Martinsville, IN—After 23 years of serving the software development industry as the Association of Shareware Professionals, the ASP changed its name to the Association of Software Professionals.
The new name reflects ASP’s influence in converting nearly all of the software publishing industry to the try-before-you-buy model, as well as its commitment to continue to guide independent software publishers in innovative software development and marketing strategies.
“ASP began in 1987 as the trade organization for software developers,” said current president Mike Dulin of SharewareJunkies.com. “Back then, the ASP was a small band of independent underdogs who defied the traditional software distribution channel and created the try-before-you-buy model. Today, the entire software industry has adopted the shareware system, and there’s no need for our organization to keep a name that is tied to the past.”
The ASP has evolved into an international organization of 1,000 software developers who are pioneering cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), smartphone development and desktop/laptop development on tomorrow’s popular computing platforms.
ASP’s newsgroups are constantly discussing new ways to market software. In past years, members were at the leading edge of using press releases to publicize their software, using search engine advertising to increase sales, and using the Internet to market their applications.
“Today, ASP’s developers work together to optimize their programs’ registration incentives, protect their intellectual property, and optimize innovative software sales methodologies,” said Adriana Iordan, ASP’s PR chairperson. “We use our newsgroups, newsletters and blogs to work together for the good of the industry, and to strengthen our members’ businesses.”
“With fewer and fewer developers calling their applications ‘shareware’, software buyers have become confused about the meaning of the term,” explained Rich Holler, ASP’s executive director. “And since nearly all software developers today, from the smallest micro independent software vendor to the largest software publisher, offer trial versions of their programs, the term ‘shareware’ has become less useful.”
Visit ASP’s website, asp-software.org, to learn more about how the ASP can help your software business grow.
