Manish Vij – The Face of Software Development

I have been evaluating a new piece of software, Anconia
RocketPost. I posted
about it a few days ago and have been doing my flat level best to use it. The
only thing that is stopping me at this time is that for the life of me I cannot get
the image FTP features to work.

That said, I am incredibly intrigued with the product and will in all likelihood buy
it because of the amazing support that I am receiving from the developer, Manish Vij.
Manish lives in New York (I think) and is making a go of marketing his own software
product. This, more than anything, is the subject of this post.

If the discussions in the blogsphere are any indication, Manish is getting a real
life lesson in the power of the web and professional marketing. I have seen a lot
of criticism about the price at which he brought this product to market, $150. I will
grant you, that is rather absurd for any set of amazing features in an offline blog
writer. The truth is, no amount of functionality in this product space is worth that
much money. So, Manish recently lowered his price and offers a both a de-tuned and
a free version.

His marketing attempts using Google ads set off a flame war with BlogJet when he attacked
them directly in his ad. Not a good idea.

I applaude this guy wanting to make a go of it and using his undoubtedly well earned
software skills to go out on his own. It takes a lot of nerve and commitment to take
a leap like that. As he wrote me in an email, this is his day job.

Whether or not Manish succeeds with Rocket post will have less to do with his prowess
as a software developer and more to with his marketing and sales capabilities. As
much as we hate to admit it, we engineers and geeks need sales and marketing experts
to help us bring a product to market.