Have some light need for graphics editing? Download Paint.NET. Now. Its about as easy to use as MSPaint, with many, many more features (layers! Full undo capability! Competent resizing algorithms!), and its perfect for the sort of “I have an app icon but need to make it a CD logo” type chores that you’re probably spending too much time on right now. Did I mention its totally free? Yeah, thats a bonus, too. (Artistic ability still not included, unfortunately.)
I finally put my money where my mouth is, by the way, and donated them $25. I remember that I had long-ago promised to donate “in the indefinite future, when I have the money to spend” and, hey, I just had my most profitable month ever. If you get as much use out of them as I have, consider dropping 2-3% or so of the cost of a Photoshop license in their tipjar.
Executive summary: January was my best month yet. I’m on target for making my goal of $1,000 a month sales by April. The redesign of my purchase page has been extraordinarily effective, particularly at moving people towards buying CDs. Google Checkout is saving me a not-insubstantial bit of money. AdWords, on the other hand, is borked and has a heavily negative ROI.
I have been using CD Fulfillment’s default CD image since I started issuing the CDs. While its utilitarian, it doesn’t exactly present a great image of my software or help my technically-disinclined customers through the process of getting the software to work. I have just gotten done creating an image which will be hopefully slightly more helpful in this regard. This won’t be the final edition, as I’m concerned that there is too much text and that it will cause folks’ eyes to glaze over. (If you have suggestions for alternate wording, please, fire away).
