I've actually never seen this done. The schools and companies in my area all have systems that integrate the picture taking with the identity information and automatically print a card. What you're describing simply requires too much skill and time.
So you've built a product, but you're competing with packaged systems. I did a quick search and picked the first (non-ad) link: http://www.idsecurityonline.com/photo-id-systems/?gclid=CI2s.... It looks to me like you assumed you'd found a niche market without realizing the breadth of competition. Sorry ... and good luck.
This matters because we cannot think of the software in question as having the power to reduce costs by very much. If Photoshop is being used, it may be an unlicensed copy, and if a person has to do this job 10 hours a week, it may cost about 1200 USD per year.
Consider that programming it made you learn new things!
1) You don't get disappointed that much to see others also have thought of it before (comparing to the shocking moment of discovering that someone else has already done it better by the time you are almost finishing your product). 2) It helps me to look/analyze what my kind of different ideas my competitors have thought about the product. If they have a crappier version of what I have in mind, then I am happy to see that there is an actual potential to beat them. If they are in a far better condition, then I force myself to think "what else could be added to this". If there is not much idea I can extent the product into, usually I give up since there is not much point of wasting time.
Sure, a Windows app won't own the market. But there are may be many small organizations within and without the education sector that could streamline their organizations - conference organizers, wedding planners, caterers etc. Think mom_and_pop with XP not organizations with IT. Think Bingo Card Creator[that's HNer Patrick McKenzie]
There's money in the long tail where integrated solutions and government contracts are rare. Looking at it another way, the existence of the packaged systems probably validates the market and the developer's intuition that it scales. Likewise, his experience that people use Photoshop to hand craft ID's shows that it is underserved.
Sure, a Windows app won't own the market. But there are may be many small organizations within and without the education sector that could streamline their organizations - conference organizers, wedding planners, caterers etc. Think mom_and_pop with XP not organizations with IT. Think Bingo Card Creator[that's HNer Patrick McKenzie]
There's money in the long tail where integrated solutions and government contracts are rareLooking at it another way, the existence of the packaged systems probably validates the market and the developer's intuition that it scales. Likewise, his experience that people use Photoshop to hand craft ID's shows that it is underserved.
Sure, a Windows app won't own the market. But there are may be many small organizations within and without the education sector that could streamline their organizations - conference organizers, wedding planners, caterers etc. Think mom_and_pop with XP not organizations with IT. Think Bingo Card Creator[that's HNer Patrick McKenzie]
There's money in the long tail where integrated solutions and government contracts are rare. Looking at it another way, the existence of the packaged systems probably validates the market and the developer's intuition that it scales. Likewise, his experience that people use Photoshop to hand craft ID's shows that it is underserved.
Sure, a Windows app won't own the market. But there are may be many small organizations within and without the education sector that could streamline their organizations - conference organizers, wedding planners, caterers etc. Think mom_and_pop with XP not organizations with IT. Think Bingo Card Creator[that's HNer Patrick McKenzie]
There's money in the long tail where integrated solutions and government contracts are rare
Your customer is not the one actually making the cards, rather their boss. Making the cards only costs the employees time, something they don't mind wasting for the most part. For the manager or owner it directly costs money, time wasted on making cards costs the employer money in the form of wages. They are also the one with the purchasing power in an organization like a school.
Creating a more efficient organization is generally speaking not part of the scope of someone making ID cards, but it certainly is for their employers or managers.
Point still stands though.
This is the situation where both the Boss and the Employee have nothing (or little to gain). It may appear weird, but indulge me. I have seen this happen over and over.
- Say employees are paid X amount a month. Now, with their current method, they can be slimey and not deliver, and then tell the boss it's complicated, Photoshop, etc.. So it's just few cards to deliver per day.
Maybe they have their macros, etc, to speed stuff up (not to the point of your software), but they only speed things up when they need to, and they slow them when they need a break. A card can take up an eternity, just because it's easier to do work on the same thing for 6 hours: You don't think much. Start the second thing for 2 hours and go home.
