Welcome to future home of Freedomware Marketing. The Tux Project is going to be shifting gears a bit. This site is set to become a grass-e-roots website where we can all work together to openly collaborate on promoting the use of Freedomware in our local communities. Whether you are a business owner who uses or offers Freedomware solutions, or an individual enthusiast. You will find that this is the place for you to share your promotional ideas and work together collaboratively in order to make them a reality.
A business for Linux
Sucky title, I know, but let me get to the details.
1 -- Find a nice chunk of change and a neighborhood.
2 -- Pick a light(?) distro that works on a lot of hardware and spin up a custom version "localized" to that neighborhood. The distro may have package management and some other things disabled. Make it easy to use (eg, desktop accessibility and help) but hard to break.
3 -- Distribute the distros door to door. CD/DVD has an url on it. Maybe CD also has "activation key", tag, slogan, logo, nothing, etc.
4 -- Some percent of target users will go to url and find out they can register for a new custom CD per week or month. Possibilities include picking options from a menu and maybe filling out other information to help cutomize the distro. You can cancel any time (maybe pre-pay maybe not and maybe have a donation button). Various price ranges for various services (eg, generic customization or something more personal, nice packaging, song and dance at the door for gift distros, etc). [Let them in on activation key joke. Be positive. No negs on competitors and mention competition as little as possible by name, and don't dwell on competitors.]
5 -- When the time of month/week/etc arrives, take these custom distros or whatever was paid for to the houses. You can beat most service programs because you can personally deliver the distros. If keep to small geography and same time of month or week, you can very efficiently cover "shipping costs."
6 -- Periodically have contests or interesting activities. Maybe even set up online forum for neighborhood. Maybe have neighborhood contests or specific activities. Have wikies and IRC. Let the community lead and pick their interests. Support them. Let them know they have control.
7 -- Periodically repeat from step 1 within same neighborhood as funds and desire dictate. Maybe every 4th paid delivery cycle, you deliver to everyone again a new/different custom freebie. You have to keep investing dollars back into the business (people move; people notice, gain trust, and try it; people change mind; people keep quiet but try it and a LiveCD ends up doing something great for them; etc). Constancy and attention will help many take the plunge.
8 -- Wash, rinse, repeat in a different neighborhood or geo size to suit needs/wants/ambitions/funding.
The idea is to:
-- Invite many to Linux and to control their destiny so to speak.
-- Provide a lending hand that is accessible/nearby (services should include various forms of support and demoing).
-- Build up an attentive and interested audience. This has further value for future endeavors (for profit or otherwise).
-- Break even or (much more likely with a bit of effort) get in the black and maybe even make a lot of money as you spread out and get creative.
Other source of income:
-- Ad space on these LiveCDs.
-- possible services (from others' ads or yours) can be: -- business support -- special customizations -- training (how to use X or how to spin a new distro) -- etc ... and see PS at bottom.
Contests are one of the ways to keep the audience entertained and engaged.
Possible contests:
-- A yearlong contest (to all in neighborhood) to submit one graphic upto size x that will be showcased in a future distro. Allow those with subscriptions to submit up to 5 or Y entries and maybe of larger size. Maybe allow other pay or ? variations. Maybe try to have a goal of 100,000 graphics that will be distributed inside the distro (+dvd probably).
-- Maybe have treasure hunts or mystery episodes and what not. Clues within upcoming distros.
-- Who can do the most XXXX within a period of time.
-- Who can do the best YYYY.
Other possibilities to fill the community flavored customizations:
-- Profile businesses or people/events in the community.
-- Accept contributions from customers/communtiy. If pro-Linux, they could make it no-charge into the distribution channel (note, be attentive to licensing), maybe giving aspiring artists or programmers or anyone an audience. You get interesting material to build future distros and you may get Linux contributions that might be passed upstream.
-- Use the activities in forums, wikis, IRC, etc for ideas. Remember, the community generates its own content and helps itself, but you should add to that in some way.
You can give away secrets but still retain paying customers if you do a good job with your remasters and serve as a local ad provider or what not. Remember, you have a business going already and some credibility. Don't be afraid to charge high prices for some services as long as you provide inexpensive versions and maybe even links to freebies. Don't hide or be deceptive. Many will still pay and the ultimate goal is to spread Linux while maybe making some money. Remember that are many many more neighborhoods, people that can help, and business ideas. Heck, just the relevant ads and any other very taylor made directed product can command a premium.
Globally, support the entrepreneurs ...
