John Casasanta on Marketing iClip, Shareware Apps

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. Continue reading...