So a software that speeds this whole thing risks taking control out of these employees, because there would be a clear metric, a clear number of cards to expect.
It doesn't "depend" on anything anymore. They can't hustle their way around it.
Second problem is that, these employees make X amount a month, producing y cards.. With your software, they would still make that amount with 10y cards, so they have nothing to gain, really.
Sure, they're making more cards but "what's in it for me".
There is one, additional tricky part: The boss doesn't want it, and why..
The boss is paying the employee X dollars/month and the employee produces, say 10 cards/day to fill a 30 cards/day order from their clients.
With your software, the employee produces the whole 30 cards/day, and then what ? Sits there all day ?
Even for the boss, an order can wait 3 days to fill. No problem. The employee is there, he's being paid anyway, so whether it takes 1 day or 3 days is irrelevant.
The reason they're not interested is that they don't ship that many cards anyway, so the benefit of having your software is only marginal.
But maybe you can do the following.. Make your own company and gut them.
Or if you don't want to, and you're willing to force yourself upon them, you can contact their clients and ask them if they had something against your software (which ?)..
The software that makes a gazillion cards per day your contractor doesn't want to buy/licence, making you wait to get your cards..
Universities (probably government bureaucracies also) will hang on to some of the most nonsensical manual processes simply because they are loathe to automate anything to the point where a job position might become unnecessary. There are many reasons for this, but mainly that an administrative appointement in a university carries prestige and clout proportionate to its number of subordinate positions. Along with the number of subordinates, the size of the budget it commands is also a critical signal. Maintaining---and if possible, growing---these two peacock feathers is the driving rationale for most of the idiocy you see in university administration.
If you eliminate the need for a staff job, you reduce the budget and the number of reports the boss has. So the boss will be very protective of his/her little fiefdom and will reject any attempts to automate or improve efficnency in any way that might eliminate any jobs.
I passed by a stocking area in my Electronics faculty, where I catched a glimpse of Tektronix scopes, so I entered.
I asked the man in charge there what's up with those, he said they were obsolete (?) and the faculty doesn't need them anymore.. Sweet. I asked if I can buy them (there were a lot of scopes, function generators, power supplies, etc).
He said I couldn't buy them. He said they're selling them to some companies "by the kilogramme". Most of these scopes probably had some cap going nuts to be replaced or something. I couldn't buy them because it needs to go through some regulations, and offerings, and contracts, etc.
I'm just a student who'd loved to have a Tektronix "scope". They're selling them as metal. If it came from any other entity, I would've understood.. But from the Electronics' faculty, it's kind of sad.
Companies don't care about saving money. Even when the amount is the same, they're much more receptive to pitches that involve them making extra money.
I don't think that's the problem. People will pay if what you build solves their problem. More specifically, they'll pay if they see that what you build solves their problem.
Before building, you should check:
1. Do they have a problem?
2. Do they know they have a problem?
3. How much of a problem is it for them?
4. Who, exactly, has the ability to act on this problem?
5. What language do they use to describe the problem?
6. Do they have any requirements that aren't obvious to me? Can I incorporate them into what I'm building?
If this sounds like marketing, it is, but it's the good sort. Building something people don't actually want is a perennial problem.
Rather than trying to sell what you have, figure out what they want. Then you'll know whether to:
1. Change who you're talking to
2. Change how you're talking about the product
3. Modify the product
4. Abandon ship
OP is fighting that urge, especially since they're not selling a full packaged solution outside of badge creation - namely, identity management, or security access controls, etc. Customers may not be thrilled with the manual process, but don't find it a problem they'd spend money on. You have to know your audience, and either appeal to their problem, be cheap enough that it doesn't matter, or abort.
Save yourself time and money and find a different market or stop now. If you are a one or two man shop (or similar) with limited resources, you will likely fail. Educating a market is costly and time consuming, and changing mindsets even moreso.
Sorry to be blunt, but been there too many times. Good luck.
