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Tips on travelling with a laptop

I recently returned from a month’s holiday in New Zealand. As a one-man software company I still have to check my email every day, even on holiday. Here are a few tips from my experiences of running my business from a laptop whilst travelling.

Laptop

In theory you can run your business from a Blackberry or a mobile phone that supports email. But it is impossible to answer some support emails if you can’t run your own software. So I took a Toshiba laptop PC with a 13 inch screen with me. I find a 13 inch screen is a good compromise between portability and ease of use. Much bigger and it would have been too bulky. Much smaller and I would have struggled with the screen and keyboard.

The laptop contained my licence key generator and customer database. I owe it to my business and my customers to keep these secure and the Windows password is no protection at all if someone gains physical access to your machine. So anything sensitive was encrypted using the free Truecrypt software. Whenever I brought the laptop out of hibernation or restarted it I just had to type the password to mount the Truecrypt volume as a virtual drive[1][2].

I took a combination laptop lock, but I rarely used it. The problem with laptop locks is that the only things strong enough to secure your laptop to are usually in plain view, and a laptop left in plain view is a bit of an invitation. Locked or not. I am also not convinced how strong the laptop security slot is. I suspect an attempted theft would wreck the laptop, even if it wasn’t successful. So I generally prefer to keep the laptop with me or hide it somewhere a crook wouldn’t think to look. I have since found out that laptop locks aren’t even very secure (see here and here). There are still occasions when a laptop lock is better than nothing though. Incidentally, don’t rely on that padlock on your hold baggage either.

The laptop was also invaluable for playing Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs (using Windows Media Player) to keep my little one occupied for part of the very long flights and for backing up photos from the digital camera. I also took a universal power adapter.

Laptop bag

I have a traditional Targus laptop bag with a shoulder strap. But I have found this uncomfortable for carrying a laptop any distance due to the uneven distribution of weight. It also makes it extremely obvious that you have a laptop. A fact I would rather not advertise.

For this trip I purchased a Swissgear Hudson laptop rucksack from Swiss Army knife manufacturer Wenger. It was much more comfortable to wear with the weight distributed across both shoulders and left both hands free for dealing with passports, boarding passes and a bored two year old. It was small enough to take on to an aircraft as hand luggage, but surprisingly spacious. It also had some useful extras, including: a carry handle, a breathable back and a compartment for an MP3 player. I was impressed with the quality of the construction and finish. My only quibble is that there wasn’t as much padding around the top and bottom of the laptop as I might have liked. So I wrapped my laptop in bubblewrap for additional protection. But on the whole I would recommend this bag highly for travelling.

Back-ups

As well a backup on DVD I also took a 2 Gig USB memory stick that contained everything I would need should my laptop malfunction or be stolen. This included copies of my licence key generator, customer database and various passwords. All the sensitive files were encrypted using the free Axxcrypt software, except my passwords which were encrypted using the free Keepass software. The memory stick also stored various third party software installers (including Axxcrypt and Keepass). I kept the memory stick on a lanyard around my neck when I wasn’t sleeping.

I also stored an additional encrypted back-up on a secure server.

Internet access

Trying to find holiday accommodation that was the right size and budget, in the right location and free at the right time was problematic. Insisting on broadband Internet as well was a step too far. I also wasn’t keen on relying on broadband at accommodation. What if it didn’t work? Relying on Internet cafes seemed an even worse idea. What if I couldn’t find one? And the security issues of using Internet cafes are very real. So I needed my own mobile Internet access.

The roaming charges for using my UK three networks mobile Internet in New Zealand are an outrageous £6/MB. Vodaphone has more sensible roaming charges for some plans, but I couldn’t justify the high monthly price for the occasional trip abroad. So I tried to find a company that would rent me mobile data access in New Zealand for a month, without success. In the end my brother-in-law very kindly sorted me out with a USB mobile modem and a 1GB/mo data plan with Telecom New Zealand. He picked the modem up cheap second-hand on trademe.co.nz and the data plan was of the order of $70NZD/mo, with no minimum term. So, rather than paying >£1000, I ended up paying about £50 (thanks Derek!). There is definitely a business opportunity for someone there.

I am glad I didn’t rely on broadband at the accommodation. It turns out that most of the New Zealand ISPs have restricted SMTP access to prevent spam. So I could receive email via IMAP when plugged in to an xtra.co.nz broadband cable, but I couldn’t connect to their SMTP server to send email. Thankfully I didn’t have this problem with the mobile broadband or I would have been stuck with webmail for a month (the horror!).

Mobile coverage is patchy outside the bigger cities in the South Island of New Zealand, due to the low population density (sheep can’t afford broadband). But I was able to get some sort of signal everywhere we stayed. This might have been helped by the aerial attached to the mobile modem. During the month a I used approximately 40% of the 1GB allowance. I could have used quite a lot less, if necessary.

Stopping over in Singapore I just purchased wifi access from the hotel. It was quite expensive, but I didn’t need it for long. Wifi and hardwired Internet access are available for free in Singapore airport (I couldn’t get the wifi to work, so I just plugged in a network cable).

Conclusion

Running an Internet-based business while travelling isn’t that difficult, with a bit of planning. I doubt my customers even realised I was on holiday. What are you waiting for?

PS/ New Zealand is lovely.

[1] Truecrypt can also encrypt the whole OS, but that seemed excessive for my requirements and I wasn’t sure what impact it would have on performance.

[2] If Truecrypt is so easy to set-up and use, why is it apparently beyond the capabilites of the UK government to encrypt sensitive data?

Photo of Airbus A380 by Claire Brice

The two types of reseller

resellers In theory, the Internet allows customers to find products without the need for middlemen (unless you count Google). In reality, the age of full disintermediation has not yet arrived, and perhaps never will. Middlemen are still important. One of the more important types of middlemen for a software vendor is the reseller. However it is important to realise that there are two completely different types of reseller. One can be very useful to you as a software vendor, the other is generally a pain in the backside. They should be treated accordingly.

Value added resellers

A value added reseller buys your product and then resells it to their customers. Usually they will buy from you at a discount and resell to their customer at full price, pocketing the difference. Typically a reseller will expect between 25-50% discount depending on a range of factors including what services they provide (e.g. localisation and support), the price of the product and volumes sold. Often the discounts are on a sliding scale, with the discount increasing with sales volume. This type of reseller can add value for you and the cusomer in various ways. They may:

have expertise in markets that you don’t
be able to reach markets that you can’t, due to barriers of language, culture or geography
localise your product and marketing materials
provide first level support.
sell your software as part of a package including other services, software and/or hardware.

