Need your ideas about how Comodo can generate revenue from free products! :-)

[Guest]

[Ronald L.]

I guess word of mouth is the best advertisment around.  Heard about you through my computer geek.  I think your product is great and will tell my friends about it.  Good idea to make t-shirts up with your logo and maybe an ask me sign or something like that.  I would buy one.  Hey I live in Canada and if you can make them I would buy one or even buy a bunch and sell them to my friends for zero profit just to spread the word.  Every one likes free stuff, just see what they are giving away free here in Vancouver. You have to watch the news from Global TV Channel 9 here on Tuesday the 27th 2007 to see what I mean.  Great job guys and girls keep up the good work.... Ron

[olddog1947]

Greeting to all, and a special hello to Melih,

I am new here and just starting to get introduced to this product, as a matter of fact I will be spending the next few days trying to get this puppy working.

I will admit that I have not read all the pages of this thread, I got worn down somewhere around page six so I might of missed something along the lines of what I am about to suggest, if I did then I apologize. Anyway, here goes.

I have read with great interest the ideas of how to gain revenue from this product. Many of these ideas involve additional expendatures before gaining a return, especially the development of a second product that is same as/similar to the existing product. One possible way to start generating revenue is providing customized installations of existing products on users machines.

I, like so many of the users out there today, spend an ungodly amount of time trying to understand just what a piece of software is trying to tell you. Run a HiJackThis log and see what it tells the majority of users out there, or run a program scan with just about any piece of "protective" software and try to understand what it says. That is where I start running to boards and google searches to see what is really being said.

I would be more than willing to pay a fair price for someone to install, or, oversee the installation of this product and then provide me with an education as to how it works and what I need to watch out for. You could provide all kinds of levels of service that could include remote access (I believe another one of your products), evaluations of logs and reports, and on and on.

I realize that some of these services are provided through boards such as this one, but they only provide limited service by un-compensated people who are nice enough to give up their time and expertise.

The great buzz word today is "customer service" and how people who have paid money for something do not expect to spend a couple of hours on hold and then be talked down to for paying their wages. If I am given something for free, how could I not consider paying for additional benefits that would only make my experience with that product so much better.

This particular model could be applied at all levels of usage, from personal to business, with only the pricing structure being different.

A book, a coffee mug or a tee-shirt would be great, but a piece of software that is designed to work on my machine as it stands would trump all of those things.

If this sounds interesting to you, let me know and I will try to expand my thinking on this.

That was fun, I feel like I am sitting in the Comodo boardroom.

[Melih]

Every user have their voices heard in our boardroom!

Melih

[peepingtom]

Perhaps you could sell pressed CDs? It could be like a pseudo-donation.
Maybe you could bundle it with a search engine toolbar or something non-invasive.

[aacm]

Hello I'm new in this forum..
however I LOVVVEE comodo my idea is why not offered license (well I know you have it) but If people donate you guys can give little extra.. I donate to some software companies like yours and they sent me back serial number and offer me others gooddies.. I think people will donate instead buying something. You could generated source income like this .. I think!!!?? How about you???

[Cliffhucker]

Give me a job;
and I will tell you for free.  JK

Cross marketing.  I.E.  "Comodo Condoms"

Tshirts: "protect your computer and alot more!"

Condoms that promote firewalls and firewalls that promote safe sex.

Its getting late (and there's a woot-off going), so I'll have to come back and modify this one. lol

[panic]

Give me a job;
and I will tell you for free.  JK

Cross marketing.  I.E.  "Comodo Condoms"

Tshirts: "protect your computer and alot more!"

Condoms that promote firewalls and firewalls that promote safe sex.

Its getting late (and there's a woot-off going), so I'll have to come back and modify this one. lol

Great idea. All the Universities in New South Wales distribute free condoms through the Students Union and these giveaways are usually sponsored by a large corporation, but they don't cross brand the condoms, just give away generic branded ones. This would tie in nicely with the concepts of Trust and Security.

ewen :-)

[Cliffhucker]

This would tie in nicely with the concepts of Trust and Security.

