If you have problem, software program likely exists to solve it

Got a software problem? Someone, somewhere probably has created a piece of software to fix the problem. And the wonderful thing about the Internet is that you often can find what you need quickly and easily.

A good friend was in the small-utility business for years, and for a while did very well. He would have an idea for a program, design it, then find Eastern European or Asian programmers to build the program. Then he’d market and sell the program. But as the Internet population grew, making it easier to get to customers, something else happened — the competition grew fierce.

“I could build a program and sell it for a couple of years,” my friend told me. “But as the Internet grew I found that within a couple of months of finishing a program some kid in Kiev or Munich was giving something similar away for free.” The competition killed my friend’s business.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Empowering communities

Rocky Mountain Health Plans (RMHP), part of the UnitedHealthcare family, has pledged its commitment to uplift these communities through substantial investments in organizations addressing the distinct needs of our communities.

These days, whatever your need, there’s a good chance you can find a wide range of choices at low prices. Bad for my friend, but good for the consumer.

Here’s an example. I’m researching a new online business that would require an affiliate program — that is, other Web sites would send me business, and I would pay those sites commissions.

Affiliate software allows you to track incoming traffic, keep account of commissions owed, provide reports to your affiliates, and so on.

There are two ways to do this. You can sign up with an affiliate service, such as Commission Junction or LinkShare. These systems have many advantages but two huge problems.

They’re often expensive — it costs $5,500 to start with Commission Junction account, though you can find small affiliate services for as little as $75 setup and $50 a month. And affiliate links point to the service, not your Web site. Links pointing to your site help boost the site’s rank in the search engines, but if you use an affiliate service, the links don’t actually point at your site, they point at the service’s Web servers, which then forward visitors to your site. You get no search-engine boost from all your links.

Affiliate software less pricey

The other way to set up an affiliate system is to install affiliate software on your own servers. This is much cheaper than the first method, and has the benefit of channeling all links directly to your Web server, so you do get the search-engine boost. Where, then, do you find such software?

I went to HotScripts.com and searched for the term “affiliate”. I found dozens of affiliate programs, ranging in price from more than $1,000 to under $25. Within minutes I’d found one that looks great. It’s $99, and includes a feature that helps fix the biggest problem with running your own affiliate software — managing all the payments. This program exports payment information to a text file that can then be uploaded to PayPal or a check-processing service, to allow you to pay hundreds of affiliates within seconds.

The Internet is awash with software for almost every need, and much of it’s very good. (Much isn’t, but that’s where the Internet’s “community” tools come in useful — HotScripts provides user reviews and ratings to help you choose.)

Here’s another interesting little program I ran into recently; Popularity OnSnap (www.OnSnap.com), a $99 program that searches for expired domain names that have a lot of links from other Web sites pointing to them. Why? So you can buy the domain names and point them to your site, to bring traffic and to get a search-engine boost.

This is an ugly, clumsy little program, though it seems to get the job done. But after trying it I figured I’d dig around and see what else I could find. I knew there were other expired-domain software programs and services, but had never taken a good look.

So I searched for “expired domain” and “expired domains” at Google, and found a plethora of interesting options — RedHotDomainNames.com, a site that provides a free list of expired domain names; DomainInformer.com, a site that provides a free search system for finding expired domain names; ExpiredTraffic.com, which, among many services, lets you provide a Web page (say, a page at Yahoo!) then checks all the domains linked from that page to see if any have expired. In all there were dozens of services for this very specific task, ranging from free to around $50 a month.

Need to manage your dog-breeding operation? Search for “dog breeding software” — you’ll be surprised what you’ll find. Want to track your beanie baby collection? Visit http://www.cniche.com/. Have to find a Hebrew calendar program for Windows? Try http://www.calendar-maven.com/. It doesn’t matter what you want to do, someone, somewhere has written software for you.

Peter Kent is the publisher of the Poor Richard’s series of technology and Internet books. Visit www.TopFloor.com for more information.