Find the “bleeding neck” and charge money from day one, says TweetCaddy founder

In this day and age of free and freemium apps, the idea of charging money for software may be viewed as a bad thing. But this may not be true for all apps and niches, especially if you are able to address your market’s “bleeding necks” better with paid software.

This is a realization that has come to Jed Tiotuico, founder and developer of TweetCaddy. He maps out the app’s journey from being a side project to a revenue-earner and gives developers a few tips on how to market their apps.

TweetCaddy is a web application that manages the posting of Twitter messages, which Jed believes will help marketers reach their audience better. The service lets users schedule tweets and automates responses and messages.

TweetCaddy used to be a freemium app, which offered a basic version, plus premium features to paying users. Since August this year, though, the app switched to the paid model, and switched to a free two-week trial in lieu of the freemium approach. Since that time, Jed shares that he had been nervous that the business model may not be working at all. But getting notified of his first-ever premium buyer was an exciting proposition. “[J]ust one paying customer” was all it took for the entire effort to be a rewarding experience.

In gist, Jed advises to “find a market that has a bleeding neck. You would then develop a solution to their bleeding necks and charge money from day one.”

Here are a few tips from Jed’s side that developers may find useful.

• Market-first approach. Jed advises to find a market with a “bleeding neck.” This essentially means going for that itch that needs scratching, or where the demand is. But be wary of developing for an audience that is not likely to pay. For example, Jed highlights how targeting fellow app developers might not be too profitable, given that developers like going for free software. But targeting real estate agents might give you better value, since they are likely to pay for apps that could help them sell more properties in return.
• Design is marketing. When you’re in the business of web applications — and even mobile apps, for that matter — how you present your app to your customers can make or break the deal.
• Take time to learn. Marketing a product may not exactly come as first nature to many developers. And so Jed advises to take time to learn the ropes of marketing, whether this be through search optimization, social networks, or other means.
• Block the naysayers. There is such a thing as constructive criticism. But sometimes people will just outright discourage you with words like “competition is too high” and “there’s already [insert name of app here] and it’s free.” Jed highlights that the real failure is in not trying again and again until you achieve success. “To succeed, we need usually need to create bad products first. And by learning from those bad products we can then make great ones.”
• Branding is important. TweetCaddy was initially called “Twitter Dealer” but a friend advised Jed that it sounded greedy. To me, using the term “dealer” made it sound related to gambling.
• Invest in good hosting. With the popularity of hosting and cloud computing services out there, developers do have a choice. You should not have to get stuck with shared hosting plans that bog down the instant your traffic spikes or your service gets traction.

“I learned that charging money from customers is okay,” writes Jed. He points out, quite correctly, that app development takes time and effort. And not all software developers have the resources of behemoths like Google, Facebook and other such companies behind them. For independent developers, it’s easy to go bust if your revenues from ads or premium sales are not enough to get you past break even. Not everyone wants to accept angel or venture funding, after all.

In my opinion, though, this will depend on your market. If you are developing a consumer-oriented application, then offering free, ad-supported versions, or freemium variants might be the better option. Game developers like Rovio learned this early on, when free versions of their already-popular Angry Birds catapulted them to even bigger Internet fame. But if your primary target are the enterprise users, marketers and professionals, then it might make sense to focus on paid apps.

Of course, there’s a difference between charging $0.99 and 10 bucks. If you’re only charging a dollar a pop, as with most paid apps on the iTunes app store or Google Play market, then the barrier to entry is lower. But “free” gets your foot into the front door more easily, which could pave the way for bigger revenues from premium items and ads.

It’s an entrepreneur’s dilemma, after all — to balance between gaining traction from free offerings and deriving value from one’s enterprise by charging your customers.

As a conclusion, Jed admits that TweetCaddy still has not gained traction with its target audience, although he is proud to say it is easier to use and has better features than the likes of HootSuite and TweetDeck (both of which, incidentally, offer free versions). For Jed Tiotuico and TweetCaddy, it’s a continuing journey in addressing the proverbial bleeding neck problem.

Featured image credits: App developers / Shutterstock