We can even start a (eg) nationwide entity to try and provide support at a large scale. Maybe have maps showing neighborhoods "hit" or "thriving", etc. Maybe try and get these local Linux entrepreneurs to give some data (to see who is doing what geographically .. this can be great market research). Provide tools for businesses to get started. Provide other central support (a special 800 number for instance plus news and developments relevant to this sort of business). Provide our own wikis, forums, magazine, etc. Maybe even serve to give loans or accept donations on behalf of others (see also http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/99723/index.html ).
PS: "song and dance at the door for gift distros" Just threw that in at the last minute on step 4, but it's an interesting idea. We can prominently showcase that service. It can be used as a joke and even by people that don't think they care for the distro themselves but want to gift "it" to someone. Maybe a messenger (with a LiveCD) service. Maybe put the message/pic/video/etc on the custom LiveCD to be delivered.
Possible Month 1 and 2 Subscription
This is all for illustrative purposes. The details may involve good specific choices or not.
Let's look at these ingredients:
-- video tutorials
-- variety
-- ads
-- customizations
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Video Tutorials and Variety:
Month 1 videos give an overview of Linux in general (the community, the product, the benefits, the freedom, etc) as well as the specific distro Linpus Linux. We go over the major portions of this distro, preferably going over each of the applications on the Easy desktop setup (the setup that has five categories of desktop icons).
Maybe I'll introduce the subscription more detailed and show that almost everything one wants can be gotten for free online. I'll even give some "secrets" to the business I am carrying out. Maybe give an overview of what to expect the upcoming month.
Before carrying this out, I would like to see if Linpus can be improved so that it runs on most hardware. I had it fail on the 2 PCs I tried (though it worked under VirtualBox). I think the problem might be with xorg.conf (a slightly educated guess). Also, I think I noticed that the live-linux scripts included (see slax/ live-linux) have an init application (linuxrc) that does not "hand off" or use the parameters passed in from grub at boot. I am not sure because I skimmed through the linuxrc shell script, but I was not able to enter into runlevel 3 from boot (5 was hard-wired.. which for testing purpose could be rewired to 3 if we change the inittab file and remaster .. I think) and linuxrc seems to call the binary "init" at the end with no params. Then again, I do not have fresh memory of shell programming and it's possible that the params (eg, "3") are passed as an environment variable or otherwise.
I also have to more carefully study the use of root powers as implemented in Linpus.
We have many opportunity to customize some portions of this liveCD. Eg, we can add shortcut links and default home page to our business home page from where we can link to anything we want. We can put up a different wallpaper, etc.
In Month 2 I want to show how to change the default set of apps (find a nice set of alternatives to some of what is included); maybe how to add a new (and more useful) repository and then use it to get fresh updates and new apps; how to do a basic remastering so that after making changes, the user can repackage it into a LiveCD/DVD to give to friends (eg, include some music and more games and things like plugins for the browser, office suite, paint apps, etc); how to change desktop wallpaper (to make a big splash); how to change (and introduce them to the idea that you can change) the graphics and text on many apps by changing the proper config files; how to introduce a few ready made themes and where to download.. for desktop as well as for some apps; how to change the booting splash screen; how to set up some other operating system as a virtualized OS and them show that this way they can stay with Linux yet have access to legacy apps and webpages and games(?) simultaneously with using desktop Linux (maybe do something with wine, too).
Maybe this month or month 3 start to describe a project carried out using various applications. Focus here on things of general interest and utility, eg, picture manipulation/artwork creation, spreadsheet and word processing, movie making, etc.
Probably, I'll keep all of these videos on youtube and make them easily accessible.
Over time, I want to hack and improve Linpus (or update it with others' improvements and set-ups.. eg, how to set up the videos for easy access and adding more help utilities and usability features), but also I will remaster and introduce things like PCLOS, Mint, and anything else of interest that comes by. [Notice these details are for illustrative purposes, eg, I hope Linpus works out, but I may not even use that.]
OK, so all of these things I want to share online. By people contributing, we can study off each other, improve the tutorials and advice and then "show off" our improvements plus business results/successes/failures.
I would also like to share details on running the business (and hope others also contribute).
Finally, over time, I'll like to build distro profiles for types of end users (eg, with info acquired through user feedback and polls). It would be nice to have offerings (eg, customizable offerings) with more focused tutorials for the "business user," the "X user," the "user that likes Y but not Z," etc. Also, one single distro/desktop should give access to multiple profiles. Linpus has two setting (easy and medium). We can easily fake some of this by using multiple desktops and configuring what is included on each such desktop. Eg, give each desktop a theme/profile.. perhaps even having multiple links to the same app from different desktops actually be a link to a clone of the app (different default settings) so that it behaves according to the profile for that desktop. Anyway, there may be technical hurdles to overcome, but a single distro with multiple faces and efficient sharing/ changing of the faces would be good.
