Next HISE Developer Hang

clevername27

@Oli-Ullmann Tell me a specific time and day, and I'll add it.

Oli Ullmann

@clevername27
Ok, then I would suggest Friday, December 13th from 5pm to 6:30pm.

d.healey

@Oli-Ullmann said in Next HISE Developer Hang:

5pm to 6:30pm.

Time zone?

Oli Ullmann

@d-healey
Ah sorry, I was referring to Germany, i.e. Berlin. The previous Doodel vote also showed me this time, which is why I adopted it.

Lindon

@clevername27 said in Next HISE Developer Hang:

@HISEnberg said in Next HISE Developer Hang:

@Lindon 's method

I've seen his installer and it's dope. If you hit him on the forum, or over DM, I'm sure he'll give you a demo.

I'd be happy to do a walk thru for everyone in the
meetup but I m away from 16th to 20th inclusive...

Lindon

@Lindon Can't do evening of 11th 12th or 13th either... sorry --- family's who'd have em...

clevername27

@Oli-Ullmann I've added it.

Christoph Hart

Unfortunately all those dates don't look good here, maybe I can join spontaneously but I'd suggest you plan the dates and topics without relying on my presence this time.

clevername27

@Lindon Next time. :)

CyberGen

Hi,

There are many technical topics I’d like you guys to cover. However, as a musician who got into HISE primarily to develop tools for personal use—and someone still on the fence about releasing anything commercially—I’d like to propose dedicating some time to discussing the state of the audio tools business.

I understand that the main goal of these meetings is to focus on HISE’s technical aspects, and the amazing folks in the forum have been great at answering any questions I’ve had so far. But I’d be very interested in hearing you discuss the business side of things.

Looking at today’s audio tool ads, you’ll often see absurd discounts (70%-80%), even for top brands. This raises the question: is it profitable at all?

Perhaps the more experienced among us could share insights about what it’s really like. Here are some of the questions I’d ask:

What kind of tools do you release?
Which ones have sold well, and which haven’t?
How many units has your top-selling product sold?
What pitfalls would you warn against?
I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?
What other tools (besides HISE) do you rely on in your workflow to release a product?
Which services and fees do you pay monthly or yearly to keep things running?
What kind of copy protection do you use, if any?
Do you release for mobile platforms?
What DAWs do you prioritize or release for?
What back-end servers do you use?
What is your pricing model: one-time purchase, subscription, or something else?
How do you advertise? Do you create your own ads or pay "content creators"?
Which platforms have yielded the best results, and which ones have been a waste of money?

I'm looking forward to the meet.
Cheers!

clevername27

@CyberGen These all sound like important and helpful questions. I'm not a vendor myself, but can share what I generally tell clients.

What pitfalls would you warn against?

Plan ahead.

Don't create a plugin, and then figure out how to market it.

Start with product idea, and then determine if and how you can sell and promote it. Ask yourself if you have the infrastructure to support customers and provide development. What are the possible technical problems (e.g. relying on OpenGL, and then macOS drops it), and how agile can you be in dealing with them?

Only after you have solid answers there should you begin development. Don't be afraid to kill an amazing plugin idea if it turns out not to be an amazing business one.

People use plugins, but they buy products. The hard truth is that the industry is full of incredible plugins that no one has, and ever will, hear of. And many leading products have poor quality over multiple domains.

Acknowledge your competition.

Know them. Foresee what's coming. But don't necessarily be dissuaded or intimidated. Being first, and being best, are often not the most important factors for success.

Have a plan.

As with musical groups, failure ends them—but so does success.

Be effective.

Focus on the areas of development that are critical for your product. Don't get bogged down in details that only you will care about. That's a hobby, not a business.

Focus.

Avoid casting too wide a net—as an independent developer, it's often better to serve a small segment of the market well. Likewise, if there's something that a small part of your customer base clamours for, don't be afraid to let it (and them) go.

Support Your customers, not your plugin.

I often recount to clients the story of a technical support rep I used to work with. He knew nothing about the product, and was incapable solving even the most basic problems. But he was consistently rated highly by customers. One reason was because he was essentially handing off the problem to a more knowledgeable rep. But the other was that he understood his goal was to make customers feel better about problems, not solve them. Listening—acknowledging the customer's frustration—is often the most important thing.