However there are a few things you have to look out for:

You don’t want to end up competing directly against your own resellers in existing markets.
Resellers may undercut you on price.
Beware of offering any sort of exclusivity.
Customers may sign up as resellers just to get a discount for a single purchase.

You can try to avoid direct competition with resellers by only picking resellers in different markets. You may also be able to specify certain terms and conditions, for example that they can’t bid against you on certain phrases in Google Adwords. But, depending on the law where you live, you can’t tell a reseller what to charge the customer. For example, under UK law, this is considered ‘price fixing’ and is illegal. So make sure you charge a reseller a percentage of your recommended price, not a percentage of their sale price, to make price cutting less attractive. For example, if your product retails for $50, charge the retailer X% of $50. Not X% of what they sell for. Otherwise they could undercut you by selling for $30, and still make a profit, or even give your software away for free.

Resellers will often ask for exclusivity. Exclusivity can provide extra motivation to the reseller (a reseller won’t want to put a lot of effort into marketing your software if you can pull the plug at any time for no reason), but what if the reseller loses interest in your product? It happens. You could be left in a very bad position unless you can terminate the agreement. So you should agree some sort of minimum volume of sales for a reseller to retain exclusivity.

Offering a sliding scale discount with no discount for the first purchase will discourage customers from trying to take advantage of reseller discounts.

Value subtracted resellers

The other type of middleman that call themself a reseller are really just acting as outsourced purchasing for your customer. They buy your software on the customer’s behalf so that the poor darlings in the customer’s accounts department only get a single invoice for software sales per month, instead of one per vendor. They don’t add any value at all as far the vendor is concerned. In fact they just make the vendor’s life more difficult by getting between the vendor and the real customer. I had one reseller of this type who, after some twenty emails exchanged, failed to workout how to buy my software from my website. How dim can you be that you can’t click a ‘buy now’ button and fill in a few details when that is what you do for a living? Hence I call them ‘value subtracted resellers’.

This type of reseller will often ask for a discount. Don’t give it to them. The real customer has probably already instructed them to buy your product, so a discount won’t help to close the sale. Also the reseller might pocket the discount instead of passing it on to the customer. If anything, charge them more.

Marketing your software through affiliates

The idea of paying someone for sending you business has been around for a long time. Affiliate marketing is just a new, Internet-based, take on it. An affiliate sends traffic to your website and is paid a commission on each sale. For software this commission will typically be in the range 20-50% of the sale price (although commissions of 75% or more aren’t unheard of). Commission is usually calculated by using cookies to track the number of successful sales (‘conversions’) due to each affiliate.

In theory you can set up your own affiliate commission tracking system, but affiliates would have to trust that your system is honest. It would also involve quite a bit of wheel reinventing. Consequently most vendors use affiliate marketing systems administered by third parties such as shareasale, clickbank or commission junction. Payment processors, such as Avangate and e-junkie, also have their own affiliate marketing systems.

It sounds great. The affiliates are doing marketing for you and you only pay them when you make a sale. How can you possibly lose? In fact there are quite a few potential downsides:

You may end up paying commission on sales through affiliates that would otherwise have come to you direct.
Affiliates won’t be happy if there is any way to purchase where they don’t get their commission (‘leaks’). This might mean you may not be able to offer some forms of payment, such as cheque or credit card over the phone.
You will be competing against your affiliates for search engine ranking.
Somebody who wants to buy several copies of your software could sign up as an affiliate to get the commission on their own purchase. You then have to pay commission, but get no additional sales.
Affiliates may compete against you in PPC ads, driving up the cost of your ads.
Even though you make less on the sale, you still have the full cost of supporting the customer.
Some affiliates operate at the shadier end of the market and may resort to various dodgy, or even criminal, practises to get their commission, including:
- Spam.
- Annoying pop-up ads.
- Cookie stuffing.
- Misrepresenting your product.
- Adware.
- Buying your product with a stolen credit card.

You maybe be able to prevent some of the above abuses with appropriate terms and conditions. ( I should also point out, in the interest of fairness, that there are various ways that the affiliate might lose out on commission that is rightfully theirs. For example customers who block cookies and even fraud by vendors.)

Drawing up agreements, recruiting affiliates, providing them with marketing materials, doing the accounts and paying your affiliates all takes time. You can automate quite a lot of it, but it still takes time to set-up the system, answer questions, keep everything running smoothly and check that affiliates are behaving themselves. Time that you could be spending doing other more lucrative and interesting things. As always, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Joel Spolsky has been an outspoken critic of affiliate marketing:

We did an affiliate program, and found it to be a big waste of time. It generated only a trickle of sales; most of the people in the affiliate program would have linked to us anyway; probably 80% of the affiliates just became affiliates to get a kickback on the one item they bought for themselves or their job.

Affiliate links only works well for mega retail sites like Amazon, where an affiliate has a chance of making a reasonable amount of money.

Our affiliate program was one of those cases where we learned that time spent improving our product pays off many times as much as time spent dinking around with so-called clever marketing schemes.

Don’t waste your time. Move on. Do something to make your product better and Just Say No.

Joel Spolsky on the Business of Software Forum

I am inclined to agree with Joel. Hard data isn’t easy to come by. But, from reading around and talking to other vendors, it seems that very few of them are getting more than 5% of their sales through affiliates. I did have a home-rolled affiliate program for Perfect Table Plan, but I shut it down because the number of sales just wasn’t worth the administration overhead. Some of the affiliates never sold a single licence. I might be more successful if I used a more automated affiliate marketing system and put more effort into recruiting higher calibre affiliates, but I still don’t think it would be the best use of my time.

I have heard that there are ‘super affiliates’ with mythical powers to drive serious sales. But these people, if they really exist, get to pick and choose amongst thousands of products to market. They are going to pick mass-market products with a proven track record and they are going to want a big commission percentage. And how do you tell who is a super affiliate and who is a wannabe? They all talk a good game.

Affiliate marketing is big business, with estimated sales of over £2 billion in the UK alone in 2006. But I suspect a lot of it is from selling ‘get rich quick’ schemes, gambling and porn – not software. Particularly not software from small companies and microISVs. Obviously a lot depends on your product and market. Perhaps if you are selling mass market software (e.g. back-up utilites or virus scanners) and you have dedicated marketing staff, it might be worth your while to run an affiliate program. But make sure you automate as much of the system as possible and be realistic about the results.

