyScape
Copyscape has moved to amortize their technology. Copysentry is the professional version of the free Copyscape service, which provides a one-time search for copies of your web page. Copyscape is a great tool for quickly checking if your site has been copied. The new Copysentry alerting service protects you by monitoring the Internet for plagiarized copies of your online content. Copysentry searches the web regularly for copies of the text on your pages and informs you by email as soon as they appear. Copysentry's powerful technology even locates copies that contain only part of your page, as well as copies that have been modified from their original form.
More information on CopyScape and CopySentry http://www.copyscape.com

Conferences
European Shareware Conference
The 5th annual European ShareWare Conference Opening doors across Cyberspace will take place on the 5th and 6th of November 2005 in Brussels, Belgium .
http://www.euroconference.org/

SWRUS-Kiev 2005 Conference
Kiev developers are planning some great events in a conference adjacent to ISDEF. The planning appears to be "set" for westerners, you need only to show up.
http://swrus-kiev.com/

ISDEF
Registration for ISDEF's fourth international conference, ISDEF 2005, is now open. Software company development will be one of the central themes of this year's conference. The Independent Software Developers Forum (ISDEF) announces the start of registration for participants in the fourth international conference ISDEF 2005, which will take place at the Holiday Inn Hotel just outside Moscow (on Vinagradovo Prospect, 4 km from the Moscow Ring Road along the Dmitrovsky highway) from October 13 to October 16, 2005. The ISDEF international conference is a significant event not only for the Russian market, but for the international IT market as well.

Every year the ISDEF conference is attracting more and more visitors from throughout the world. Nearly 500 people attended last year's ISDEF 2004; their numbers included not only developers and software manufacturers, but also journalists, major software distributors and publishers, representatives of investment and legal firms, and government organizations and financing bodies.
http://www.isdef.org

Austin Game Developer's Conference
The third annual Austin Game Conference is a two-day event will be held October 27-28, 2005 in Austin Texas. The Austin Game Conference, is the definitive conference for networked game development, including massively multiplayer online games, mobile and wireless games and devices, and online PC and console games.
http://www.gameconference.com/

SoftSummit
Over 700 executives from leading software publishers and purchasing companies, as well as key industry press and analysts, are expected to gather at SoftSummit 2005 to discuss key trends and best practices in software pricing, purchasing and licensing. The conference will be held
October 10-11, 2005 Westin Hotel, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.softsummit.com/

Software Business 2005
Software Business 2005 has been the premier software industry event for the past four years. C-level executives from top software companies and the hottest startups will come together in Tampa on November 1-2. http://www.softwarebusinessonline.com/sb_conf2005_registration.htm

Search Engines
Google
Click Defense(CD), a Colorado based Click Fraud Tool seller has sued Google for click fraud loss amounting to $5 million!

Google AdWords has gone through some significant changes. Login to your account to see how these new changes have effected your ranking.
Google did provide the following ad optimization tips: https://adwords.google.com/select/tips.html?hl=en

Kanoodle - Kanoodle is implementing bid management. You can set your max bid for each listing individually, or you may set one overall max bid that will apply to all your listings. As circumstances change - perhaps a new advertiser enters the mix, or a competitor lowers a bid - Kanoodle will automatically adjust your bid in real time, raising or lowering it by one penny at a time.

Ask - Rumors are out that Ask is implementing a pay for traffic scheme. Stay tuned!

Holidays?
Thinking about Christmas? Holidays Sales? Promotion and ad planning for the holidays? You should be!

Software marketing resource is an independent voice for developers. We welcome any suggestions and feedback on our articles and information

Thank you for your continued interest in SMR.
Sharon Housley
Software Marketing Resource - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
FeedForAll - http://www.feedforall.com
NotePage, Inc. - http://www.notepage.net