Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Looking for people who are interested to sell our Timesheet script on Commission Basis.


As specified in my Previous post, we had updated our Timesheet script to make it work with latest PHP version and started promoting it.

I have created a page to show the Screenshots of the script and created a video to tell about our Timesheet script, and updated our Timesheet Demo also.

And, I had spend significant amount time and effort to run Google Ads Campaign. But getting positive ROI from Google Ads campaign may be difficult as I set very low price for our Timesheet script. Instead of increasing the price, I am planning to explore various options to sell the script. As part of this plan, I would like to find people who are interested to sell our Timesheet script on
Commission Basis.

So, I posted a question about it in Reddit. And, a Reddit user made below reply.

Typed in timesheet script and codecanyon came up. Why not start there.
I replied him with below message.

I explored about codecanyon. But I don't want to list it there as I want to have control over the sales of the script. Actually my primary aim of selling the timesheet it not just to earn from the sales, but I am planning to use it as a way for finding customers for my software development company.


Let me explain in detail. Around 10 Years back, I started my Software Development Company, hired many Fresh graduates and trained them to code. I got projects by bidding on Freelance websites. Since the Margin is very low, I couldn't afford to give salary equivalent to the Corporates. So, the employees started leaving for high-paying jobs after getting trained from me. I had to spend a lot of time and energy in hiring and training new employees. And, each and every project I receive from freelance websites will be different. That means I have to train the Employees on project domain also apart from train them technically. But all my efforts will be wasted once they leave in short duration without completing the project. The other employees will find difficulty to continue the project as it will be completely different from their current project. Moreover if any project is taking time more than expected time, I couldn't figure out whether the Employee is under-performing or the Project is complex one. In summary, both Employees and Projects are variable. I want to make one thing as fixed so that I can manage the other one easily. I couldn't make the Employees as static, as I couldn't afford to pay high. So, I thought of making the Project part static. i-e Instead of bidding for various projects with different technoloy/domain/client background, I have decided to focus on a product. i-e switch from project based company to product based company.

 In the mean time I was looking for timesheet to manage our Employees and projects. I explored various timesheets including free open source projects. But I couldn't find affordable timesheet suitable for our needs. So, we developed a timesheet for our own need. Since I was looking for a product, I decided to test it with our Timesheet, and few other products. Timesheet started selling well. So, I continued updating it while stop doing the development of other products. And, the customers who bought our timesheet asked us to do custom changes and even they provided new projects also. i-e Everything was going as per my plan or expectation. i-e We need not spend time to study and train the Employees on various domains, and our clients trust us. In case of freelance sites, the customers used to trust the sites than us. So, the new approach gave us a lot of freedom and encouragement.

 Though everything is going smoothly, I couldn't speed up the Employee hiring and training process to match with the need/demand. So, personally I had to spend a lot of time and energy in completing the projects. And, therefore I couldn't spend time for the hiring/training process. In the mean time, I started earning significant money from my blog which I primarily used just for sharing my knowledge/experience software testing and development, and I started getting emails from Google/YouTube for encouraging me to earn from YouTube Channel also. I liked the passive nature of this Google Adsense earnings. And, therefore I stopped the hiring process and stopped the timesheet promotion also. And, asked the remaining Employees to work on promoting blog/channel till they leave. Finally I closed the Office at primary city and I am working from my native place with 1 or 2 Employees only. (Right now only 1 Employee just for promoting my adsense sites and Channel) The passive income gave me a lot of freedom and free time. Everything was going smoothly till 26th September when I received an email saying that I couldn't monetize my Channel by mentioning "Duplicate content" as the reason. I used to upload a lot of Creative Commons Video which are useful for our subscribers. It seems it caused the problem, though I a not having any copyright strike or community strike. And, I was allowed to reapply for monetization and waiting for their review. I don't know when they will complete the review.

These things made me think about alternate earning ways. I explored a lot of things and finally decided to go back with timesheet and plan to continue it as a backup plan even after the youtube monetization is getting enabled. I updated the timesheet to make it work with latest PHP, created a new demo video, updated the Demo environment and started posting about it social media. Even started Google Ads Campaign which didn't work effectively. That's why I am looking for other ways to sell the script. Since I learned a lot of experience about doing Business by making many mistakes, now I am slowly getting ready to put my efforts to re-initiate software development/service activities again step by step. In this situation codecanyon may not be much helpful than selling directly.
Regarding, answer for your other questions, I am slowly reactivating/reengaging with social media presence step by step.
And, I am not planning to sell more number of Scripts, as I don't want to spend all my time supporting or doing custom changes, as I have other activities like running my YouTube channel also. But I plan to do both Team building and product promotion step by step in parallel. Direct selling will help in this manner also.
And, I understand I had to learn a lot of new things with respect to PHP development. It seems a lot of things got changed in the past few years when I was not actively involved in development activities. I need to learn a lot. So, I would like to do every step very slowly.




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