We currently have a ProWorkflow Affiliate Program that can pay a fixed fee for a referral to sale and many people are already receiving referral fees for putting Affiliate banners and links on their sites (that convert to sale).

How does it work?

So basically, you would put a link or ad on your website. You tell a customer or friend to click that link/ad to visit our website. From there we track it all so if they sign up for an account we know you referred them.

Click here to read about the specifics of the Affiliate commission structure. The program has built in reporting and notification (shown below) so you can see the traffic you’re sending and what’s converting into a ProWorkflow sale!

How do I signup & get the Ad/Link for my site?

Follow the instructions below to get setup. It’s worth doing to get a kickback for referring people to the ProWorkflow solution. If you get a cheque in the post it’ll help with the office social fund!

STEP 1.

Visit the Affiliate Sign Up page and enter your details to become a ProWorkflow affiliate.

Note: There’s an option lower down the form to ‘Refer a Friend’. If you do this you’ll clip the ticket on their commissions!

STEP 2.

Visit the Affiliates Area and you’ll see a welcome screen. Look at the links on the top menu. The links are: Reports, Creatives & Settings.

• Reports
  Displays reporting about traffics, clicks, impressions, click-thru ratios etc. The reports also show commission and payment history.

• Creatives
  

  Here you can grab the code for the banners and links that you want to put on your website. Just copy the code!

• Settings
  Your account settings. You can update your address and contact details, payment currency etc.

STEP 3.

Click on the ‘Creatives’ link at the top. Here you can access creative material for both banner ads and text links.

To add a Text Link to your website…
Click ‘Text Ads’ then the available text ads will appear below. Click the one you want to add to your website and you’ll be shown the code.

Note: We recommend adding both the Text Link shown below and a banner ad as well. The more the better!

To add a Banner Ad to your website…
Click ‘Banners’ then the available text ads will appear below. Click the one you want to add to your website and you’ll be shown the code.

STEP 4.

Add the code to your website and you’ll see the text link or banner ad appear. The link to ProWorkflow includes your Affilate ID. For example:

http://www.proworkflow.com/?kbid=XXXX&m=10

When people click the text link or banner ad from your website we track the traffic and lead, and if they sign up you receive a commission (in accordance to the terms).

Let me sign up!

Find out more about the ProWorkflow Affiliate Program and sign up today. You could be earning some good dollars from referring leads, or just from the traffic on your website!

Contact us if you have any questions…

No huge scoping documents, documentation, peer reviews, industry research, tight visuals or anything! No large teams of usability experts or developers – just two hardworking bootstrappers (working remotely from each other) with a loose idea, a few pencil sketches, and understanding partners who let us work all hours to turn the idea into what is now the ProWorkflow project management solution. A world class tool managing huge amounts of customer info globally.

We’re now a tight team managing critical info daily for thousands of people worldwide. They depend on us to deliver results daily and we do. They expect the solution to work reliably daily and it does. We deliver the goods and have done for years.

Below are some of the original design sketches sent to Alan to work on. We just communicated lots, built the app and then started to build a business!

Now we have:

• Thousands of users globally
• 629,022 projects created
• 2,620,234 tasks created
• 9,349,890 hours tracked
• $301,762,038 has been invoiced through ProWorkflow
  (Note: these are from live accounts and don’t include trials)
• An awesome team in 2x offices
• A pile of servers
• An iPhone App (One of the top in our industry)
• Time Tracking Widget
• Integration with Xero, QuickBooks and Kashflow
• 3x plans for different account sizes
• Support, Help site, Videos, Blog etc
• A professional and robust API
• Most backend systems we have built and automated (including multicurrency recurring account billing)

This post should also be a little encouragement to people that you can build a world class solution and business from nothing. We did this with no debt or funding – only sweat equity! Just some smarts and hard work.
.

Collaboration Concept:

The basic idea behind ProWorkflow is that Staff, Clients, and Contractors can login to one place, see their work and all work on the same page. Essentially all working on the same project together.

The ProWorkflow tool makes sure all the permissions are under control so people only see what they need to see and can only access what they need to access.

We manage project in 2 screens when most other solutions take up to 10+ screens to do the same thing! Here’s a few of my early sketches to figure our our core process/permissions model.

The first Visuals!

Below are some of the very first ProWorkflow visuals as supplied to Alan (Cofounder) to develop.

Job (Project) Page:

This is the original ‘Projects Page’. Pretty loose visual, but it’s quite funny seeing that we used to have the navigation on the right. It’s all a heap more professional and powerful now.

Job (Project) Details:

In the original version you would expand the Job to see the details. Nowadays we click through to a new ‘Project Details Page’. This old version was pretty basic.

Timesheet Page:

This is still pretty much the same concept so I think it must be time to rethink this page using some new technology available.

Contacts Page:

This has been extended somewhat…

Notes Page:

Pretty simple really. Not much to say here…

Calendar Page:
And my all time favourite development visual – the ‘Calendar page’. Brilliant! The developer (Alan) must have loved me for sending this brief. I think developers must have great patience at times to put up with designers like me  ;-).  Sheeesh!

