Hello every body,
Do you think selling php scripts is good business ?
I am programming news publishing script and an auction script and i am making alot of templates come with each script so the admin have alot of designs and can change the design with one click

The templates will be from templatemonster and i'll customize the design and make it suits the script

I go to hotscripts and i found alot of scripts is made what do you think people need now ? scripts for education , ecommerce, hosting , etc ..??

In markting the say you should be good at least in one of the 4Ps markting mix
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
and for me my markting mix is
Product : script + at least 6 designes
Price: cheap less than 50$USD
Place: website
Promotion: some ads at hotscripts

so is my markting mix is good or need some changes

Regards,
Homam

sorry for my poor english

nobody, no ideas !

I think that is a very good bussiness sell scripts...
if your script is good, you will have success....
People want a lot of different scripts....you have to focus which people you want to sell your scripts...( hosting bussiness, ecommerce, etc...)....

The problem:

Websites have to be unique. Sure, a lot of sites have similar needs, so there will be markets for scripts. However, the scripts will be customized, so you will get A LOT OF support requests. You won't make a lot of money with that pricing because pretty soon, you will get overwhelmed by support requests.

Ship designs with the scripts won't cut it. When you have your 7th customer, two of your customers will find out someone else has the exact the same look. Actually, most webmasters (who runs a business and thus willing to pay) will request the ability to put in their own design from the beginning.

Also, your 4P is way too general.

Product: what kind of scripts? for whom? how big is this market?
For example, you mentioned auction scripts. How many new auction sites do you think there will be?

Promotion: What's the cost? How many impression do you think you will get? What % of the impressions are potential customers? What % will buy? Will the sales from the ads cover the ad cost?

empresasdehosting thanks for your advice :)


riverpast thank u
about the support problem yes i agree with you i can't alone do the support i need to employ some staff but now i am thinking to provide to license one without support and one with support

the designs there are at least 6 templates
and if the consumer want custom design i can do it for him with some extra money (75)

maybe my plan has alot of mess but the problem i don't have budget maybe after selling some copyes i'll do employ many support staff to make cnsumers happy

cheers,
Homam

homam_g,

Do you make php shopping cart?
Here is a site you can look at: www.phpcart.net
They are selling phpcart pretty cheap.

You can go to their forum to see how do they support their customers? They have 1000 users, and I assume they have
sold out more than 1000 units of their phpcarts?

And their support I would say is prompt and good.

Do a business plan.

How big is your target market for the particular kind of script? What percentage will use your script? What percentage will be paid customers? From that, you can calculate your yearly income.

Will that be enough to pay for staffing and other costs?

cavalry phpcart pricing is very great i'll make similler pricing and the support will be thru furom(C2C) and tickets the support staff will do the support
thank u cavalry

and i'll make deep tour to see how others provide the service and get customers

regards,
Homam

riverpast right and i agree with you and now i am making a marketing plan and this post as the title to know is this a profitable bussiness and i'll try to find any secondry researches availeble about the market and then i'll do the segmentation and choose one or tow segments as a target market and make the markting mix that suite the the target market and looking deepers in the market to know who is my compiteters and how can i start compit them and also find stratigic partners to cooperation with

cheers,
Homam

homam_g

Sure, no problem.

As I know, there should be no more than 2 staffs are operating
phpcart.net 's business. I do not think this phpcart is hard to make if you have good php programming knowledge.
And I think the most difficult part is how to get more processors' payment modules to integrate into the PHP cart.

If you can make the php cart installtion guide easy for the users to understand, and provide a very detail step by step how to install the cart, then I am pretty sure you can save a lot of hard work to support users.

As I mentioned, this php cart from pHPcart.net is actually easy to install, but phpcart.net's installation guide is not written clear enough for the users to understand, this is why you can see some users are complaining about their cart in their forum.
And some of them even want refund.

In fact, I am very pity on phpcart.net, they have a good product, but they screw up their business on their installation guide.

I think they make money from Developer edition.

After you do your proper marketing plans, and If you can keep your overhead low to start your business, then you can consider to do it. And you can sell template also.

Good luck in your business venture.

PS: Now you need to add packaging as 5th p in your marketing mix. Actually there are 6 now, not 4. I forgot another p.

Hi, i think selling same-old-fashioned php scripts cant be good
WHILE , if you have an original idea it will work like a charm,
For example as the one u discussed, selling a shopping cart will NOT be easy as i suppose especially with the existance of free carts like oscommerce and xcube that are actually awsome, even if they lack a bit of options , yet there is free plugins and a coder can add his own options as well.
Great selling php scripts are the custom ones with new features that you cant find.
Id buy a script only if i cant search to find a similar one for free ! < consider this one and ull end up earning money !

Lebanon,

Glad to meet you again! You ideas are always creative.

Buy for me I do not like OsCommerce, Cube Cart, and Zen Cart, because they will change my template into their template.
Furthermore, they are not easy to install and configure for beginners.