Running a microISV

Consumers and businesses are being more careful with their money now, but they are still buying software if it will save them time and/or money. If you have been laid off in the current recession, perhaps now is a good time to start that microISV you have been thinking about. But starting your own business can be a bit daunting if you haven’t done it before. What is actually involved in the day to day running of a small software business?

Disclaimer: The information below is based on my my experience of running a microISV as a UK-based limited company for 4 years. It is far from comprehensive and is merely intended to give you some pointers. I am not an accountant. I am not a lawyer. Some of the information will not be relevant to businesses based outside the UK. Seek appropriate professional advice.

Accountants

Probably the first thing you should do when you decide to go into business is to get an accountant. An accountant will be able to advise you on bookkeeping, tax, VAT, company rules and regulations and any number of other topics. As you aren’t a large or publicly listed company they don’t have to be a chartered accountant. Changing accountant later may be painful, so try to get it right first time. Ideally try to find your accountant by personal recommendation and someone you think you will get on with. Everything can be done by phone and email, so they don’t have to be in the same town.

Setting up a company

You don’t have to have a company. But it does have some advantages:

It makes it easier to separate your personal and business finances, which can only be a good thing.
It gives you some legal protection. If someone decides to sue due to a bug in your software, they will have to sue your company, rather than you personally. So you have less chance of losing your house.
It has some tax advantages.
You can impress members of the opposite sex by putting ‘Director’ on your business card.

Having a company also has certain obligations, such as filing annual returns and company accounts. Much of it can now be done online. The company annual return is pretty straightforward. You just need to list who the company officers and shareholders are. The tax return is more complicated and something I wouldn’t want to do without the help of an accountant.

Setting up a limited company in the UK is fairly easy, simple and cheap. In theory you could read all the necessary documents and do all the paperwork yourself. But surely there are better uses of your time when you can get an accountant to do it for you for as little as £90.

Banking

When you choose a bank you need to consider:

Charges – per month and per transaction.
Services – e.g. foreign currency accounts.
Customer service – how long will you have to wait on the phone to speak to someone?
Convenience – you don’t want to have to drive to the next town to pay in a cheque.
Interest – are their rates competitive?
Guarantees – is the money guaranteed if the bank goes bust?

It may also be a good idea to choose a separate bank from your personal bank, to keep your business and personal finances separate. This could also be important if you ever got into a dispute with your bank.

Having had very good experiences with HSBC through FirstDirect, I chose HSBC for my business banking. However I was unimpressed by the service I received. This included queuing 40 minutes to pay in a cheque and calls to the branch 2 miles away being routed via India (I got fed up of spelling out H-i-g-h W-y-c-o-m-b-e). I was also irked by the service charges. £0.60 to pay in a cheque! When I told them what I thought of their service they made an appointment for someone to come and see me. They never turned up. No apology, nothing.

I have since switched my banking to Alliance and Leicester business bank. I have been happy with the service and there are no charges as long as you pay in at least £1,000 per month. I can also pay in cheques at any Post Office (if the UK government doesn’t close them all).

Invoices

If you are selling to other companies, rather than just consumers, you will have to deal with invoices. Invoices are a subject of mystery to many developers, but really they are just a note to someone that they owe you money. In theory the sequence is:

Customer asks for a quote.
You send a quote (include an expiry date).
Customer sends a signed purchase order.
You send the software licence key with an invoice.
Customer pays the invoice within the time specified by the invoice.

Yeah, right. In reality many companies pay months late. This helps to improve their cash flow at your expense. But, according to Hanlon’s razor, one should ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’ and I am sure that the apathy and incompetence of accounting staff is also a large factor.

The invoice itself is nothing special. It should include:

The word ‘INVOICE’ in large letters.
Your company details (including your VAT details, if registered).
A unique invoice number.
The date.
Customer details, including their purchase order number.
A description of the product sold and the price (including the currency).
Details of how to pay, e.g. your SWIFT/IBAN code and/or who to make the cheque payable to.
The payment terms (typically 30 days).

You might want to number your first invoice 0100, rather 0001, if you don’t want early customers to know you are a newbie.

Dealing with the late payment of invoices is a whole topic on it’s own. Personally I don’t invoice for payments of <£100 or $200 – it just isn’t worth the hassle. And I always pay my bills on time. It is the right thing to do.

Bookkeeping

Don’t fight the system, you can’t win. Computing is <70 years old. Accounting is as old as recorded history. Suck it up and learn the appropriate terminology. Consider doing a class on basic bookkeeping.

An accountant is not a bookkeeper. They may agree to do your bookkeeping, but it is likely to be expensive. Personally, I do my own bookkeeping. It is a bit tedious, but it means I know exactly where every penny goes and I can listen to a podcast at the same time to alleviate the boredom.

I started off using Excel for my bookkeeping. In retrospect this was a mistake.

You are on your own when it comes to generating reports, such as profit and loss.
Mistakes are easy to make and hard to find in large Excel spreadsheets.
Excel doesn’t scale very well to hundreds or thousands of transactions.
Your custom Excel spreadsheet is much more difficult (=expensive) for your accountant to work with than the package he normally uses.

Sales receipts, advertising, salary, dividends, ISPs, postage, stationery, professional fees etc. can add up to a lot of transactions. Even with sales batched up into weekly blocks, a one man business such as mine can easily generate over 600 transactions a year. You really don’t want to be trying to track all this in Excel. Much better to use a purpose-built accounting package.

The market leading package for small businesses worldwide appears to be Intuit Quickbooks. Others are Sage (popular in the UK) and MYOB. I recommend you chose whatever package your accountant is happiest to work with. Get your accountant to set it up for you. Trying to use a personal finance package, such as Microsoft money, to run a business is almost certainly a bad idea.

I switched from Excel to Intuit QuickBooks. Initially I hated it. But once I accepted that it was written for bookkeepers, not software developers, we reached a grudging acceptance of each other. Now I just spend an hour or so updating Quickbooks every 1-2 weeks and making sure it tallies with my bank statements. I then send my accountant a copy of the database at the end of each financial year. He then uses this data to create the company annual accounts and tax return.

Don’t leave the bookkeeping until the end of the tax year. You will end up with hundred of scraps of paper to match up with hundreds of transactions. This is an N^2 problem. As with any polynomial problem, you should try to keep N small. Also, your accountant has lots of other clients and won’t thank you for asking him to create your annual report by midnight to meet the filing deadline.

Try to get a receipt for everything. I number receipts sequentially, write that number on the receipt and include it in the Quickbooks transaction memo. I then file the paper receipt in a folder partitioned by month. This should mean that I can easily find the appropriate receipt if (when?) I get audited by the tax man.