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Customizations:
This involves a separate revenue source. There is a lot that can be done manually. One goal though would be to be able to automate as much of the process as possible. See for example Nimblex Linux.
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Ads:
This is another revenue source. If featured and integrated properly.. if the distros given out are attractive enough and the target market tries them out.. if you get enough businesses and others to participate/advertize.. then you can even probably give away the distros ($0) at a net gain.
*******
I think the potential is certainly here to make money, learn about and teach Linux, and help Linux spread far and wide.
Remember that with online support and sharing, we can facilitate for many others to join in so that Linux grows fairly fast. Competition is not much of an issue in the early days at least (except for the most ambitious). The online sharing helps everyone if enough contribute (though at this point it seems like a BSD thing ripe for exploit by the overambitious, possibly to the detriment of others, while keeping many components proprietary). Remember that spreading Linux will have many benefits to all. Remember that good "community citizens" gain special benefits. Remember that the main competition is still Microsoft and Microsoft partners; there is strength in numbers.
Also, really, with any sort of modest success, this will attract media attention (first locally, eventually nationally if in fact many are able to tap into this or similar businesses to grow Linux fast).
As for distributing it. Check local laws, eg, do not stick anything in mailboxes (in the US), and consider that you may need a business license or something else.
Walking, one can definitely distribute 1000 in one day (but take water with you). Consider even taking company along with you (ie, someone else). Periodically, you want to distribute to everyone in a zone. Normally, you only need to distribute to those that subscribe.
As for burning and packaging the CD/DVDs, I am not sure the time and cost there because I have never approached doing this for anything near 1000.
Finally, the majority of the month can be spent on other business as well as in building the tutorials and preparing/researching for the upcoming months, looking for ways to grow or become more efficient and refining the product and methods, buying tools, looking for ad customers, sharing online, etc.
I suggest that the gameplan for at least one or two months be done in advance.
Also, there are many variations for those that want to grow faster or slower.
How do you price these services? Well, keep in mind that ads can make it easy to price many of these services very low (but you would then have to have a high volume of customers so you would distribute to a large group monthly). There are a lot of possibilities and many factors (how much work do you want to put in to provide a value add service? what is the cost of doing business in your area?). Hopefully people will share results online.
This is only the beginning of the process of hashing out some of these details and later implementing them and reporting on results. Still, for any that run ahead, good luck (and don't be too greedy).
[I'll have to take a closer look again at Ultumix(?) which was described here on thetuxproject. The website has a funny spoof on Windows. Also, I think computeruse(?) changed the video to show more of the actual desktop in usage, but I don't remember.]
The Demo Disc
There is a distro that shows some promise as something simple to satisfy many needs of many: Linpus Linux Lite (version 9.4 out this year).
It is for newbies.
I think to get the source code you have to pay for support or at least register. (??) The LiveCD does use standard linux live scripts (can't remember which ones right now.. slax or from berlios), so we probably can remaster it even if the distro doesn't specifically give that option.
I will probably try and contact Linpus if I decide to use this LiveCD with their logos and remastered (or even if I don't).
This torrent [url=http://linuxtracker.org/download.php?id=7521efbf6e7e6fb7a1cbac220eec0dbe3d87ebd8&f=LinpusLinux-LiveCD-i386.iso.torrent]LinpusLinux Live CD[/url] for it may actually be faster than the central server. At least this seems to be the case during US daylight hours. The company behind the distro is based in Taiwan where the distro seems to be fairly popular ( http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2008021600526RVSW ).
Also, the package installation system (through synaptic I think) seems somewhat static in that you can't access extra packages (maybe you just have to register or something). Though this could be a negative for a *real* distro, it makes for a very good newbie lite demo distro. It's harder to break and serves to whet the appetite as a "free sample".
Another negative is that I was not able to run the LiveCD on either of two computers where I tried (almost seems as if the X.org conf file inside the LiveCD is broken or weak). Hardware support will be key on whether I take this distro seriously or not. If not, I would like to use some of the concepts/applications from it through some other distro (it uses xfce).
If these potential showstoppers are overcome or play out to be insignificant, I think this LiveCD will go far. While the LiveCD did not work directly, I was able to test it out through VirtualBox (on PCLOS2007), and it is very nice. It scores well in usability. Using virtualization may have solved the problem since X would already be up and running (not sure though how virtualbox works.. but it did).
If possible try it out and comment.
If anyone needs help, I should be able to help some with questions on getting it to run on VirtualBox.
Here is a mini tutorial on using bit torrent (w/ a focus on KTorrent) http://www.nuxified.org/topic/torrents_in_a_nutshell .