Red hot articles that help you run a successful software company

Mark Jones shares his experience of starting a software company and how he managed the problem of sales, marketing, administration and product development.

When you think of a successful financial role model, who comes to mind? Is it someone obvious, like Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson? An entrepreneur and titan of industry, who has lots of power, makes lots of money, and is the focus of scores of glowing articles and biographies?

Stop me if you've heard this one: Your bootstrapped startup is finally off the ground. You're able to spend $6000/mo on AdWords to drive leads. Sure the conversion rates could be better, and sure it's not the best ROI on Earth, but on the balance it's making money.

We tend to hear a lot about software industry success stories. But most of us mere mortals have to fail a few times before we learn enough to succeed. In this guest post William Echlin talks about the hard lessons he has learned about creating and selling software products.

Do you know who Lady Gaga spends all her time supporting? She actively supports her most loyal 1% of followers. You will find that many successful musicians and bands have supported their most loyal followers and fan club owners and members over the decades. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why?

I get pitches every day from entrepreneurs, PR agencies and book authors who hope to get an article about them written on my blog, OnStartups(300,000 readers) - or on HubSpot's marketing blog(over 1.5 million visits a month). It's sad that most of those pitches fall flat and are likely to be completely ignored.

The following is a guest post by Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, a smarter way to post on Social Media. [Note: I'm an angel investor in Buffer and love what they're doing] The Complete Guide to Getting Press Coverage For Your Startup Whoa, this guide was long, long, long overdue.

Advice is often much easier to give than to take. For example, I was at a meeting at HubSpot yesterday and we were talking about a particularly area of the business that is having some challenges. A plan was presented.

Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the "Freemium" business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan.

"You need a business plan" is the mantra of MBA types. As they say, businesses don't plan to fail, they fail to plan! Who could argue with such a clever turn of phrase? Let's do some quotes: "Without a business plan, how will you know whether you can make a profit?"