In my experience it is common to be invoiced for the wrong amount or twice for the same things. Some companies will even try it on by invoicing you for things you didn’t agree to buy. So check every incoming invoice. Companies don’t appear to put their best, brightest and most cooperative in the accounts department. Get used to it.

Managing cash flow is a huge issue for businesses. Any number of healthy and profitable businesses have gone to the wall due to cash flow problems. This shouldn’t be an issue for most microISVs as we don’t have to spend a large proportion of our income on equipment or maintain expensive inventories. Hooray for software.

Currencies

I accept payment in various currencies through PayPal. PayPal charge a 2% fee for converting these payments to pounds sterling on top of their other fees. I have previously looked into opening a US dollar account, but it didn’t seem worth the hassle or expense. The Alliance and Leicester Bank charge a £10 fee to cash a cheque in US dollars.

Tax

MicroISVs, like other one-man limited companies, typically pay themselves a minimal salary (around 5k per year) and the rest as dividends. This means that no income tax is payable on your salary. Instead you pay corporation tax on the dividends. As corporation tax is typically lower than basic rate income tax, this is more tax efficient. However you still have to pay higher rate income tax if your income exceeds the higher rate income tax threshold.

Whenever I pay a dividend I transfer the amount of corporation tax that will be due on the profit to my business reserve account. At the end of the tax year I then know I have enough in this account to pay my corporation tax.

If you sell more than £67k per year (currently) of goods inside the EU you must register for VAT. If you sell less than this, registering for VAT is optional.

Advantages of registering for VAT:

You can claim back VAT on all purchases.
Not having a VAT number may make you seem ‘not a real business’ to other businesses.

Disadvantages of registering for VAT:

You have to charge VAT on all sales inside the EU. Businesses can claim this back, but consumers can’t.
More paperwork.

Consequently a B2C software vendor with large profit margins probably shouldn’t register until they have to. But VAT registration might be much more attractive to a B2B software vendor with lots of expenses. Apparently you can claim back some of your VAT payments retrospectively when you register.

Some other points on tax:

You can give your spouse shares in the company and pay them that proportion of the dividends. This is tax efficient if they earn less then you. But will only add to your woes if they ever run off with the milkman/milkwoman.
When you are applying for a mortgage some banks will only count your salary, not your dividends. A £5k salary doesn’t go far, even in the current housing market.
If you work at home you can charge a percentage of your heating, electricity, council tax etc or rent part of the house to your company. But you may then be liable to pay capital gains tax on any increase in value of the house.
In the UK you can claim £55 per week tax-free in childcare vouchers. The childcare provider must be registered with OFSTED. You don’t need a physical paper voucher – just pay the childcare provider direct from your company and keep all the appropriate records (including their OFSTED number).
The UK government pays a reasonable rate of interest on early payments of corporation tax. You might get more interest paying your corporation tax early than leaving it in a savings account. Also you don’t have to worry about the bank going under with your savings. Of course you will still have to pay tax on the interest next year.
I have also written an article on the basics of VAT for software vendors.

Additional resources

UK Business Link. Business link is a free business advice and support service, available online and through local advisers. Useful for generic business advice – don’t expect them to know anything about the software business.
UK Companies house. Where you go to set up your company and make annual returns.
UK HM Revenue and Customs. They have always been very helpful when I rang them with a query.
Andrew Wells. The accountant I use. Good service at a reasonable price. UK based.

100 ways to increase your software sales

Increase targeted traffic to your website:

SEO your website.
Write a blog or newsletter of interest to the sort of people who might buy your software.
Get more links to your website.
Try Google Adwords Pay Per Click (PPC) ads.
Write a guest post on someone else’s blog.
Try CNet Pay Per Download ads.
Promote your software through download sites using the ASP PAD repository, a paid submission tool or free submission tool.
Promote your software through platform sites e.g. Apple downloads or Office online.
Start an affiliate program.
Try Microsoft Adcentre PPC ads.
Bid higher for your PPC phrases.
Advertise on stumbleupon.
Write additional content for your site.
Give away a ‘lite’ version of your software.
Offer discount coupons.
Add a forum to your website.
Offer free review copies of your software to bloggers.
Do a press release.
Run a competition.
Write better ads for your PPC campaign.
Direct (snail) mail.
Run ads in print magazines.
Include your URL when posting on relevant forums.
Try Yahoo Search Marketing PPC ads.
Buy banner ads on targeted blogs, forums and other websites.
Add extra keywords to your PPC campaigns.
Talk about your software on a podcast.
Add a viral element to your software.
Do a publicity stunt.
Get word of mouth recommendations by giving great support.
Get listed in online directories such as DMOZ.
Post a screencast on YouTube.

Increase your visitor->download rate:

Have an online demo movie.
Offer a free trial.
Offer a money back guarantee.
Port your software to additional platforms e.g. iPhone.
Have a clean and professional website.
Add case studies to your website.
Make sure your website functions with all the major browsers.
Get someone else to proof read the copy on your website.
Talk to visitors in a language they understand i.e. not technical jargon, unless they are techies.
Reduce the number of barriers to downloading the trial (don’t require an email address).
Add a product FAQ to your website.
Show your price prominently.
Improve the usability of your website.
Include your contact details on the website.
Make sure the people can understand what your software does within 2 seconds of arriving at your site.
Make the ‘download’ button more prominent on your website.
Fix any errors in your website.
Include screenshots on your home page.
Add a list of famous customers to your website.
Use a digital certificate for your installer and executable.
Add (genuine!) testimonials to your website.
Create better landing pages for your PPC campaigns.
Add a privacy policy to your website.
Add live online support to your website.
Check your web logs/analytics to find out why/where visitors are leaving your website.

Increase your download->sale rate:

Offer more than one payment processor.
Improve the usability of your software.
Accept purchase orders.
Offer Trialpay as an alternative payment method.
Offer sensible prices in additional currencies.
Require an email address to download your software and follow-up with marketing emails.
Increase or reduce the price of your software.
Fix bugs in your software.
Lengthen or shorten the trial period.
Offer bulk purchase discounts.
Improve your installer.
Make the ‘buy’ button more prominent on your website.
Make your software more beautiful.
Allow users to buy your product easily from within the software itself.
Localize your software into another language.
Offer organizational licences.
Try limiting your trial by features instead of time (or vice versa).
Improve the speed/memory performance of your software.
Improve your product documentation.
Offer alternative payment models (e.g. an annual subscription instead of a one-off fee).
Offer alternative licensing models (e.g. per site instead of per user).
Write an introductory tutorial.
Reduce the number of clicks and key presses required to make a sale.
Add that new feature that people keep asking for.

