Zilch and Delphi: Standing Strong Since 1991

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t tell your story, you may not like the story that’s been told. For more than three decades, the story of Zilch debt reduction software — built on Turbo Pascal and powered by Delphi — hasn’t really been told. Yet both Zilch and Delphi share a remarkable trait: they’ve quietly endured while so many giants of the software world have faded away.

Turbo Pascal first appeared in 1983, giving programmers an accessible, structured language at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. Three years later, in 1986, I saw Pascal for the first time when my college professor put C and Pascal source code side by side on the blackboard. The C code looked cryptic. The Pascal code? Clear as day. That choice — Pascal — shaped my entire path as a programmer.

Five years after that moment, in 1991, Zilch was born. And from the very beginning, it carried Pascal in its DNA. As Delphi evolved, Zilch evolved with it. The same clarity and stability that drew me to Pascal has allowed Zilch to keep going strong for decades.

And here’s the part I think the Delphi community will appreciate most: just as Turbo Pascal and Delphi have stood the test of time, so has Zilch. While giants like Lotus 1-2-3, Netscape Navigator, and MSN Messenger have all faded into history, Pascal/Delphi continues to endure — and so does Zilch.

👉 I just published the full story, including a list of 25+ once-dominant apps that disappeared while Zilch endured. You can read it here:
Zilch: Standing Strong Since 1991

If you’re part of the Delphi community, it would mean the world if you visited, left a comment, and helped boost the presence of this new blog. Your voice will help shine a light on one of Delphi’s quiet success stories — and on the remarkable longevity of Zilch and Delphi, standing strong together since 1991.

Semper Fi,
Gunny Mike
https://zilchworks.com

The Kinetic Technique by H. A. Overstreet (1925)

Influencing Human Behavior by H. A. Overstreet was published in 1925. I purchased an old hardcover copy of his book over a year ago because, some other book I was reading referred to it as a master work. Overstreet's book has been sitting on my oak book shelf, which was built by a very nice Mennonite man in Maryland, ever since it arrived.

I spent the weekend of November 26th and 27th entering all my "print books" into a software program called Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com) which by the way, is mainly for managing E-books.

After saving the information from an ISBN import, I began reading. I stopped on page 12 after reading what Overstreet wrote about capturing one's attention using "The Kinetic Technique".

I stopped reading because this piece of wisdom so grabbed ahold of me, I wanted to let it seep into my mind.

Two days later on Tuesday morning at 1:45 AM I woke to a racing mind. "What book talked about a dot on the wall?" I kept searching, and searching my thoughts. Nothing.

"Ah, the influencing human behavior book."

Why was this so important that it woke me up? My website (read that as I) totally violated the principle of movement. Every page on my website has the same big-ass banner. I was making all my visitors (read that as potential customers) stare at a dot on the wall. How boring is that.

I jumped out of bed right then and there and started working on removing the dot from my website. It took me a few days, but I managed to get rid of that dot. But more importantly, I learned a valuable lesson from some ink that was printed nearly 100 years ago.

Thank you Mr. H. A. Overstreet. I can't wait to see what else of yours seeps into my mind.

Influencing Human Behavior - H. A. Overstreet (page 12)

Enjoy,
Gunny Mike
https://zilchworks.com

The Biggest Mistake I Made in 2021

 I know this year isn't over yet but I'm pretty sure I won't make a bigger mistake between now and January 1st. 

Mike has been selling a software product written in Turbo Pascal & Delphi for 30 years. Mike's software was mentioned on the television show Good Morning America. Mike got very excited. Mike updated his website making the 30-second Good Morning America television segment center stage. Nobody cares Mike's software got mentioned on television (except Mike). Mike turned off potential customers who visited his website. Mike's sales dropped. Mike's a jerk. Don't be like Mike.

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned. 

I was so sure my would-be customers would feel just as excited about my software getting praise on national television as me. So sure in fact, that I posted a video of my software getting mentioned front and center on my website. And not just on the home page... but on every page.

Wrong! 

People don't care about me. People care about themselves.

