Chance,
Well, from conception, I knew my primary market would be bartending schools
(at least to start generating income from the software) so I didn't want to
bite the hand that fed me, so to speak, by offering something that could be
viewed as a replacement versus a supplement, which is how it is now. For the
program to really work well, we customize it to the bartending school's
recipes/course material, and although we do do direct sales via barsim.com, it
only accounts for about 25% of the monthly totals. However, over the past six
months, I've been surprised at a gradual increase in sales to bars, or even
bartenders that are already working and wanting to increase their overall
drink recipe knowledge, so it is already being used in that capacity to some
extent.
Really, the problem with software of this type, is it's really a very niche
market. Pay Per Click prices have gotten so out of control, I can barely get
any ROI on most keywords, so I'm still dependent on schools so keep things
running. However, with the release of BS2, some new opportunities will open
up, and I'll see if I can't start generating some decent revenues off of it
from other sources, such as a promotional tool. We're making BS2 much more
flexible, both in terms of the recipe DB and the overall game play experience,
whereas the current BarSim program is fairly restrictive. Thinking about the
future, I think the next incarnation of BarSim will be integrated completely
online and be more of a community type program where users can add, promote,
practice, view, rate & share drink recipes and bartending knowledge. I guess
you could think of it as an interactive "wiki". But to be honest, that's
probably at least a year away. First, we need to build ChefSim ;)
--
Cheers! - Josh @ BarSim
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http://www.barsim.com
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BarSim (tm) - The Ultimate Bartending Simulation
--> BarSim 2 (tm) Coming soon!