Increase the value of each sale:

Increase the price of your software.
Charge extra for optional modules.
Upsell additional products and services of your own or as an affiliate.
Charge for major upgrades.
Offer multiple versions at different price points e.g. standard/business/enterprise.
Offer an optional CD.
Charge an annual maintenance fee.
Charge for support.
Offer a premium support plan.

Explore alternative sales channels:

Sell through resellers.
Exhibit at tradeshows.
Cold call prospects.
Allow other companies to sell white label versions of your software.
Include your software on cover-mounted magazine CDs.
Sell through retail stores.
Sell on Ebay.
Sell on Amazon.
Promote your software on one day sale sites, such as BitsDuJour or GiveAwayOfTheDay.
Create a new product.

Notes:

Items are in no particular order in each category.
Some of the items are mutually exclusive.
I have tried about 80% of the above. Some worked, some didn’t. In fact, many of them were a total waste of time and money. But the ones that didn’t work for me might work great in a different market (and vice versa). I discuss my experiences with some of them in more detail here: Promoting your software part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, part6.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Feel free to suggest more in the comments.
Don’t know where to start? Perhaps you need a fresh pair of eyes.

Thanks to Stuart Prestedge of Softalk for suggesting some of the above.

Programming with your feet

foot I started feeling a mild burning sensation in my left wrist a few weeks ago. This is a classic early sign of Repetitive Strain Injury. Uh-oh. I had an email exchange not long ago with someone who now has to use voice activation because typing is too painful. I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be. I decided to ignore Jane Fonda’s advice to “feel the burn” and looked for a way to alleviate the problem.

One approach is to reduce the amount of typing I do. But that is tough when you are running a microISV and writing a blog. I already use the text expander capabilities of the excellent Direct Access software to save a lot of typing (it tells me that it has saved me 51 hours of typing so far). I decided to try an ergonomic keyboard.

I bought myself a Microsoft 4000 Ergonomic keyboard. This is shaped to allow more natural positioning of the forearms and elbows.

Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

For more comfortable wrist positioning it also has a built-in wrist rest and the front of the keyboard is higher than the back.

Note the front of the keyboard (right) is higher than the back (left)

I was quite surprised how physically large it was when it turned up. The shape of the keyboard felt very strange to start with and it took me a few days of slow typing to get used it. The feel of the keys is nothing special and I haven’t yet used the extra gizmos, such as the integral zoom button. But I feel it is an improvement in comfort over the conventional keyboard I had before.

An unexpected advantage of the new keyboard is that it has improved my typing. If you watch a good touch typist, their hands hardly move. I (unfortunately) never learnt to touch type, I just didn’t have the patience. The clearer separation between keys for the left hand and keys for the right hand on the new keyboard made me realise that I was moving both hands left and right, more like a concert pianist than a touch typist. I am now moving my hands less and I think my typing speed has improved as a consequence.

I didn’t feel the new keyboard on it’s own was going to solve my impending RSI problems though. The major problem seems to be the continual Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, Windows-D, Windows-E and Alt-Tab key combinations I do with my left hand, hundreds of times a day. Using the right hand Ctrl key instead of the left one helped a bit. But it occurred to me – why are my hands doing all the work? My legs are doing so little that I often feel stiff when I stand up from a long programming session. Why not put them to use?

I Googled for foot pedals for computers. After wading through lots of hits for music and dictation foot pedals I finally found the Savant Elite Triple Foot Switch. This is a programmable 3-pedal foot-switch that plugs into a USB port.

Savant Elite Triple Foot Switch

At £86.00+VAT it isn’t cheap. But what price do you put on your health? I ordered one.

When it arrived I wanted to program the pedals to map to the Ctrl, Shift and Windows keys. But I couldn’t install the device driver to program the pedals. After a call to the retailer it turns out the device driver doesn’t work on Vista, despite assurance on the website that the pedals could be used with “virtually any computer”[1]. Grrrrr. How long has Vista been out? I finally managed to program the pedals using my wife’s laptop – my last remaining XP box.

So now I can type using my feet for most of the modifier keys. I am using the pedals as I type this. I am still getting used to them, but the burning in my left wrist has definitely reduced. I think I can also type a little faster, but I am too lazy to do the speed tests with and without the pedals to verify this. On the negative side:

Working out where to put your feet when you aren’t typing can be a little awkward.
The pedals tend to move around the carpet, despite being metal and quite heavy. Some small spikes might have helped.
Although the travel on the pedals is small, they are surprisingly stiff.

When I told a friend about the pedals he asked – why stop there? I could also be using my elbows, knees and head like a one-man-band. I could be working-out and typing at the same time. It is an intriguing prospect.

I just hope I don’t end up with burning ankles.

[1] System requirements have since been added to the website.

7 Ways to be a healthier programmer

Developing software is an indoor job with no heavy lifting. How dangerous can it be? Actually, the long term dangers to your health are all too real. Humans have bodies evolved for running around the African savanna, not sitting motionless in front of a computer for hours at a time. I have heard several stories of developer careers cut short by RSI. Imagine if you couldn’t type any more, because it was too painful? Yes, it could happen to you. I started to write an article about ergonomics for developers. Then I realised I knew someone who was a lot more knowledgeable about it than me. Derek kindly agreed to write it instead.

It may seem hard to believe that working at your desk can cause you long term harm, but unfortunately the real toll of sitting in the same location and doing the same operations over and over again may not be felt until it is too late. Here are some simple precautions you can take.

1. Setup your work environment to be ergonomic

Make sure that your whole working environment is set up correctly. This includes your monitor, keyboard, mouse, your desk height, your chair, and possibly a foot rest. Adjusting your seating position relative to your workstation layout encourages good posture. Do this on a regular basis, not just when the ergonomic assessment forms come around once a year. Setting up your chair correctly is probably the most important step and is covered in detail at healthycomputing.com.

2. Try using an ergonomic mouse and keyboard

There are a wide range of ergonomic mice available nowadays, and while some of them may look a little strange, you may be surprised how comfortable they are compared to conventional mice. The Evoluent VerticalMouse is ergonomic, easy to use and available in left and right hand variants. If you find an ergonomic keyboard inconvenient for programming, consider looking into one with a small key travel distance, like the keyboards on laptops where the keys only need to be depressed a small amount, as this reduces the finger movements and effort required.