People don't care about you.
People care about themselves.

It was Saturday morning, August 21, 2021. I was sitting on the couch in my living room watching cartoons with my granddaughter. And my phone dinged. I received an notification of a sale. A few minutes later another ding, another sale. I checked the real-time website stats and to my surprise there were 53 visitors on my site all at the same time.

I started googling trying to figure out what was causing this frenzy of visitors to my website. And by luck I found a video segment that had just aired on the Good Morning America television show. 

The total segment was about 4 minutes long. The last 35-40 seconds is where my software ZilchWorks was mentioned. So I trimmed the video down to the last 40 seconds because that's the part that talked about my software. Proof again that people only care about themselves. Why else would I have trimmed down this video.

I then retooled my entire website and made this "Look what I can do" video front and center. I foolishly thought this would drawn in website visitors.

Lessons Learned:

• People don't care about you. They care about themselves.
• Customers want to know what you can do for them.
• Enjoy the media success. Treat it as validation.
• This too shall pass applies to both good and bad.

Enjoy!

Semper Fi,

Gunny Mike

https:\\zilchworks.com

I've Been Telling the Wrong Product Stories

This post has nothing to do with Delphi other than it's the software development tool I use. In November of last year I finally purchased Microsoft Office 365. A couple days later I received a promotional email introducing me to Microsoft Virtual Academy (https://mva.microsoft.com/).

I visited the MVA site, signed up for a free account, and by pure dumb luck stumbled across an amazing set of videos designed to teach you how to create stories. The video series is called "Crash Course: Analytics Storytelling for Impact". (https://goo.gl/oFEc9F) This video series was put together to teach people how to present data analytics in a very impactful way. Although it's focus is on how to present data analytics, it has a very unique set of videos all about stories and storytelling.

The storyteller is Mario Juarez and he is phenomenal. The third video "Definition of a Story" (https://goo.gl/L5e1g8) hit me like a ton of bricks. It was as if everything all of the sudden fell into place. All the previous stuff I had read or heard about marketing such as; don't sell features sell benefits finally made sense.

In the past no matter how hard I had tried I always wound up telling what Jaurez refers to as "transactional stories". The description of the thing I did. The transaction or process. What I built, how it works, the sequencing of events. Sound familiar.

The stories I need to tell are what Juarez calls "transcendent stories". These are stories of how human life changed because of the interaction with your product. Transcendent stories go to the place of human experience and human values and human meaning.

Watch this video series. They will change they way you talk about your products.

The first story I'm working on is for my Credit Card Math product. I've created a fictitious customer persona called Kate. The story I'm creating is "How Credit Card Math Saved Kate's Marriage." The story model I'm using is defined by Kurt Vonnegut as "Man in hole". (https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ)

Here's a sneak peak at Kate:

My first video is taking me longer than I expected. Hopefully it will be completed soon. I'm very excited to see how this whole process goes.


Semper Fi,
Gunny Mike
zilchworks.com

Google, Mobile, and You. Are You Good?

I put my Delphi development on hold a few months ago so I could work on creating a responsive website for my software. The hardest part for me was trying to find a layout I was happy with. I took a little inspiration from the Embarcadero Communty website. I settled on a Bootstrap 9 X 3 layout. And now it's done and I can move on.

It's only been a couple days but I have already seen a 300% increase in traffic to my website.

Dave Collins from Software Promotions has put together a 5 minute video that talks about Google's big shift toward mobile first indexing. I strongly encourage you to watch this video. Mobile-friendly isn’t necessarily mobile-friendly

I'm just an Independent Software Deveopler like many of you. I felt compelled to share what I have learned over the past three months. We all love Delphi and the opportunities it gives us to create software and apps. You can have the best software or app out there but if people can't find it, it's not a good thing. Don't let this happen.

I look forward to getting back at it. It feels good to know thay my development efforts will have a fighting chance.

Semper Fi,
Gunny Mike
zilchworks.com

EMBT Webinar: Overcoming Monetization Challenges Using Licensing

Embarcadero Technologies is teaming up with the Association of Software Professionals to bring you Jessica Dewell of Red Direction.