I do not know PHP programming, but I love PHP stuff!

cavalry thank you :)
Well ur right they change ur template but as i said with a slight work they can be changed , but this is also the case of ALL premade php scripts , they must have a startup template and u have to edit it , ofcourse some are made easier for end users to edit.
Now my idea is based on that, for many pple who buy scripts usually they already have an idea on how to run them, eventually they can get around editing them and their templates to save few bucks.
One last thing i must include , if you design a unique idea and submit it to search engines ( unique ideas will get you higher listings because of less competitors ) Now if u have designed a php shopping cart and u wish to have random visitors from a search engine ....... u surely know how many results and older companies you have to bypass to get into your site listing !
Now lets say ( one of my needs btw) an IMDB fetcher that can be integrated with VB ! no one did that before and with my limited php knowledge i cannot program that advanced !
Lets also say : Advanced VB download area ( ive tested few and am still in need for a better one ! )
**those are just examples anyway **

Lebanon,

All I can say is you are a smart guy!
And you are absolutely right, it is easier for unique
products to be listed on the first page of search engines.
But to market a new different thing is not easy.

we have to do what we know now to pay our bills, then
switch to new products slowly. ;)

Hi Lebanon (neighbor)
I want to add thing if you don't mind
i read in this forum something is very valubele and it said

A wize businessman said if u want to be succss do one of 2 things
1. create new idea ,product ...
2. do every thing people do but be the best

and i choose no2
why?
i'll tell you
to be creative is not an easy thing and new ideas and new products consumers some times feel afraid of it and studying new market is much harder than existing one so that need time and money and i don't have enough of them
so when i have stable business and enough employees
i'll do many creative things i have dozens of new ideas but i need money and this project is to invest my new creative project

thank u all guyz i feel this discution is helpful to all of us

regards,
Homam

I choose this too: 2. do every thing people do but be the best

homam_g,

Please PM me if you have PHP shopping cart for sale.
Thanks

It will be quite difficult to "do everything people do but be the best", because there will be dozens competitors in the market doing the same thing.

And it is impossible to be the best in every aspect, because every potential customers have different (often opposite) requirements. Trying to be the best on everything often end up too complicated and difficult to use for everything.

Sometimes, it makes much more sense to "do one thing better than anyone else".

hi riverpast
yes be the best on one or more if u can but at least one
of the 4Ps
Product, Price, Place , Promotion

I am not talking about 4P - that is way too abstract. Get down to details.

Which particular feature in your script will make your target market buy? If you have one, focus on that, arrange everything (advertising, pricing, support...) around it.

Originally posted by homam_g


In markting the say you should be good at least in one of the 4Ps markting mix
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
and for me my markting mix is
Product : script + at least 6 designes
Price: cheap less than 50$USD
Place: website
Promotion: some ads at hotscripts


Don't over think it. Just do it! You'll learn more from mistakes. The most successful people generally have stumpled a few times before they figure out all the ins and outs of what works and what doesn't. If you're getting your information from books written by 'experts' keep in mind that the main point in writing the book is to make the author money--not you.

I agree with Storyman,

We all learn experience from mistakes.
As long as you can keep your overhead low, and you
have a good product, then just do it when you are young!

Life is too short, how many winter seasons do we have in a
life time!

Hello Homam,
Your idea works too, its just that as i tried to explain, if ur hitting a market that already exists and you want to target new clients from internet you will face difficulty being ranked or viewed considering most pple hit the first pages they find on search !
Thus they will be mostly buying from those results links .
I am positive you might be able to create an easier shopping cart but are u able to promote it ?
Second issue, adding an original idea might take up same coding time as a shopping cart and maybe less.
After all i wish you luck and if you coded a nice shopping cart , who knows WHT might bring you your first clients :)

Hi everu body,


I am not talking about 4P - that is way too abstract. Get down to details.

Which particular feature in your script will make your target market buy? If you have one, focus on that, arrange everything (advertising, pricing, support...) around it.

script feature , support ... are the product
pricing is price
advertising is part of promotion
they told us(in business) every thing u could think is part of markting mix (4Ps,7Ps, 4Cs aproches)


quote:Originally posted by homam_g


In markting the say you should be good at least in one of the 4Ps markting mix
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
and for me my marketing mix is
Product : script + at least 6 designs
Price: cheap less than 50$USD
Place: website
Promotion: some ads at hot scripts


Don't over think it. Just do it! You'll learn more from mistakes. The most successful people generally have stumpled a few times before they figure out all the ins and outs of what works and what doesn't. If you're getting your information from books written by 'experts' keep in mind that the main point in writing the book is to make the author money--not you.

I agree with u
once they asked successful businessman about how he do his success
he said
Right Decisions
then they asked how u make right Decisions
he said
from experience
then they asked him how you get the experience
he said
wrong Decisions


I agree with Storyman,

We all learn experience from mistakes.
As long as you can keep your overhead low, and you
have a good product, then just do it when you are young!

Life is too short, how many winter seasons do we have in a
life time!

right


Hello Homam,
Your idea works too, its just that as i tried to explain, if ur hitting a market that already exists and you want to target new clients from internet you will face difficulty being ranked or viewed considering most pple hit the first pages they find on search !
Thus they will be mostly buying from those results links .
I am positive you might be able to create an easier shopping cart but are u able to promote it ?
Second issue, adding an original idea might take up same coding time as a shopping cart and maybe less.
After all i wish you luck and if you coded a nice shopping cart , who knows WHT might bring you your first clients
I know and ur ideas are valuable too and i learned from you many things
and i wish good luck 4 u and for all guys that participate in this discussion

cheers,
Homam