3. Remember to look up from your monitor

Staring at your computer screen for long periods will lead to eye strain, tiredness, headaches and dry eyes. Every few minutes, look up from your monitor and focus on objects in the distance, either by looking out of the window or at the most distant end of the room. You can do this by using ScreenRest set to remind you at fixed time intervals. It is also worth adjusting your monitor screen to eliminate reflections from light sources behind and above you.

4. Sit up and stop slouching

Leaning forward, sinking down in your chair or resting you elbows on the desk places unnecessary pressure on your back. Poor posture, maintained over a period of time, leads to back pain and more serious back conditions. Make sure that you regularly correct your posture, sitting slightly reclined and supported in your chair with your shoulders relaxed.

5. Keep yourself hydrated

Don’t forget to keep up your fluid levels throughout the day. Even mild dehydration can leave you feeling lightheaded or bring on a headache. Often when you feel hungry it is actually that you’re thirsty, so don’t reach for the biscuits, get a glass of water first. Staying hydrated will help keep you clearheaded, more alert and help counter the dry environment around computers.

6. Take regular rest breaks

Get up and walk around regularly, taking a few minutes to relax. Try to avoid the temptation of carrying on with that feature that is “nearly finished”, or doggedly tracking down that bug that you’ve “almost fixed”. Taking a break will refresh you both physically and mentally. Also, use the break as a reminder to change the type of task you’re performing. If you use the keyboard and mouse extensively, you may want to use ScreenRest set to remind you based on the amount of usage. It can be surprising how much you use a computer continuously without realizing.

7. Look after yourself before it is too late

As a programmer your livelihood depends on you being able to use a computer. Pay attention to any discomfort, tension or pain you may feel while using the computer. Don’t think that computer-related conditions won’t happen to you and ignore those nagging pains until they become something more serious.

Do not underestimate how severe and uncomfortable repetitive strain injury pains can become and how long they will persist throughout the day and even into the night and will eventually impact leisure activities you enjoy doing. Once the damage has been done even the simplest of movements, not just using the computer, can be enough to trigger pain. There are tools available, such as speech recognition software, to help with basic computer tasks such as emails and browsing basic websites, but it is of no use when controlling complex development IDEs. Speech recognition can frustrating to control at the best of times and is impractical in an open plan office environment, due to the background noise.

Derek Pollard

Derek Pollard is the developer of ergonomics software ScreenRest, for the prevention and relief of eye strain and the management of RSI while using your computer.

Should I give free upgrades for life?

There are any number of different licensing models. For commercial software the main ones are:

subscription
outright purchase, with annual maintenance
outright purchase, with free minor upgrades and paid major upgrades
outright purchase, with free major and minor upgrades for life

Subscription payments and purchase + maintenance are nice, if you can get them. They give a more predictable cash flow for a business and you can generally charge a higher lifetime price than you can with a single payment. But this isn’t appropriate for all types of software. For example, it doesn’t make much sense for lower priced desktop software. Assuming subscription or purchase+maintenance isn’t an option, the question boils down to – should we charge for major upgrades?

Let’s look at the numbers for a simple (contrived) example. AcmeSoft sells 1000 licences of v1 of their product in year 1, 2000 licences of v2 of their product in year 2, 3000 licences of v3 of their product in year 3 etc. Each year 50% of the customers who bought the previous version (new or as an upgrade) pay to upgrade to the latest version. The upgrade costs them 50% of the initial purchase. How much is the upgrade revenue worth? We can create a simple model in Excel:

Income new licences (blue) vs income from upgrades (red). Click to enlarge.

Percentage of annual income from upgrades. Click to enlarge.

In year 8 the upgrade income is actually worth more the new licence income. By year 10 upgrades are worth some 60% of yearly income for the product. If the product has a 10 year lifespan, nearly 50% of the total income from the product will be from upgrades. So it only makes commercial sense to give free upgrades for life if this will at least double the conversion ratio[1]. This seems highly unlikely. You can always try changing your upgrade policy and measure what effect it has on your conversion rate. Not much, I would guess (if anyone has tried it, I would be interested to know the results).

Even in a more pessimistic model where only 30% of customers upgrade and they only pay 30% of the new licence fee, upgrades still account for nearly 25% of total income over 10 years. You can download the spreadsheet and play with the parameters yourself.

Upgrade income becomes particularly important when:

A product has a long life span.
Customers are very likely to upgrade to a new version.
There is little growth in new sales.

In the worst case you could end up with a product with a huge customer base built up over a long period, but which makes very few new sales as it has saturated the market. Free major upgrades would mean that each major release is then going to result in large expense (developent and support) but very little income. Microsoft must be very happy they didn’t offer free upgrades for life on Windows or Office!

I don’t see anything unreasonable about charging for major upgrades. The vendor has to do additional work to add the new features and existing customers can choose whether the new features are worth the upgrade fee. However customers have certain (not unreasonable) expectations for paid upgrades:

The fact that the customer is expected to pay for major upgrades needs to be made clear before purchase.
Any major bugs in version n should be fixed before releasing version n+1.
A major upgrade should have significant new features.
Major upgrades should not be released more than once every 12 months.
The upgrade fee should be reasonable. Around 40% of the cost of a new licence seems typical.
There should be a grace period for free upgrades. E.g. If I buy v1 of a product on 01-Jan I don’t expect to have to pay an upgrade fee for v2 released on 02-Jan. Typically this grace period is 3-6 months.

If you are offering free upgrades for life currently, you can change your policy to paid major upgrades. But, obviously, you will need to honour free upgrades for everyone who purchases before the change of policy.

There are some, apparently successful, companies that offer free upgrades for life (Axialis for example). But I have heard many tales of small software vendors regretting their initial decision to give free upgrades for life. The easiest customer to sell to is the one you already have. If you don’t charge for major upgrades, are you leaving large amounts of money on the table?

[1]Ignoring inflation, interest etc.

Cookie tracking for profit and pleasure

It is great to make sales. But you really need to know where these sales are coming from to optimise your marketing. A simple and effective way to do this is through cookie tracking. The basic process is:

A visitor arrives at a web page on your site.
A script on your web page stores a small file (cookie) on their computer with some tracking details, e.g. the web page they came from, the date they arrived and the page they arrived at.
As they navigate to other pages the Javascript on these pages recognises that the cookie already exists and doesn’t modify it.
When (if) the visitor makes a purchase, the contents of the cookie are sent through to your payment provider.
Your payment provider sends back the cookie data with all the other information about the sale.

