SketchUp Aftermarket Economics
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Is this an appropriate place to ask a question about the economics of the SketchUp aftermarket?
I'm rapidly finishing my tutorial, and beginning to think about marketing channels. I'm not sure I'm liking what I'm thinking.
You Ruby masters seem to be working inside maybe 5% of your whole market, to use Chris's number. From Google's perspective, maybe 95% of SketchUp users don't have a clue how great their product is. From my perspective, approximately 100% of the people who DL SketchUp for the first time don't know that there is a learning alternative.
Symptomatic aside: I'm looking at the forum's built-in spell checker underscore "SketchUP" as it's not part of its vocabulary.
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@martinrinehart said:
From my perspective, approximately 100% of the people who DL SketchUp for the first time don't know that there is a learning alternative.
Like people seem to treat most things it seems. There appear to be an increasing expectation that software just works exactly as they expect it to. And if it doesn't, then they drop it before they've really tried.
And when people give up on Sketchup - then I don't think they'll have much luck with any other package. As 3D modelling packages goes: SketchUp probably has the easiest learning curve.As for plugins and people's awareness: I get the impression that people come across them on a word of mouth basis. When I started to use SU, I found out about plugins from co-workers. The SU's website doesn't seem to promote them much. I certainly would not have guessed they'd be as useful as the ones you find here at SCF.
@martinrinehart said:
Symptomatic aside: I'm looking at the forum's built-in spell checker underscore "SketchUP" as it's not part of its vocabulary.
This forum got a spell checker..?
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In a former life, I founded and ran an Xbase (dBASE, Clipper, FoxPro, ...) aftermarket company. It was successful as we had two excellent marketing channels.
The Clipper community had about 40 active clubs, nationwide. A press release about your latest and 40 stamps was all it took to appear in 40 newsletters.
There was also a small magazine, DataBased Advisor that was read avidly by Xbasers. A full page ad wasn't expensive and almost every reader was your potential buyer.
I'm trying to think of ways to reach my audience: SketchUp newbies. Best I'm coming up with is to turn promptly to treeware, as the newbie might head to Amazon when s/he finds out that SU has a bit of a learning curve. Treeware in the age of YouTube.
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