I didn’t mean to “spam” google,  but when writing my copy, I used too many times my product’s name “PC Desktop Cleaner”. The title had it, the meta tag had it, almost every paragraph started with “PC Desktop Cleaner”.

Before the last change (with my previous draft pages) my site was in the 8th place for the keywords “desktop cleaner”  (language = en, country = us). Now, my site is on the 80th place or even worst.

After thinking about it and reading, I guess I’m in front of Google Spam Penalty.  Analysing my page with http://www.ranks.nl, these are my stats:

High keyword density

For the keywords “Desktop Cleaner” I am a serious candidate to Spam Penalty. Keywords are on the url, title, content, and headers, and are repeated lots of times on page text.

I’ve done a simple rewriting of the page, replacing “PC Desktop Cleaner” with PDC in most paragraphs. Now my density analysis look better:

Better keyword density

As usual, I cannot be 100% sure that the reason for my low ranking is the penalty, but IMHO it’s likely. I will follow this up as time passes.

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I think my current version of PDC is ugly. Today I downloaded Eltima “Flash Decompiler Trillix” (what a name) and found it gorgeous. My application has  a stinky 90’s look (being generous).

In order to fix it, I started looking for a skin component for Delphi. (I hate futile adornments, I like spartanware, it has been a very successful  principle in my ad-hoc development business, but I’m afraid that in B2C looks does matter).

Well, after a little googling, found some candidates, then started downloading the trials to make some tests. I want to buy today, because I want to release a better-looking version of PDC this weekend. I have the CC on my table and I’m resigned to spend the customary $100.

One of the candidates was ThemeEngine, I have browsed them many time ago, and the product looked nice. So, I downloaded the trial. I am not very expert with Delphi, had never used a package so I started looking at the Help File  to find how to make it work. 1st error, no help for Delphi 2009…

Product development is alive: they released a new version on February/4 2009. But obviously they didn’t think of changing the help file.

Ok, so I used the instructions for 2007 and it worked OK, but I’m a real Delphi ignorant! I don’t know how to set the library path to include the missing DCUs. So I gave the help a new chance, and  then I found this:

Strange Help

So this guys haven’t took the time to finish the CHM help. Now, let me be clear on this:

 I am thinking as a customer now (if I think as a developer I wouldn’t have the face to criticise nobody after so many years delivering badly-finished system to business users).

As a customer, when I find something not finished, I start to make myself questions like: “what will happen when I have a problem with the component on Windows Vista 64 SP8?, what kind of support and upgrades will I be able to get from this guys?”.. and so on.

IMHO, the lesson of the story is simple. If you want to sell something, give attention to details. If you start something, finish it, and do it well.

This guys have very nice products, they must be master developers, but they lost a sale today.

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Honouring PC Desktop Cleaner, hackers from different countries enjoyed hacking the serial number generation. Following McKenzie’s advice, I didn’t put much energy in the design of the validation algorithm. Maybe will do one little bit more complex the next time.

I admire those folks, I have never been able to crack a program’s protection, and must said I  have tried a couple of times. I must said that I am relatively expert in Assembly and C having done a lot of graphic and antivirus programming in my time, but hacking was not for me…

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On Apr 18th Softpedia and Brothersoft listed PC Desktop Cleaner. Some people started downloading it, but to my surprise, all of them were in Asia or Middle-East.  Nobody from an English-speaking country downloaded it.

I have the following theories:

• Some awful grammar typo on my product description  is making English speakers discard the product.
• Asia and Middle-East people have a higher percentage of desktop-clutterers.
• BrotherSoft and Softpedia have and (incredibly high) bias toward this zones.
• The broom icon has a special cultural appeal for these countries (?).

This is the description currently showing:

“PC Desktop Cleaner is an intelligent software tool that cleans your desktop”
EditByBrothersoft: PC Desktop Cleaner is an intelligent software tool that cleans your desktop, storing your files in a special folder. It creates an index so you can quickly and easily Find Any File

With PC Desktop Cleaner, you keep your Workspace clean and have easy access to all your files.

The downloads per country are:

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My plan was always to develop a software product. But life guided me to consulting and ad hoc business software development. In 2005, I started reading the Business of Software forums my dreams of creating a product come back again. Specially inspiring was the story of Patrick McKenzie, creator of Bingo Card Creator, a software that makes custom bingo cards. Patrick’s sales were tiny by then but he did something very special, he published his sales numbers (and he keeps doing it until now).

My first idea was to solve a personal pain: the clutter of my PC desktop. I made a small prototype  in visual basic:

DeskSort, first prototype done in VB

Then, three years passed by. They were busy years, but I cannot blame it on that. I just lacked the focus. In the meanwhile I always had the idea alive, but did nothing to make it happen.

In December 2008 I started working again, with a focus and energy that wasn’t present before. I took the decision of developing the product in Delphi, and I made a mockup of the main screen:

Unclutter It mockup

My product name by then was “Unclutter It”. I changed it to “PC Desktop Cleaner”.

I choose Delphi because I wanted a small executable file, and no kind of frameworks, DLLs or nothing like that. I aimed for a light and fast application.

Learning Delphi was fast, but the IDE and the stiffness of the language was painful. Too many years of working in VB have spoiled me!.

January passed by and the advance wasn’t what I would have liked… I made the screens, made the configuration file, but the main file listview was difficult. I then rentACoded the main screen listview. A Russian programmer named Sergei did the work. I was not a brilliant work, but it stopped my struggle and gave me something to work on.

February and March were good months and by April 1st I started beta testing with my friends. I also rentACoded the logo and am very happy with the resulting Broom  logo:

This week, (Apr 13) http://pcdesktopcleaner.com was officialy opened.

Selling the product won’t be easy there are several good applications with similar concepts (but not equal tough). But the main problem is not the competitors, is how to reach users.

My courses of action:

1. Google organic search. My site is in the eight place for the obvious keywords. I plan to work around the other relevant keywords, at least to get first page with them also.
2. Adwords. This will be a struggle. More on that on future posts.
3. Forums. Must search forums related to the theme and post there. Also, must search for related conversations and post there.

Very difficult!. My goal for 2009 is selling 6 units. Let’s work!.

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