From the referrer you can find out what your customer typed into a search engine to find you. For example if the referrer is:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=backup software

You can infer that the purchaser found you by typing “backup software” into Google. This is incredibly useful information. Once you have amassed enough of it you can find out which keywords are most effective at selling your product. For example, whether “back-up software” makes more sales than “backup software” or “back-up programs”. This can be very helpful for fine-tuning your marketing message, SEO and PPC campaigns. You can also find out which websites purchasers are being referred from, and even how long purchasers take to make a sale after first arriving at your site.

You can get a lot of this information from Google Adwords conversion tracking. But you will only get data on sales through Adwords. I want data on all my sales. You can also get some of this information through Google Analytics. But you can only get the information in the form that Analytics wants you to have it and the price is allowing Google to see all this data as well. So I think it is well worth doing your own tracking, even if you are using Adwords conversion tracking and Analytics.

If you do use tracking cookies you will find that there is no cookie data for many transactions or the cookie data is unreliable. Reasons for this include:

The cookie has expired before the customer made the purchase.
The cookie has been pushed out of the cache by other cookies. Browsers only have a limited cookie cache, and your cookie might be pushed out of the cache by others long before any expiration date you set.
A different person is buying the software to the person who first arrived at your site.
A different computer or browser is used to buy the software to the one use to find the site.
The customer clicked a button in your desktop software (not a browser) to go to your site, so there is no referrer information.
A firewall or other software is blocking cookies.
The customer has disabled JavaScript in their browser.

So cookie tracking data is never going to be particularly reliable. My own data shows that about 30% of sales don’t return cookie data. But it is likely to be considerably worse for B2B sales due to the longer sales cycles and the increased likelihood of the buyer not be being the person who first found the product.

With these caveats in mind, I think it is worth the time to set up cookie tracking. It is pretty quick and easy to do. You can even use the free JavaScript published at www.webmarketingplus.co.uk. Note the conditions of use. Note also what an ugly language JavaScript is[1]. I recommend placing the JavaScript in a single file which you include in each page, so you only have a single place to make modifications, for example:

Sending the contents of the cookie to your payment provider is also quite straightforward. For example, for e-junkie I just use some JavaScript to extract the cookie contents and append:

&custom=<cookie contents>

to the end of the ‘Buy now’ button URL e-junkie gives you. The cookie data then comes back to me in the ‘custom:’ field of the e-junkie sale confirmation email (I believe all the major e-commerce providers support something similar). I then store the cookie data along with all the other sales data. I can use this data to generate various graphs and reports, including top-selling keywords and a graph of the time-taken to purchase. Unlike much of the data you get from Analytics this is data you can really use, e.g. for the top selling keywords:

Make sure they are in your Adwords campaign.
Write additional content pages based around these keywords to attract targeted traffic.
Consider including these keywords in the strapline on your home page.

The use of cookies does have privacy implications, but these are often overstated. In theory all the information in a cookie could be retrieved from server log files, cookies are just a more convenient way or doing it. Users can also disable cookies in their browser settings or using other software. I think it is fine to use cookies as long as you make this clear to your visitors. You should still have a clearly stated privacy policy for your website and this should contain a brief description of what information you are storing in cookies.

Knowing a bit about cookies can also help you as a consumer. A while back I was interested in buying a large VDU from Dell. I browsed around their site and found a good deal. I went back some time later to buy the monitor after I had bought a new PC, but the price had gone up considerably. On a hunch I deleted Dell’s cookie and refreshed the page. The price dropped back to the original price. I believe that Dell knew from a cookie that:

I had logged in as a business user; and
Had just purchased a new PC from Dell.

Consequently they expected me to be less price sensitive than a consumer shopping for just a VDU and upped the price. I can’t prove this. It is also possible (but unlikely) that they just happened to drop the price in the few seconds before I did a refresh. Anyway, try it next time you want to buy something expensive online. Note that it might be easier to use another browser (e.g. Opera or Safari) than to delete cookies. Let me know if you get a similar result.

[1] It has been said that JavaScript bears as much resemblance to Java as the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant bears to the Taj Mahal. And Java is hardly a ‘looker’.

Using defence in depth to produce high quality software

‘Defence in depth’ is a military strategy where the attacker is allowed to penetrate the defender’s lines, but is then gradually worn down by successive layers of defences. This strategy was famously used by the Soviet Army to halt the German blitzkrieg at the battle of Kursk, using a vast defensive network including trenches, minefields and gun emplacements. Defence in depth also has parallels in non-military applications. I use a defence in depth approach to detect bugs in my code. A bug has to pass through multiple layers of defences undetected before it can cause problems for my customers.

Layer 1: Compiler warnings

Compiler warnings can help to spot many potential bugs. Crank your compiler warnings up to maximum sensitivity to get the most benefit.

Layer 2: Static analysis

Static analysis takes over where compiler warnings leave off, examining code in great detail looking for potential errors. An example static analyser is Gimpel PC-Lint for C and C++. PC-Lint performs hundreds of checks for known issues in C/C++ code. The flip side of it’s thoroughness is that it can be difficult to spot real issues amongst the vast numbers of warnings and it can take some time to fine-tune the checking to a useful level.

Layer 3: Code review

A fresh set of eyes looking at your code will often spot problems that you didn’t see. There are various ways to go about this, including formal Fagan inspections, Extreme Programming style pair programming and informal reviews. There is quite a lot of documented evidence to suggest that this is one of the most effective ways to find bugs. It is also an excellent way to mentor less experienced programmers. But it is time consuming and can be hard on the ego of the person being reviewed. Also it isn’t really an option for solo developers

Layer 4: Self-checking

Of the vast space of states that a program can occupy, usually only a minority will be valid. E.g. it might makes no sense to set a zero or negative radius for a circle. We can check for invalid states in C/C++ with an assert() macro:

class Circle
{
    public:
        void setRadius( double radius );
    private:
        double m_radius;
}

void Circle::setRadius( double radius )
{
    assert( radius > 0.0 );
    m_radius = radius;
}

The program will now halt with a warning message if the radius is set inappropriately. This can be very helpful for finding bugs during testing. Assertions can also be useful for setting pre-conditions and post-conditions:

    void List::remove( Item* i )
    {
        assert( contains( i ) );
        ...
        assert( !contains( i ) );
    }

Or detecting when an unexpected branch is executed:

    switch ( shape )
    {
        case Shape::Square:
            ...
        break;

        case Shape::Rectangle:
            ...
        break;

        case Shape::Circle:
            ...
        break;

        case Shape::Ellipse:
            ...
        break;

        default:
            assert( false ); // shouldn't get here
        break;
    }

Assertions are not compiled into release versions of the software, which means they don’t incur any overhead in production code. But this also means:

Assertions are not a substitute for proper error handling. They should only be used to check for states that should never occur, regardless of the program input.
Calls to an assert() must not change the program state, or the debug and release versions will behave differently.