Calling all owners, founders, CEOs, and all leaders whose company has products for sale right now! You will receive actionable and immediately useful information to review, evaluate, and evolve your product catalog to stay competitive…and profitable.

When you finally figured out how to make your products fly into the hands of customers that want it … something changed, and what worked before no longer does. A very important, and often overlooked place to start is with the product catalog. (More)

Sign Up Today

Embarcadero Technologies Webinar:
Wed, Dec 14, 2016 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM PST
Wed, Dec 14, 2016 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM PST
Wed, Dec 14, 2016 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM PST?

Enjoy,
Gunny Mike

Download Sites Have Become Software Pimps

I have spent the last couple months doing marketing instead of coding. And this weekend I stumbled across this thing called ProductHunt. It's a pretty cool idea check them out on the web producthunt,com or on twitter @ProductHunt.

The way software needs to be marketed today is completely different that it was 20 - 25 years ago. I refuse to become irrelevant so I am learning how to change my thinking and strategy. This weekend several things fell into place and I went on a rant about the current state of downloads and the download websites.

Here is my five minute rant on why I think download sites have become software pimps and how this is effecting all small software developers.

Semper Fi
Gunny Mike

( transcript )

Most download websites are software pimps.

When I went to the ISVCon in 2013 some of the vendors that the ASP got touted their secondary offer programs.

So for those of you who are not familiar with the secondary offer program, it goes like this. You’re not making money through selling of your software. Okay people find it and then they download it from all the different download sites on the web. But what’s your conversion rate? Is it one out of five-hundred. For every three-hundred downloads you get do you get one sale.

So the download sites their trying to make money. And I call them software pimps because this is what they do. They take your software, your a small independent software developer. You spend hours upon hours putting together a piece of software hoping that you can sell it.

Are you going be the next WinZip or whatever. No, you’re probably not but you’re trying. And you don’t want to get your dreams crushed. So lets say you finally get your software completed it’s gone through all the testing. It’s gone through this. It’s gone through that and you’re ready to push it out to the market.

How are you going to distribute it. You use the software download sites. They take your software and your nice pretty install and they wrap a monetization package around it. The secondary offer.

So here’s what happens. They’re a software pimp. They’re turning your software into a whore. Their platform becomes the mattress. Your software is the whore and then they get unsuspecting customers. So they’ve basically ruined the software download process It’s destroyed. No wonder why Google has the unwanted software thing going on.

The ASP tried 10 years ago to create a website called safer downloads that disallowed this kind of crap. But everybody wants their slice of pie. They’re all greedy little bastards who sit there and say okay I’m a download site. I know marketing. But, I can’t create a piece of software if my life fucking depended on it.

But they’re good at putting together websites. They have a list. Who knows how they compiled that list. And then in order to stay alive have to sell advertising. Well regular advertising doesn’t work. So then they create the Ask toolbar which is probably the worst offender that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Do you know how many times at work people have downloaded something and the Ask toolbar automatically gets installed and now you’ve got all this crap happening. Yeah, that is the secondary software offer program.

And then places like download.com. You go to download.com and your your stuff is listed. I remember 25 years ago when I had my first piece of software out there it’s like oh wow it’s on download.com that’s really cool. If you looked at that website 25 years ago to today it’s like what the hell. They got all these big green buttons that say download now, but none of them are for your software.

Someone finds your product. They go to the description page and there’s seven different friggin download buttons on that page. All of them are big green download buttons. The poor customer doesn’t know what the hell to do. Yeah, there is a need for a safer download website. And the problem is who’s going build it.

The ASP has some great ideas. But the ASP is just a very small organization. ProductHunt understands this. ProductHunt created an environment where they’re keeping the marketers out. Why? Because they are going to pollute it. They’re going to turn it into a secondary offer thing and that’s not what we need. We need something like safer downloads.

Yeah. I may have to talk to Suster and ask him. “Hey do you want to throw some money at a website called safer downloads?” Hey Suster. if you’re listening. Do you want to get involved in a website called safer downloads. If you do let me know.

