I have developed a software program (compatible with Tradestation) that gives buy and sell signals and trades futures, stocks, options, forex, e.t.c in any time frame with a good success rate and wanted to know if anybody has any recommendations as to how to take it to the next step and market or sell the product? Is it best to try to go it alone or partner with someone who has some experience and financial backing who can help with (advertising, marketing expenses, e.t.c.)? I know it's a big business with a lot of financial potential. I do trade the method currently and make good money but wanted to take it to the next level. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
If it's so successful, why do you want to sell it? Why not develop an audited track record,raise capital and trade to the next level? el surdo
I don't have that much money to trade with (trust me, I wish I did) but it took me many years to develop it and I don't know if I should try to market it myself or partner with someone or a firm to help.
Run an ad in Technical Analysis Stocks and Commodites. Put up a web site. You can also put it on ebay and sell it.
Take it to the next level is increasing your trading volume with more contracts!! No reason to market it unless you don't believe it works... or you've gone broke.
Imagine 50 ET traders calling you after last week's sell off complaining about how a bug in your program caused them to lose their life's savings. Very bad. If you don't have enough money to trade, you clearly do not have enough marketing money to drive people to your site... However, there may be more money in the web site, chat room, with your software as the 'unique marketing advantage' over other rooms and services. If you have a chat room with software you might be able to keep stupid people from hurting themselves long enough for them to make some money. (I doubt this but I could be wrong.) TradersInternational is a good example of a 'low tech' operation that has made more money than most small software companies. (They screwed up last year big time by making statements that could not back up. Search ET for examples of how NOT to provide a trading service. But they are still in business and still making a lot of zero risk dollars.) TradeTheMarkets is very profitable with low tech and seem very honest in thier claims. They do it right and it shows in their site and their seminars. Software as a standalone product? Market too crowded with free/cheap alternatives. Hard to differientate from other products. Innovation hard to protect from copycats. Only going to get worse. IMHO Focus on trading instead and better software tools for yourself. Don't hold trades overnight. Be happy. Enjoy.
This cannot be overstated. If you are a one man show, this could not only become extremely stressful, but could get completely out of hand to the point when you could get nothing else done beside attempting to douse the flames. Do not underestimate the importance (and cost) of support.
If a software was good for trading then you should trade it. If it does not work too well but looks nice then you sell it and try and cash out as much as possible. You can open a trading account with as little as $2,000 or $5,000 in a prop and get all the leverage you need to make money. If the software worked well, it would take you no time to get even that little amount off of a credit card loan (who the hell is not lending to even sub-prime candidates lately lol) or some family. If you cannot make money off of it, why should someone else pay you for it?