Different languages have different approaches, for example pre and post conditions are built into the Eiffel language.

Layer 5: Dynamic analysis

Dynamic checking usually involves automatically instrumenting the code in some way so that it’s runtime behaviour can be checked for potential problems such as: array bound violations, reading memory that hasn’t be written to and memory leaks. An example dynamic analyser is the excellent and free Valgrind for Linux. There are a few dynamic analysers for Windows, but they tend to be expensive. The only one I have tried in the last few years was Purify and it was flaky (do IBM/Rational actually use their own tools?).

Layer 6: Unit testing

Unit testing requires the creation of a test harness to execute various tests on a small unit of code (typically a class or function) and flag any errors. Ideally the unit tests should then be executed every time you make a change to the code. You can write your own test harnesses from scratch, but it probably makes more sense to use one of the existing frameworks, such as: NUnit (.NET), JUnit (Java), QUnit (Qt) etc.

According to the Test Driven Development approach you should write your unit tests before you write the code. This makes a lot of sense, but requires discipline.

Layer 7: Integration testing

Integration testing involves testing that different modules of the system work correctly together, particularly the interfaces between your code and hardware or third party libraries.

Layer 8: System testing

System testing is testing the system in it’s entirety, as delivered to the end-user. System testing can be done manually or automatically, using a test scripting tool.

Unit, integration and system testing should ideally be done using a coverage tool such as Coverage Validator to check that the testing is sufficiently thorough.

Layer 9: Regression testing

Regression testing involves running a series of tests and comparing the results to the same input data run on the previous release of the system. Any differences may be the result of bugs introduced since the last release. Regression testing works particularly well on systems that take a single input file and produce a single output file – the output file can just be diff’ed against the previous output.

Layer 10: Third party testing

Different users have different patterns of usage. You might prefer drag and drop, someone else might use right-click a lot and yet another person might prefer keyboard accelerators. So it would be unwise to release a system that has only ever been tested by the developer. Furthermore, the developer inevitably makes all sorts of assumptions about how the software will be used. Some of those assumptions will almost certainly be wrong.

There are a number of companies that can be paid by the day to do third party testing. I have used softwareexaminer.com in the past with some success.

Layer 11: Beta testing

End-user systems can vary in processor speed, memory, screen resolution, video card, font size, language choice, operating system version/update level and installed software. So it is necessary to test your software on a representative range of supported hardware + operating system + installed software. Typically this is done by recruiting users who are keen to try out new features, for example through a newsletter. Unfortunately it isn’t always easy to get good feedback from beta testers.

Layer 12: Crash reporting

If each of the above 11 layers of defence catches 50% of the bugs missed by the previous layer, we would expect only 1 bug in 2,048 to make it into production code undetected. Assuming your coding isn’t spectacularly sloppy in the first place, you should end up with very few bugs in your production code. But, inevitably, some will still slip through. You can catch the ones that crash your software with built-in crash reporting. This is less than ideal for the person whose software crashed. But it allows you to get detailed feedback on crashes and consequently get fixes out much faster.

I rolled my own crash reporting for Windows and MacOSX. On Windows the magic function call is SetUnhandledExceptionFilter. You can also sign up to the Windows Winqual program to receive crash reports via Windows’ own crash reporting. But, after my deeply demoralising encounter with Winqual as part of getting the “works with Vista” logo, I would rather take dance lessons from Steve Ballmer.

Test what you ship, ship what you test

A change of a single byte in your binaries could be the difference between a solid release and a release with a showstopper bug. Consequently you should only ship the binaries you have tested. Don’t ship the release version after only having tested the debug version and don’t ship your software after a bug fix without re-doing the QA, no matter how ‘trivial’ the fix. Sometimes it is better to ship with minor (but known) bugs than to try to fix these bugs and risk introducing new (and potentially much worse) bugs.

Cross-platform development

I find that shipping my software on Windows and MacOSX from a single code base has advantages for QA.

different tools with different strengths are available on each platform
the Gnu C++ compiler may warn about issues that the Visual Studio C++ compiler doesn’t (and vice versa)
a memory error that is intermittent and hard to track down on Windows might be much easier to find on MacOSX (and vice versa)

Conclusion

For the best results you need your layers of checks to be part of your day-to-day development, not something you do just before a release. This is best done by automating them as much as possible, e.g.:

setting the compiler to treat warnings as errors
performing static analysis and unit tests on code check-in
running regression tests on the latest version of the code every night

Also you should design your software in such a way that it is easy to test. E.g. building in log file output can make it much easier to perform regression tests.

Defence in depth can find a high percentage of bugs. But obviously the more bugs you start with the more bugs that will end up in your code. So it doesn’t remove the need for good coding practices. Quality can’t be ‘tested in’ to code afterwards.

I have used all 12 layers of defence above at some point in my career. Currently I am not using static analysis (I must update that PC-Lint licence), code review (I am a solo developer) and dynamic analysis (I don’t currently have a dynamic analyser for Windows or MacOSX). I could also do better on unit testing. But according to my crash reporting, the latest version of PerfectTablePlan has crashed just three times in the last 5000+ downloads (the same bug each time, somewhere deep down in the Qt print engine). Not all customer click the ‘Submit’ button to send the crash reports and crashes aren’t the only type of bug, but I think this is indicative of a good level of quality. It is probably a lot better than most of the other consumer software my customers use[1]. Assuming the crash reporting isn’t buggy, of course…

[1]Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office crash on a daily basis on my current machine.

Laptop

Laptop bag

Back-ups

Internet access

Conclusion

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Value added resellers

Value subtracted resellers

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Accountants

Setting up a company

Banking

Invoices

Bookkeeping

Currencies

Tax

Additional resources

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1. Setup your work environment to be ergonomic

2. Try using an ergonomic mouse and keyboard

3. Remember to look up from your monitor

4. Sit up and stop slouching

5. Keep yourself hydrated

6. Take regular rest breaks

7. Look after yourself before it is too late

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Layer 1: Compiler warnings

Layer 2: Static analysis

Layer 3: Code review

Layer 4: Self-checking

Layer 5: Dynamic analysis

Layer 6: Unit testing

Layer 7: Integration testing

Layer 8: System testing

Layer 9: Regression testing

Layer 10: Third party testing

Layer 11: Beta testing

Layer 12: Crash reporting

Test what you ship, ship what you test

Cross-platform development

Conclusion

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