My Bits du Jour Experience
My Bits du Jour Experience
I mentioned some of this in my comments to last week’s post, but I wanted to provide more details. Maybe my experience will help other software developers make the most of being featured on Bits du Jour.
First, my results from The Journal being featured on Bits du Jour:
- Sales volume – ~8X normal
- Revenue volume – ~5X normal
I have only very limited information to compare against, so I’m not sure how typical those results are. So I don’t know if the results are high or low or even average. Regardless, I was pleased. And I figure that’s what matters. 
Obviously, the whole point of a sale is to increase sales volume and (hopefully) make up the discount in total revenue.
At first, when I was preparing for the sale, I was somewhat unenthusiastic. My only other experience with a sale had taught me a Very Valuable Lesson:
Never offer a discount to someone who is willing to pay full price.
So I hadn’t run a sale on The Journal since 2003. Over 5 years.
But then I realized: Bits du Jour’s readers aren’t my customers.
OK, sure. Some of them are. But the vast majority had never heard of The Journal.
And that’s when I realized the Big Opportunity Bits du Jour offers: Exposure. Lots of exposure.
So here’s what I did to maximize that exposure to new users, while simultaneously reducing the risk of offering a deep discount to people who weren’t price sensitive in the first place:
- I decided that I would offer (as Bits du Jour recommends) a 50% discount. Due to the vagaries of decimal mathematics and my love of prices ending in .95, it was actually a 51% discount, but let’s not be too fussy. The idea was offer enough of a discount to draw attention and to push the price down to “impulse item” range.
- I decided that the discount would be cash off the base edition of The Journal (normally $39.95) instead of a percentage off. I seem to recall that BdJ might have recommended that, but I went with it for my own reasons. Specifically, I would still be offering the various add-ons for The Journal (like Hamumu’s Prose Challenges). Those are $10 a pop, which puts them into the “impulse item” range already. I saw no need to reduce their price. (On the other hand, I didn’t sell a lot of add-ons that day. Maybe I should’ve done an all-over sale, after all.)
- The first place I promoted the sale was on The Journal’s “Discounts Available” page. I posted word of the sale there 4 days before the sale. My reasoning was that people who are interested in a discount should be told. (This was the only place on The Journal’s actual Web page that I posted any information about the sale.)
- Then I realized that besides the opportunity to promote The Journal to people who might not otherwise be interested in personal journal software, I had another big opportunity: Current users of The Journal might want to buy cheap copies for their friends and family. So 2 days before the sale I posted information to The Journal’s user discussion email list.
- On the same day, I posted information about the sale to this blog and to Guns & Magic, my writing blog. I usually don’t explicitly promote The Journal to either place (I prefer to keep my ads passive), but this was a special occasion. And maybe some of my readers, who I don’t usually think of as my customers, might be interested because of the sale price.
- My wife got in on the act too, and posted information about the sale to a local homeschooler’s emailing list she is part of. Again, not something we would normally do. But this was special.
- Finally, I sent out The Journal’s newsletter the day before the sale, with the necessary links (and encouragement).
Maybe not a “marketing blitzkrieg”, but not slacking off either.
If I had it to do over, there is one other thing I would do: I would have posted the sale information on The Journal’s front page the day of the sale.
One last word: A lot of my ideas were sparked by BdJ’s own tips. So definitely read their suggestions, as well.
-David
David, Nico here from Bits Du Jour. You certainly took all of our advice to heart. This goes to show that a few quick emails and posts on the part of the vendor really help give your sales an extra little boost!
Looks like you’ve done everything right, and we’d like to have you back again. We’ll be creating even more tools for vendors to help out in the promotion, like time sensitive ads for your website.
Hi David, sounds like the sale was good for business. I’d be curious how sales are for the next couple of weeks after the sale. Do sales stay steady or is there a decline because those who wanted it at the moment got it.
Though, from what you said, dropping it to impulse level and getting the word to a different set of consumers I’d suspect there wouldn’t be a drop.
Cheers.
The sale seems like a fine way to gain new customers. Perhaps if you were to offer a discount to the segment of those individuals that purchased via BdJ, to their friends (a referral program), you may gain a few other customers.
I’d guess you see a brief dip in sales, as Bryan commented. However, I think in the long run, this sale shouldn’t affect your normal sales trends.
All the best.
Ta!
Bryan: I didn’t see much impact on the revenue from surrounding days’s sales. Which would seem to indicate that I was able to isolate the promotion pretty well. I’m pretty sure that the “discounts available” listing shifted some sales from earlier in the week to the Friday. But with no other “buy today for a special price” promotion, I don’t think I moved many future sales to Friday.
Marshall: My experience with offering a friends-and-family discount has been … less than optimal. I used to include such an offer in the sales confirmation email (the one with the Registration Keys). It got used <10 times in several years. Part of the reason, I think, is that personal journaling is (obviously) *personal*. So referrals have a high barrier. As an example: When was the last time you told someone what anti-perspirant you use, even if you had a coupon for it?
I’m always open to ideas for better growth through word-of-mouth, of course. Thanks for the suggestion.
-David