I’ll see what else we can find in the cupboard from the ‘early days’ that can be blogged. Possibly real screenshots of version 1.0?

I do realise that not everyone hangs on everything I have to say, but for those out these who leap out of bed in the morning just to hear my thoughts on things, here’s your very own “Julian101 iPhone app!”

Keep me in your pocket! Show me to your friends (and followers)! And let me keep you updated with my latest ramblings! I’ll be sharing thoughts on business, design, creativity and to be honest, whatever comes to mind!

Download Now!

From this:

“Quicken Online Can’t Believe Mint Is Doing So Well; Sends Threatening Letter”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/quicken-online-cant-believe-mint-is-doing-so-well-sends-threatening-letter/

“Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online, can’t believe how well its competitor Mint is doing. In fact, they were so bewildered by Mint’s claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months that they decided to send a threatening letter demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat.”

to this…

“Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former-techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-million/

“Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. Silicon Alley Insider first reported a rumour on this. The deal should be announced in the next few days.”

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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The Duct Tape Programmer

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html 
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It’s basically saying don’t worry too much about the polish on your code or getting it 100%, just ship it! I talk to other software co’s that get so wound up in perfecting technology that they never get their releases to the customers.

At ProWorkflow, of course we’re always trying to improve technology and programming – that’s just ongoing, but we do ship, and often! We roll out updates about every 1-2 weeks. They contain a mix of fixes and functionality, but the fact is they’re rolled out and the customers benefit.

All functionality updates are posted about on the blog here: http://www.proworkflowblog.com

Back to the the article though, there were a couple of paragraphs that really stood out.  Check out these:

“Yeah,” he says, “At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”

and…

“A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.”

So true! Our Chairman reminds us of the latter on a regular basis. So Ship people, ship, ship, ship!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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“A little while ago Julian asked me a question that ended up in this blog – not that I am one to blog. You will see from the PWF website I am on the high side of fifty and not “techie” in the “Twitter” sense of the word. However at a functional level I was using email regularly in the early 90’s and I get nostalgic about DOS (in the operating system sense).

Anyhow out of the blue or maybe after a session of me wondering out loud about the utility of channels like Twitter, the following question from Julian hit my inbox.”

From: Julian ProActive [mailto:HIDDEN]
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 10:29 PM
To: John
Subject: re: Software

Out of curiosity, how are you liking/finding the software world of today (business/marketing-wise) versus say 5-10 years ago? Just wondered what you thought of the new culture…

Web2, SaaS, Marketing (can of worms), 100’s of competitors, etc…

Any thoughts on the industry?

You’ve got huge experience in Manufacturing and software as well as other areas and have seen changes in models over the years. I was just wondering what you thought of the online world today?

That is just the sort of question I get a lot my interactions with the worlds 20 and 30 somethings and they often make me think hard, probably harder than is good for me. My answer:

From: John Walley [mailto:HIDDEN]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 February 2009 6:18 a.m.
To: Julian ProActive
Subject: RE: Software

The world is the way the world is, at some level it has not changed – at least in my observation – that much.  Basic principles remain and probably always will. 

Finding customers, keeping customers, charging the right price that balances the needs of both sides and doing in a way that keeps the wheels on has always been the challenge – it is a bit like your Web 2 yes or no discussions – beauty/difference is in the eye of the beholder.

What has changed is access speed and turn round times have dropped dramatically – that places more pressure on individuals but somewhere in there is individual creativity, welding that to the new tools is the trick, but the tools always need the craftsman. 

For the craftsman the challenge is to learn how the new tools best fit the craft.

As a result of this email Julian asked me to do a guest blog on Julian 101 “thoughts from ProWorkflow’s old chairman” well you can see some above; the only thing I would add would be for those of you who don’t have an older person on the team get one, you will make each other think harder and that has to be good for you, your company, your customers and the mutual dependency that of necessity binds you all together.

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About the author: 
John Walley – Chairman: ProActive Software
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From day one, we set out  to build a global business founded on our low inertia business model.  We’ve never just been NZ focussed, it is as easy to reach Los Angeles, London or Levin so why not?

We’ve worked hard to setup automation for trials, sales, support, billing, licensing, client account maintenance and support; leaving our staff free to really talk to customers.  The model has run in profit from day one and the organic growth has allowed us to invest revenue back into the business to support top class infrastructure to support our SaaS application.

“Remember that in SaaS, the app is to SaaS what the hamburger is to MacDonalds – people forget that. The app is a small part. To go global the BUSINESS MODEL and INFRASTRUCTURE and SYSTEMS need to scale… The actual application is the least of your worries. Automation and infrastructure leave people to do what they do best, interact with people to solve problems.”

Supplementing our top team, the backend system called “ProCodeManager, which has seen nearly as much development as ProWorkflow is the ‘Engine’ behind the business and provides us with information on every bit of activity in the business, including dashboards for all user activity, follow up, account management, and financial performance.  PCM also highlights issues, ie: mail backing up, server errors etc. So it helps keep us all  on the ball!