Contextualise bugs as a constant to be managed, not problems to be fixed.

As developers, we often have a strong motivation for our code to be elegant, clean, efficient, and bug-free. But none of these things are necessarily important, in and of themselves—only what their tangible results imply. Prioritise. There's a wonderful scene in a Microsoft/Apple biopic where Jobs laments to Gates, "But we're better!" And Gates correctly replies, "Nobody cares."

Keep your eyes on the prize.

Remember that the end of the day, your goal is not to make cool plugins. It's building a sustainable business with the security and work/life balance you need to feel safe, secure and satisfied.

You can be competitive without having the coolest interface, the best features or superior sound.

Nobody can have the best plugin—but you can have the best product.

CyberGen

@clevername27 Yes! Exactly. This is the kind of guidance I believe so many of us are hoping to hear during the group call. Posts like this are not often seen in the forum itself, even though these issues affect all of us who are releasing or considering releasing products. Thank you—more of this, please!

d.healey

@CyberGen said in Next HISE Developer Hang:

What kind of tools do you release?

Sample libraries, and one effect so far.

Which ones have sold well, and which haven’t?

People seem to like my Celtic instruments.

How many units has your top-selling product sold?

Of my HISE based instruments, Emerald Flute is my top seller with 1419 sold. I think my best seller overall is my Kontakt based uilleann pipes library, but that's over 10 years old so it's got a good run on my HISE stuff.

Worst seller is El Mariachi, but I just released that. I'm always thinking of sale numbers over the long term.

My most downloaded instrument is Bell & Bone (10535) but that's a freebie.

What pitfalls would you warn against?

Don't expect people who download your free stuff will want your paid products, some people just like free stuff.

I imagine most companies are one-person operations, but do you hire help occasionally?

I hire musicians, studios and graphic designers. I have occasionally hired audio editors but I much prefer to do it myself. I do all my own scripting so have never hired a scripter but I do sometimes hire developers to write little applications for me, or I pay them to enhance existing applications with features I want - usually these are tools for audio editing.

What other tools (besides HISE) do you rely on in your workflow to release a product?

Ardour, Audacity, Musescore, Signet, Loris, SoX, ffmpeg, Proxmox, shell scripts, Inkscape, GIMP, and the usual compilers and packaging tools.

Which services and fees do you pay monthly or yearly to keep things running?

Webhosting, I was using Vultr but switched to Cloudways a few weeks ago - it's similar to the control I get with Vultr but they handle the server admin.

Domains: I use Namecheap.

I use Bunny for CDN and for file hosting - much cheaper than S3.

Private email, I just switched to FastMail.

Marketing/Transactional emails, I was using Mautic + Amazon SES but I switched recently to FluentCRM + Amazon SES

Various WordPress plugins.

What kind of copy protection do you use, if any?

I don't restrict copies or use DRM but I use a license system to restrict who can download what from my server.

Do you release for mobile platforms?

Nope

What DAWs do you prioritize or release for?

Reaper, Cubase, FL Studio, Pro-Tools, Logic, Ableton

What back-end servers do you use?

If you mean for my website then I'm running Apache, previously I was using Open Lite Speed.

What is your pricing model: one-time purchase, subscription, or something else?

One time purchase. If I had a lot of products with regular updates I might consider subscription, but I would be having to supply new content every month for me to consider it a good idea for users.

How do you advertise? Do you create your own ads or pay "content creators"?

Facebook, email marketing, VI Control banners, YouTube:

Which platforms have yielded the best results, and which ones have been a waste of money?

In my experience FB is good for growing a mailing list but not great for making money.

VI Control banners don't bring in a lot either but you get some exposure. Posting in the commercial announcements forum is much better I think.

Email marketing is by far the most cost effective way to bring in money but you don't really get new customers from it. My last email brought in directly 140 Euros, not a lot but it cost me pennies so the ROI is great. I also get a lot of follow up sales from each email, especially if it's for a sale or includes a coupon.

YouTube is a good way to reach a target audience for free, either you need to grow your channel or get someone else to promote your stuff, I try to do both.

If you have a referral program for customers that can also be good, but most customers won't use it.

I also post on other sites like Reddit, KVR, and audiopluginguy

CyberGen

@d-healey This is really helpful info David. Much appreciated. Thanks.