During SIC last year, I’ve got the chance to attend Bob Walsh’s presentation on Business blogging for microISVs, and back then I’ve noticed how the audience was very interested in using blogs to gain more exposure and ultimately sales.

I think you can find hundreds of articles on the Web debating the importance of business blogging but not so many related to microISV and that’s why it’s an interesting subject. MicroISVs have some specific characteristics that don’t fit perfectly in the regular debates about business blogging.

I’m sure that being a one-two man company changes the perspective over blogging: it’s already hard work doing what you do, adding a blog would just be an extra hat on top of the 47 hats Bob Walsh says a microISV owner should wear. That’s why I will stay away from the classical pro-blogging articles and just try to answer some very basic questions that I’m sure you have.

Most (non-geek) people think that shareware is a type of software. Well, actually is not a type of software, it’s a way of marketing software. From the vendor’s perspective it looks like offering a 15-30 days trial should be more than enough to test the product and buy it before it expires. But even with a trial period:

• Some of the users will request a refund after the purchase saying the product is not doing what they need even after they tested it in the trial period;
• Some of the users are not convinced to buy the product in the trial period.

I bet that if you are reading the Avangate blog, you would love to hear how things are going around here. As head of the Avangate Marketing Department, I’m in the position to know a little bit about everything, which probably makes me the right person to talk about it.

Not sure if you know, but before starting Avangate, we were in the security business, with the RAV antivirus that we sold to Microsoft in 2003. And that included a lot of selling and marketing expertise we gathered during RAV’s 9 years. I know you might not perceive an eCommerce provider this way, but we are still in the business of selling software, just like you. In a way, everything that we’ve learned about selling software before applies here on a greater scale.

So, how does it feel to work for an eCommerce provider?

You know how each company has the smart guy, the lazy guy, the fat boy and the blond secretary? And from all these human typologies, I’m… the blogger guy. That’s why they trusted me enough to write the first post and jump start the Avangate blog. Still, I can’t play around with the new toy as I can see Adriana’s critical eye watching me over the desk (she’s our Web Marketing Manager) making sure I don’t make any mistakes or blogging donts.

Let me start and build some anticipation and say what this blog is about.