I’ve spent the last 2 months developing a Blender addon I’m quite proud of. Since this addon needed some custom stuff, I asked my brother to help me code this (I’m not much of a coder myself).
The addon is nearly finished, there are just some few scripting bugs and stuff that need fixing. Unfortunately, my brother is away for 1 week, and without him I can’t finish the Addon.
Since I’ve already finished all the marketing slides, where I tell and show people what to expect from the addon, I was thinking to promote it in the meantime, so that when the addon finally is released, there are already people waiting to download it.
I don’t want to just say to people, be on the lookout for this new Addon, because they will most likely just forget. Instead, I somehow want them to be notified if they so wish to.
How do I do that?
The Addon will be released on Gumroad and Blender Market. Apparently there once was a pre-order option on Gumroad, but they again took it off.
It should be a trustworthy solution, like a feature directly from Gumroad. So that they don’t just have to give their e-mail, trusting me to not publishing that list
oh, IDK honestly how you can do that. I’m not fimiliar with Gumroad and Blender Market. Maybe there’s some option of notifying users? have you checked that?
Yea, I could not find anything. Maybe there is a third party site, specifically for this kind of thing? Do you know what this kind of thing is called? Is this an email list?
It depends on what you exactly want. If you say that users don’t have to give their emails because that’ll look more likely like spam, I don’t think that something like an email list thing would satisfy your needs. Of course, there are many email newsletter services, but wouldn’t that then look like spam?
Well, I dont think there is a better way, then to notify them through e-mail. At least the two sites are not offering anything like this. So i think using a trustworthy site, that creates an e-mail list is the best way to go?
I know you can contact buyers on Gumroad through their email, once they bought a product (i thnk even a free one).
Maybe it is an idea, to create a free product (with maybe some art work), that is specifically meant for then sending out notices to people, once the main addon is available?
Maybe, frankly, I have no clue. But giving customers the ability to use a free version of a product so that they’ll be able to get a paid one if they wish - is a good idea.
I mean, if you simply want to generate interest, show it off. Show people what it does, and how it could be useful for them. All you need to say is that it’s releasing Soon™.
If people like what you’re offering, then they’ll be excited for its release.
Congrats on your soon-to-be add-on; I can well imagine you’re proud.
But marketing and promotion are words I view with suspicion. Too much vaporware and unkept promises; I am very cynical about it all.
If you just want to write something that expresses your excitement with it and share that here, I’d be fine with that. That sort of thing makes me smile. You could show it off and even ask whether people might have suggestions about it. Just don’t slide into marketing hype; that always feels really out of place to me here.
In my opinion the best way to show an addon is youtube video with voiceover.
Othervice: some forum post with a few gif’s quickly shows what the addon are doing, how it solve some problems, make life easier.
As an example of good gif’s: Mesh Align Plus
Just a few sec and you can clearly realize what the addon are doing and make a decision did you need this or not.
As an example of good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdqpxrTLnOc
If addon are complicated, i.e. it contains several functions/operators its best to make a video with a marks on a timeline to different functions to help potention customers to navigate and, probably, find some function they need.
I might say “wait”. Excitement is hard to convert to sales: we are bombarded with addons. Plan your promo when the addon is fully ready. That way, you call to action can be “download now” instead of “try to remember and check back later”.
Also: test it with a small group before releasing, your tester may find bugs or find the UI confusing. If paid users find bugs, that can lead to bad reviews.
