If you are like me, you subscribe to several mailing lists created by other Internet marketers. And if you are like me, you’ve received more than one email today about how, for $297, you can start your own instant software business.
Not so fast! It’s not just a matter of buying a package like this, changing around the sales letter and grabbing some $27 graphics, then sitting back and waiting for the checks to flow in:
- Support. What are you going to do when people can’t get the software to work? What are you going to do when you discover that no two customers have the same computer setup?
- Support. What’s going to happen when some basic functionality doesn’t work? What’s going to happen when some hacker figures out a way to exploit a vulnerability in the software and your customers demand a fix yesterday?
- Support. What is your course of action when customers are disappointed because the functionality described in the “post it and forget it” sales letter –which was written by a copywriting shark — doesn’t quite match up to the hype?
- Support. What are you going to do when customers demand that you fix it or refund their money?
- Support. I think you get the idea…
There’s more to software than just selling it and cashing the checks. Think this through before you decide to become a seller of software. I’m sitting on a lot of software that I could sell simply because I don’t want the support hassles. And don’t expect the person that sold you the software to fully support YOU as you support your customers. They might, but past experience has painfully taught me that most software sellers vastly underestimate the need for customer support and abandon their software right about the time that you most need the help.
Oh, and one last thing: The sales letter for the product has pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Michael Dell on it. Bill Gates, of course, is famous for Microsoft software. Larry Ellison is the man behind Oracle database software. But Michael Dell? Dell computers. Hardware. Not software.
Oops. Got that one wrong, guys… 