We’ll put the reputation of the ASP behind you’re money. Go to Google and pitch them a safer download website. Where people can go and download software that’s not going to intrude on their computers and small little software developers like me and all the other product hunters out there who are trying to make this stuff  happen, actually can survive in a world that’s greedy.

So, that’s my take on download sites becoming software pimps.

Gunny out!

David I to Discuss Mobile & Mac at the 2013 ISVCon

The 2013 Independent Software Vendor Conference (ISVCon), scheduled for September 27-29, 2013 at the Atlantis Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, has released information about the panel discussions and seminars that will be presented. Designed to deliver the latest marketing ideas to small software development firms, this year’s conference includes:

• “Sell Software on Facebook” by Nico Westerdale of BitsDuJour – Can independent software vendors (ISVs) make money selling software on Facebook? Yes. More than half of the people in the US have Facebook accounts. Learn practical ways to build your fanbase, and create posts that generate traffic.
• “Conversations to Create More Customers” by Jessica Dewell of Red Direction – Move more software customers through your company’s sales cycle by changing from reactive conversations (such as answering email inquiries) to proactive conversations (such as listening and starting conversations.)
• “Growing your ISV business to Multi-Device with Mobile and Mac” by David Interstimone (David I) of Embarcadero – Discover how to increase software sales by supporting a mix of client devices, UI approaches, OS versions, and emerging form factors.
• “Connected Apps: The New Normal” by Leyla Seka of Salesforce.com – Learn to build and deploy connected apps as your software development business evolves from the desktop/laptop world to the cloud and mobile environments.
• “33 High Tech Business Myths, and How They Can Hurt Your Company” by Gary Elfring of Elfring Fonts Inc. – Gain insights into distinguishing between valid business ideas and the myths, folklore, and misinformation that can hurt your company.
• “Google AdWords – Winning the War and Making It Work” by Aaron Weiner of Software Promotions – Learn how recent AdWords changes will impact your account’s performance, and how you can overcome any problems.

Other seminar titles include:

• Practical Roadmap to High Performing Websites
• Secondary Offer Networks
• The Cloud for ISVs
• Avoiding Problems When Hiring and Working with Freelancers

Visit http://www.isvcon.org/speakers.php to read about new seminars that will be added during the summer.

Sign up for the conference by September 22 to take advantage of ISVCon’s $820.50(US) registration fee. Registration includes three days of intense education and networking opportunities plus a Thursday evening reception, and break rooms full of snacks and helpful representatives from the conference’s sponsors.

Previously known as the Software Industry Conference (SIC), ISVCon carries on a 22 year tradition of supporting independent software developers’ business and marketing efforts with seminars, presentations, and networking opportunities.

ISVCon is owned and presented by The Association of Software Professionals. Sponsors for ISVCon 2013 include FastSpring, Avangate, Tightrope Interactive, Software Promotions, Greentram Software, and The Association of Software Professionals. Visit http://www.isvcon.org/ for more information about attending ISVCon 2013. Or visit http://www.isvcon.org/sponsors.php for information about sponsoring the conference.

Semper Fi
Gunny Mike

end.

ISV Conference 2013 - September 27-29 - Reno, NV

I just learned about the ISV Conference being held September 27th, 28th & 29th in Reno, NV. The last time I went to anything that was remotely similar to this was 1995 when I attended the STAR (Shareware Trade Association and Resources)  party which was held at the same time as the SIC (Shareware Industry Conference).

ISV Conference 2013

As a Delphi developer there are hundreds of resources available for learning how to do things with the Delphi language. StackOverflow is probably my favorite resource.

As a Micro ISV, developing software is only one part of the total picture. In fact it's my belief that developing the software is the easiest part of the process. For me the other pieces are much more difficult:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Promotion
• Distribution
• Support

I am planning to attend the ISV Conference this year, hope to see some of you there.

Please vote in the ISV Conference poll in the top right margin.

Semper Fi,
Gunny Mike