What is a good way of promoting new software on tight budget?

following key people on twitter helped us a lot.

You do not have to pay $99 for RoboSoft in order to start promoting your product through the network of download sites. You can use it absolutely free for 30 days. That's enough to submit all your products to all the download sites.

If you offer your product as an on-line service, you still can use the network of download sites. Most of them require a downloadable file. Capture a screencast, put into a zip file along with an HTML description of your product. Download.com and a few other important sites will probably reject your submission. Yet, it should be accepted by the vast majority of download sites.

Facebook ads are by far the most effective and cost effective option for a startup in my opinion. You can set very low budgets, even as low as $50 total cost and still get results.

You can control your demographic that you are targeting down to the finest details, and some of the benefits include:

• Specifying target gender
• Specifying target age
• Specifying target location by city, zip code, or mile radius
• You can focus on marketing to people who do not like your Facebook page, or who do already like your page
• You can link to a Facebook page, Web page, or even the URL of your Facebook page (this allows you to change the title of the ad)
• You can control your daily spend, or total budget for the campaign.
• Facebook charges your credit or debit card every time you reach around $25 in fees
• I have had per click costs be as low as $0.17 per click
• In my experience conversion rates have been about 40% of clicks equal "likes" on a fanpage and of those 40% likes 20% sign up for my email marketing list

I've used Facebook advertising for software products, service companies, and online magazines. All have been effective. I still feel like its an unknown secret advertising platform because people are unaware of how easy and affordable it is.

I work with about 12-15 startups on a constant basis and its the only thing I recommend as a startup. Google Adwords and other traditional advertising are too risky and very difficult to track initial performance compared to Facebook Ads.

One final note, is that if your Facebook ad is not performing well, they will pause it for you and tell you to make improvements. So in essence, they won't charge you for an ad that isn't delivering for you.

Here is another important article you'll need once you get a campaign or two under your belt.

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-ad-performance-2010-09

Online discussions and forums are great.

Just make sure to tell people its your project, before you get reported as a product troll.

Good news: The less expansive way to promote a new software I know is also the most effective.

Take your (free) time to post a link and description to your software in software directories.

If you can afford to buy RoboSoft ($99), you can mostly automatize the process.

Search online where this type of software is discussed. It appears to be quite a niche business. Possibly it is a forum and as such may have inexpensive advertising option. Good luck.

The BBB provides accreditation for console & computer repair shops.

Consider hiring college students to work telesales on a list of repair shops.

For example, http://www.bbb.org/south-east-florida/accredited-business-directory/computer-repair-service