mISV and ComponentSource distribution chanel

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Permalink Reply by Neil Davidson on November 10, 2008 at 10:10am

We've never had much luck with any reseller. In theory, their 20% - 40% cut should inspire them to sell your software to their customers, but in reality all that happens is they take sales you would have made anyway off you.

I wouldn't bother.

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Permalink Reply by Rachel Clements on November 11, 2008 at 12:44pm

Hi Elian and Neil,

Elian - a good question, one we've pondered occasionally but never followed up on.

Neil - for an ISV still getting off the ground, do you think there's any mileage in going with a big distributor such as ComponentSource, for creating exposure to potential customers?

Thanks,

Rachel

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Permalink Reply by Neil Davidson on November 11, 2008 at 1:02pm

Rachel,

In theory, if you don't have any way of taking sales or getting your product in front of customers, then yes. In practice, I'd say no.

If you're a fledgling ISV then you have very finite time and resources, and I think you should spend them more fruitfully.

- Neil

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Permalink Reply by Rachel Clements on November 11, 2008 at 1:30pm

Thanks for the swift reply Neil!

Yes, finite time and resources indeed :)

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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on November 11, 2008 at 1:40pm

Neil Davidson said:

We've never had much luck with any reseller. In theory, their 20% - 40% cut should inspire them to sell your software to their customers, but in reality all that happens is they take sales you would have made anyway off you.

I wouldn't bother.

As a reseller I feel I have to comment :-)

A good reseller can help with many things:

- Helping get your product right for their market
- Making more people aware of your product
- Acting as a sounding board outside the organisation
- Helping you find other partners, making introductions etc.

Aside from their commission on sales resellers will want you to make a commitment to them and this is where I see many microISVs fall down. The reseller has to see that your software meets a market need, that it has been professionally produced, will be professionally supported and that you have put thought and effort into how it should be marketed. They'll also want you to listen to them and act when they tell you you've got something (badly) wrong.

I know that reselling isn't for everyone but one final word of caution, I worked for a company many years ago that was told by investors it would be worth more if it had an international network of resellers rather than its international network of offices. The offices were seen as liabilities and the fact that no reseller or other partner had taken the product on successfully was an additional red flag. YMMV

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Permalink Reply by Ken Hughes on November 14, 2008 at 3:08pm

Some interesting comments here...

the question is "What will ComponentSource do for you that you cannot do yourself?"

Take sales / payment
If you do not have a similar service in place then this might be of use. If you are already using your own online payment (multi currency) or have this service from someone else, then it's no value to you.

List you product on their website
If you believe that developers all immediately go to www.componentsource.com to look for the tools/libraries they need, then this might be of use.
Also, if your SEO is so poor you cannot find your own product in the first page of google or live.com results when searching for typical terms then it might be of use.

I don't really see that they do much else ??...


.. KJ

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Permalink Reply by Eduardo Cruz on November 23, 2008 at 1:04pm

Nice feedbacks. We are going in to this kind of online marketplace. Our guess is that in our system, the developers will have a place to look for options and have feedback from other developers about the components they want to acquire. That would be more powerful then reading the creator of the component saying it is good.

It is called Enterprise-Components.com and it will be all free.

http://www.enterprise-components.com

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Permalink Reply by mark stephens on December 4, 2008 at 8:45am

We were contacted by a reseller last week. They were aggressive, threatening and rude so we contacted the customer - who had previously contacted us directly - and said we would be happy to sell to them directly but not via these people. The customer was horrified by what was being said on their behalf...

The sale was put through way faster as it was direct. Our experiences of resellers have been entirely negative and we do not feel we have lost any customer sales, just wasted time with these third parties.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on December 4, 2008 at 12:06pm

mark stephens said:

We were contacted by a reseller last week. They were aggressive, threatening and rude

Mark,

Of course this isn't a universal experience.

Can I ask how you went about finding the reseller? Did you approach them or did they approach you? And how many other products were they handling in addition to yours?

Mark

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Permalink Reply by Mark Dalgarno on December 4, 2008 at 3:19pm

Elian Chrebor said:

Hi Mark - I think that we can consider at least 2 categories of resellers.
The first one is the one I was talking about, they have 100s (and sometimes 1,000s) of products in their catalogs and make the biggest part of their revenues by selling ads to the ISVs.
The 2nd one is working with a few products/ISV only and are very specialized (architecture, e-learning, etc...) They really believe in the products they resell and can be considered like a partner. They're often able to provide value-added services: customization of the softwares, configuration, support, etc...
I strongly think these 2 categories only have the word "reseller" in common.
My 2 cents

Hi Elian,

Yes I agree and that is partly what I was driving at in my earlier posts.

Mark

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