The company has no debt, no cash needs beyond sustainable growth, market salaries, corporate governance, no need for funding, sufficient cash in bank to consider dividends, a 7 figure revenue and a growing happy user base.  We can see the growth and customers tell us PWF really helps in their business – a great place to be,  The PWF solution is essentially  ‘recession-friendly’ as it allows customers to  focus on efficiencies. Saving money in hard times is a handy substitute for revenue growth. Furthermore big business is breaking into small businesses in the USA (and all over), creating a much larger market of SME’s (our target market).

As about 75% of our revenue is charged in USD from offshore customers and the US Dollar has finally returned to a realistic cross rate that has been a shot in the arm for us, we really would like to see the New Zealand government taking more note in policy of our wild currency fluctuations.  It would help us plan better.

In our view the key metric for business is revenue per employee, we are driving for a target of US350k per person, at this level we are relatively immune to what the world does in terms of economic activity.  We are exposed to some risk through broadband connectivity so the better and faster our connections to the world the better for us.

Expenses are relatively fixed and we should be able to drive about 300-500k of revenue per staff member.

With hard work and determined effort  we have made page 1 on Google for the term “Project Management Software” and are now finding an increasing number of referral based sales as we’ve been around a few years now. We’ve been aligning our marketing spend to our product releases and the tidiness of PCM and will tweak it more as our organic growth increases.

We released Xero and QuickBooks integration last year, a Time Tracking Widget in Q3 08 and have just finished the ProWorkflow API.  We have a growing number of developers lining up to get into the API, either to integrate with their intranets or to build cool apps! We plan to build an app library for the ProWorkflow solution this year.

The ProWorkflow affiliate program is about to be launched late Feb and our plan is to drive this hard. We want to reward those who refer sales to us.

As our biggest user base is in the US, and the US has been dropping around 500,000 jobs each month, we have of course noticed some slowdown over recent months.  But once customers move past the shock of revenue falls, efficiency soon gets on the radar – so growth, for us, is back.  For us 2009 is about pushing out to new customers, keeping on keeping on with our efforts to supply good products, build on top class infrastructure from a low inertia operation.

So yes, we are in great shape. Slim, trim and rocking!  We will continue to work hard to support our customers and help then find efficiencies – a real substitute for revenue growth until the global economy bounces back

And my advice on company survival does not change in hard times or at any time.   Grow sales faster than costs, automate process, focus people on the stuff only people can do, have a real value (savings or revenue growth) proposition for your customers, if you can, be international from New Zealand.

Remember, if you have to SELL a product, you’re doing something wrong. Instead, you should be FACILITATING a purchase. Think about that for a bit…

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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Whether it’s hard customers, lack of sales, server trouble, cash flow or staff, being in business is all about knocking over obstacles and pushing forward when there’s many reasons not to. The reward comes down the track – not on day 1.

Read the post!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
————-

After 5-10 years of similar trends of up and downtime, it became apparent that no matter how much I fought, the quiet patches still occurred and revenue dropped. On the flipside, I found during the busy, more positive times that business was good, and revenue flowed. It was also during these busy times that the busyness hilighted the need for good systems and processes. Trouble was though that I had no time to put any new processes and systems in place. I was too busy!

It tome some years to recognize that these periods were actually market trends and not just a result of bad business effort. Look around and talk to business people today and you’ll find that nearly all businesses are in the same economic condition. Almost all are noticing the same patterns, so it’s not just you – we’re in a bad trend.

Here are some simple tips you should consider to help your business run smoother  in tough times…

In the good times, setup a buffer for the bad times.

There are some times every year that all businesses are either negatively or positively affected by. Usually these are either holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving etc) or seasonal (Winter, Summer etc).

If you know you have a good season each year, (ie: Advertising/Design peaks between holidays and drops off in holidays), during your good revenue period, put some money aside! Simple advice I know, but I still hear of people spending big during the good times rather than saving, and when the bad times hit they’re unprepared! So put cash reserves aside in the good times to carry you through the bad!

Cut paid advertising, Use free marketing instead

In good times, pay for advertising as when people are in ‘buying mode’, advertising works. In bad times, you may notice the response or conversion rates dropping from your advertising efforts. It’s pointless using paid marketing when the customers aren’t in ‘buying mode’. It’s just throwing money away!

Instead of investing money, invest time. Use other free methods to drive traffic and leads such as social networking, blogs, PR, articles etc. They cost only the time, but still drive traffic to your door!

Here’s some articles worth reading:

Organic Marketing – A better choice!
Do you need Google Adwords and PPC?
Key Marketing Methods for 2008

Change focus from Sales to Systems and R&D

As mentioned above, if people aren’t buying, you’ll end up beating your head against a wall trying to advertise (sell) to them. I don’t suggest you stop selling, but rather you should take advantage of the spare time to focus on your core business systems.

Try to systemize and automate as many processes as you can. This will make your business processes and administration run smoother as well as save you money (and possibly a wage). Create or implement a CRM tool or Project Management software. Look at improving your Accounts System. Anything that will make life simpler and easier should be addressed. Then, when the market picks up you’ll be better equipped to handle a greater level of sales focus!

Want more tips?

Software Startups: Tips for Surviving a Recession!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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