Exactly.  Lots of potential for cross marketing and reaching otherwise unreachable market sectors.

And you reach people other than geeks like me (i.e. people with life's.) who just read posts all night in a gazillion different forums.

Comodo Firewall III for your PC and Comodo Condoms for your PP "we gotcha covered"

[Damien_Kane]

Ideas (best ones probably 9 & 10)

1. If you wanna donate, click here (Spybot model)

2. Charge businesses and not home users.

3. Condition of download: subscriber details can be sold to third parties (erk - spam alert!)

4. Find a sponsor or sponsors who are advertised on your site (pay per click)

5. Buy the product - lifetime upgrades?

6. Free product - purchase yearly licence?

7. Charge $1 for all products. Tiz nothing but I reckon you'll have $100,000 within a reasonable time. What's a dollar? I'd pay it!!!!!

8. Run competitions. $x entry fee $y prize and U earn $z.

9. Get in eBay's pocket as a secure on-line transactioner to compete against PayPal. Groovy.

OK. I have to get 10 .... hmm

10. Set up a secure transaction site on behalf of businesses - autoprocess payments, batch or singulars. For example, see www.eMatters.com.au

Crikey, hope this helps.
Freakyfied

[PapaSmurf]

In order to make money in electronic security, you have to advertise on radio/TV.
Most folks who surf the web have learned to ignore or prevent ad banners and the like from popping in, so advertising on the web is not as productive as people seem to think.
If you want to generate the revenue, you are going to have to advertise to businesses showing that the Comodo family of security is the best way to go. You still have Norton and McAfee to deal with and a couple of others, but I think a SMART side by side comparison chart showing independent test results would get peoples attention. And hey, as dumb as it seems, T-Shirts and hats with logos are a great way to get name recognition.
Just my 2 cents.

[Andreas]

Hi Melih!

I think, i have an idea for you!

Please, look on www.sygate.de. This an inofficial german Sygate-Firewall-Forum.
Sygate-User can click "Forum" and can discuss, ... .
Look, the forum has banner.

Comodo Security can be completely free, but with the Comodo-Forum you earn money with banner and other things.

What do you think about this idea?

[Melih]

Hi Melih!

I think, i have an idea for you!

Please, look on www.sygate.de. This an inofficial german Sygate-Firewall-Forum.
Sygate-User can click "Forum" and can discuss, ... .
Look, the forum has banner.

Comodo Security can be completely free, but with the Comodo-Forum you earn money with banner and other things.

What do you think about this idea?

possible, however not my preference as i would like to keep our forums free of any adverts.

thanks
Melih

[cheber]

Maybe mentioned before but as you don't have a "search within thread" feature...

CFP idea:
Add on the alert popups a Google searchbox. When pressing enter/searchbutton it'll open the search in the browser. Another good place for a searchbox would be at the top of the program so that anywhere you are in the program you can do a search.
I know Firefox makes some money for every search made with its Google searchbox.

[metrolife]

 ;DWELL the goggle thing sounds good. but you have to solict other venders also. and more reveiws gotta help. so its back to basic networking.

[watmuhibah]

i am from malaysia,and my engrish writing is not so good hope youcan understand what i am wrighting here.
The word bigges money is come from advertising,so i sugest when we using your antivirust freeversion to scan our home pc,on the same time your programe is scaning the advertisment like using radio advertisment is being run too,something like when i am using cd cleaner to cleane my cd head the cd is play aome song too.is it posiber to do that in your programe???
so when somebody is not interest in the advetismen,he just need to swith the sound off,until ur programe scaning is finish,the advetisment is finish too.
BUT I NEVER COME ACROST THIS TYPE OF ANTIVIRUST,SO I THING IS HARD TO WRITE THE PROGRAME INTO IT,THAN THE ADVERTIMEN HAVE TO UPDATE EVERYTIME.
HOPE YOU CAN MAKE IT COME TRUE,THAN COKE OR PEPSI WILL BE THE BIGGEST COSTOMER FOR YOU WHEN YOUR ANTIVIRUS IS USING WORDWIDE LIKE GOOGLE.

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