by A. Canton

Posted on Feb. 7, 2018 at 8:00 PM

Let me tell you whom I think is the best software development company on the planet!

Many of you don't know what an FTP program is. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocal and basically an FTP program uses this communication standard to let you upload and download files to and from your web server. It also lets you edit text files on the server and most commercial FTP programs have lots of other very useful features as well.

For those of us who are in the web development biz, we 'live' on these programs 24/7.

There are lots of FTP programs out there... from free to paid. The free ones are adequate for limited use, but for full functionality you need a 'real' FTP program and that means a paid one.

And that brings me to Yummy Software. These people are the best in the world.

No, it is not the program which makes them so good, it is the service. No one, not even our own company, provides the depth of service that Jason, the owner of Yummy Software, and his team does.

Recently we had a situation where we needed a significant modification of their FTP program in order to work for one of our web developers who was on satellite Internet. The satellite service kept disconnecting and reconnecting her from whatever server she was working on when she was using Yummy FTP Pro. Each disconnect/reconnect took half a minute and it degraded her production. (In web coding you make a change, save a change, test the change, rince and repeat.)

We brought the issue to the attention of Jason and he said it would be quite a bit of work to make the changes needed to fix this. He said he would get to it but didn't say when. I was prepared to wait until the next update release.

Two days later I get an email with a link to a new version of Yummy FTP Pro to try out. It solved the connection problem of our remote developer.

Now THAT my dear friends is service! Do you think Microsoft or Apple would do that for you? Here is a better question: do you think any software developer on the planet would do that for you? No way... not gonna happen!

But the people at Yummy will make it happen and that is what makes them, in my opinion, the best software development company in the world. You find me another company who will make you a personal copy of their product and not charge you for it and I'll add them to my list.

If you need a first-rate, top-of-the-line FTP program for the Apple Mac platform (for all of $29.99 USD), Yummy FTP Pro is the one you want. And you get Jason and company too.

You will wish all of your vendors were even half as good as Yummy Software.

by A. Canton

Posted on Jan. 29, 2018 at 10:00 AM

We are getting ready to roll out our new "Less is More" website design service to publishers, authors and others (book consultants, etc.) who might refer us.

Our marketing stategy developed when we decided that we were not going to renew our membership in IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) We've been members for many years but never got much business "from" the dues we paid.

This led us to talking about marketing in detail. My partner, myself, and my two associates (plus our Australian Shepherd… who is smarter than your honor student!) decided that it was is in our best business interest to again renew our membership.

Why?

IBPA gives us access to their membership directory which we could use to cull 500+ mid-size publishers as well as vendors that we can market our new service to.

Their directory has no phone numbers (which I think is rather dumb) so we would have to hire a temp to go through the 3000+ entries, do a web search (if they don’t list their URL) and get the name and number of whom to call.

It's a lot of work... but this list has a big chunk of our target market right there waiting for us.

If nothing else, we get to say (truthfully) that we are a member of IBPA and display their logo. I don’t know how much it helps, but I’m sure it can’t hurt. (We get far more favorable response by displaying the APSS logo.)

Yeah, it’s cold calling. (Oh the horror!)

Honestly, it’s good, old-fashioned, marketing 101… everyone hates doing it, but it works… and in my experience in selling a service, its the ONLY thing that CONSISTENTLY works.

We’ve tried advertising, we’ve tried so-called ‘social media’ marketing (way overrated,) we’ve tried convention and book festival booths, publicity press pieces, direct mail, as well as face-to-face networking (also way overrated) and the only thing that consistently works is getting ‘out there’ and directly calling prospects whom you think would be interested in what you are selling.

It’s a simple phone pitch:

“Ms. James, I’m Al Canton the managing partner of NewMedia Create in Fair Oaks, CA. We do websites for authors for $999. Is that something you think you would like to tell your new authors about, or perhaps even re-market for us as an affiliate? Can I send you an email with our URL?”

If “yes," I get their info and give them the 30 second ‘elevator speech'. If ‘no’ I thank them and make the next call.

If you do this for 90 minutes a day, five (or six) days a week, month after month… and you WILL get clients who will later become a referral base… and the biz grows (assuming you do good work… which we do.)

It would be nice if all we had to do was join IBPA and be listed in their vendor directory and the members came flocking to us… it doesn’t work… we know because we tried… even offered a discount to IBPA members… no one goes to the IBPA site or if they do, they never found us!

Cold calling works. I built my insurance agency (www.ancins.com … see cartoon on last screen!) by cold calling as well as our Jaya123 biz (www.jaya123.com). It’s not fun and not glamorous and often downright boring… but it works.

You really can’t sell your basic trade-book novel this way… but if you have a special-sale kind of book, especially one you can price rather high and which has a specific market, calling prospective businesses who have need for the information and willing to pay a premium for it will work... if you make enough calls!

I hope this was of interest to someone out there.

You’ll be hearing from us! :-) :-)

by A. Canton

Posted on Nov. 24, 2017 at 10:00 AM

Enough with the pictures already!

I swear, surfing the web is no longer a reader's delight, it's more of a museum goer's delight

Look, we like pictures... we really do. But when that is basically all of the content and the site owner is expecting me to get some value from the site, well, it's just not working.

If you are trying to sell someone something, I'm sorry, but a picture is not worth a thousand words. It might be worth a couple of hundred, but that's about it.

You are NOT going to build trust with a picture. You need good content on the site. No you don't need War and Peace but you do need something beyond a dog or a sunset or a runway model!

by A. Canton

Posted on Oct. 27, 2017 at 2:00 PM

These days everyting on the web seems to be graphic-oriented. We contend that words are still important... at least if you want to sell something!

You go to websites these days looking for information and what do you find? Lots of moving pictures, bouncing icons, eye-blinding scrolling, fade-ins, fade-outs and lots of other eye-candy. What you don't find is the information you are looking for!

Why is that? Two reasons.

First, it is taken for granted that people either don't or won't read you site. Yet, in talking to our own clients, they want MORE information, or at least relevant information in a condensed format, and not to be left on their own to figure out what service we are selling

Second, good copy, copy that is interesting as well as relevant, is hard to write. Indeed, the prevailing sentiment today seems to be "If you can't be good... be long!"

So we get websites that are so verbose and so poorly written that no one reads it... and thus is born the self-fulfilling prophecy that people don't read.

But they do... they actually WANT to.

The honest truth is that high-impact graphics and eye-candy sites are not going to tell your story wel.

And at the other extreme, sites that are page after page after page of content, won't either.

There is a happy medium here... and a good web designer usually knows it. But do clients listen? Not often enough.

We believe that "less is more' but that "too little" is "not enough."