If any of the sales deal with Government entities there could be a million dumb reasons. I've seen: someone doesn't believe that there much be a catch with something so cheap--decides to buy the thing that costs tens of thousands more instead, manager decides they don't want to process paperwork for a new integration regardless of cost savings, management doesn't want something cloud based so they can "have more control over it" by buying servers, "the sales guy emails me alot, so it's kinda creeping me out", etc...,etc...
I also see alot of times the people making the decisions on technology for organizations (again, Government) are the people who don't even own computers at home and don't have even a basic fundamental understanding of the concepts of what they are dealing with. If the IT departments are brought it, it's more of a yes/no we can/cannot support whatever it is you are presenting rather than that sucks or this is smart. Actually, some of the stuff IT was suggesting boggled my mind too. It seemed like they were very against using anything internet based...
"Yeah, but our deadline's in 2 weeks and there's no way we could go through the procurement process by then. How's that custom solution coming?"
If you're targeting consumers, they can be very fickle. As we've seen time and again, they easily shell out $5 for a cup of coffee but complain about $1 mobile applications.
If you're targeting businesses, you got a better shot. Demonstrate how much money you're saving a business, and they'll easily buy. But if your product doesn't create a significant amount of value, it'll be hard to change the status quo.
When buying a mobile app, I may be buying myself a waste of time. Which is double loss.
Most, if not all, of the mobile apps I've bought so far either have free Lite companions or come free with an option to unlock all functions via an in-app purchase.
I think a better marketing plan is to charge a monthly subscription. I have no data on this, but I believe a lot more people would rather pay $5/mo indefinitely rather than $400 one time.
Remember he's selling to large orgs. They have set budgets (often use it or lose it next year), and getting approval for a $400 payment might be easier than recurring payments.
Go and talk to the business owners or managers of those ID making people.
people don't. There is a market and you have to understand it before making your product.
It's not a question of how much effort you put, it's how much value the customer can see in it.
Ask yourself this: do you like to pay top-dollar for every product and service you buy? There's your answer. If given the choice, you would also want everything for free.
What was the asking price for the software? $1 or $1,000 changes the calculus in the customer's mind. Did you consider a subscription-based service? Charge a small amount every month and you get a steady source of income, and the customer thinks they're getting a deal.
> The creation of ID card is generally done with > photoshop and separately edited for each card
This may be true for an institution you're familiar with, but cannot possibly be true everywhere. ID badges are ubiquitous and creating them en masse is a common problem (Google the competition: http://bit.ly/1sW6BKq). Photoshop is expensive, and while it's great at putting mustaches on the faces of the ID photos, it's not great for creating a ton of badges. Not to mention that it's difficult to find administrators with Photoshop skills that want to remain administrators.
>> people want everything for free just everything of that value to them. Give them a software that turns them 20 yrs old and they will pay.
If you are about to give up on putting more energy into it, talk to your friends maybe someone wants to jump on board and put energy into selling it.
Hey, you are around 22, already experiencing a seeming-to-fail business. Awesome. Extract your take-aways, learn, move on. Go and read The Lean Startup if you haven't read it yet.
You may want to make is a SaaS product and as people have suggested have a free version with limited features. e.g maximum of 10 ID cards at a time.
Remember again, it is in the interest of the people that have the business of making cards to have this as complex as possible so they can charge companies more.
So you may want to pitch this to the companies directly and not the people who make the cards for them.
Try pitching to those audiences.
I always prefer to partner if I have technology that is useful to a niche market I don't have strong contacts in. They will be able to get to those who really have purchasing power and give you immediate feedback on whether there is really a market or not.
Moreover, if you can make it a webapp, even better where you can charge per ID card generated.
I have seen people having this problem and they paid decent money for the ID card generation. You are just targeting wrong audience. Don't talk to people who generate the cards, appeal to people who want the cards.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh69406...
Besides that, the most important factor is the cost of one hour of work of an employee for the boss.
This is a flawed question. People pay money based on the value delivered to them, not the effort the developer put into a project. This is tough to hear, but nobody cares if you put a lot of effort into something if it doesn't solve their problems better than their current solution. Check your ego at the door of your business if you want to be successful.
