John Casasanta is the developer of the popular and award-winning multiple-clipboard application iClip, and also the winner of the 1999 Apple Design Awards for Best Macintosh User Experience with his shareware game, Food Chain, which is pretty cool. I started working with John last year, as he coded the Black 'n' Blue and Macworld widgets for WidgetMachine, and also worked with our artist Piotr Gajos on iClip lite. Later that winter, we traveled to Macworld Expo San Francisco together along with AppZapper developer Austin Sarner, and had a blast working with the MacUpdate guys at their booth.

Recently, John has been behind some interesting marketing tactics for iClip, including giving away tens of thousands of copies of the app last weekend and creating a free Dashboard widget, "iClip lite", to complement the full application. We talk about his marketing ideas in this interview.

So, first things first. There's nothing quite like a massive giveaway to get people clicking. How many free copies of iClip 3 did users end up downloading over the weekend?

We got over 50,000 downloads while the promo was running. It was way beyond our expectations! My main concern was that the server wouldn't be able to hold-up to the load, but it was fine. The problem, though, was that I took a break to watch a bit of South Park the first night. When I came back to my computer I realized that we were over our monthly bandwidth allowance, so we did go down for a bit.

Hopefully that was the Ginger Kids episode?

That episode's one of my faves since I'm actually a ginger myself. But no, I was watching one on DVD. I've "unplugged" from TV/cable to be more, uh..."productive" these days, though I find myself wasting too much time with other distractions instead.

Yeah, great show though. So we've given away apps in the past with MacGrab, but it's been on a much lower scale, nothing like this. How has this affected iClip 3 sales so far?

That was pretty surprising too. Things have been way up since the promo. Much more than I would've anticipated.

It sounds like it really worked as a hook for new users. As I understand it, the free version doesn't include a free upgrade to the upcoming v.4?

Since this is a freebie this won't include a free upgrade to iClip 4, but we plan to have good discounts available when the time comes. And you may want to keep an eye on macZOT again soon after release.

Speaking of MacZot, you used it as a platform for the iClip freebie, and have featured iClip as a daily zot in the past. What do you think of it as a new marketing avenue for devs?

It's really been incredible. We're in a very crowded market and as a small Mac developer, it can be hard to get noticed. macZOT's been helpful in getting a lot of good attention for iClip.

That's pretty cool, I wonder if new marketing stunts like MacZot and your giveaway will become more often used tools for shareware devs?

I think that one of the most important things for smaller developers to focus on is getting their work out in front of as large of an audience as possible. Of course it's important to keep improving your applications, but that alone simply isn't enough to cut through.

Very true. A lot of devs depend solely on MacUpdate/Versiontracker/Apple Downloads to publicize their software. But things like sending out press releases for major updates is critical!

Definitely! We've built-up a great list of media contacts over the years. It's very frustrating at first when you're not getting any attention, but the key is to keep plugging away with it.

How was it having a booth at last year's expo? It was Inventive's first, and booths can be quite an investment. Worth it?

Going through a Macworld Expo from "the other side" was a whole different experience than just walking the show floor like I've done in the past. For our first time it was great to be sharing a booth with the MacUpdate guys as it really cut costs and helped us to figure out a way for a small developer to make it all work. I'm really happy to say that things went phenomenally well and the plan is to keep exhibiting at the future Macworlds. But beyond looking at it from a business point of view, it was just one of the most incredible times I've ever had. I'd always go back for the parties at the very least!

You know, this just came to mind. You've also been using a free widget version of iClip (iClip lite) which I worked with you on for WidgetMachine, to bring attention to iClip. Any reports on how that's been working out?

The whole widget thing's been amazing. Because it's free, it's turned a ton of people on to the benefits of multiple Clipboards. And I've made a lot of new friends through working with the Widget Machine. In some regard, it was really the turning point of Inventive where it was just me doing everything sole for a couple of years but we now have a bunch of people collaborating on it all. It's been a huge challenge to grow the company gracefully, but we're getting our act together and we're working on some really nifty things. I can hardly wait to unveil our new website design with the launch of iClip!

So iClip v.4 is nearing release. When's it coming? How's the beta test been going?

Oh, it's coming! LOL I have a pretty bad track-record of estimating when things will get done in general, but I've been waaaaay off the mark with iClip 4. What it comes down to is me completely underestimating how long it'd take to do a completely custom UI and have it feel like it belongs on the Mac. I've seen it done such that some new graphics are just slapped-on, but one of our biggest goals has been to make it feel just right. The good thing is that I feel that we've finally accomplished it and we're getting close to having it go out the door. The beta test has been going pretty smoothly so far and the testers seem to be loving the new UI. I can't be happier about the way it's all been going.

Awesome. Hope this'll prove to be helpful to Mac devs out there. Thanks for the interview!

I hope so too. Even though we're all competitors I think it's great when we can help each other out. One of the best things about being a Mac developer is the strong sense of community among us all. Thanks, Phill.