Learn What People Say About You and Your Competitors

People will tell you what they think about your software but they seldom tell software developers what they think about their competitors.

If you don’t know your competitors, you cannot find your position in the market. I constantly monitor Usenet newsgroups for competitors’ names, their product names, URLs, our product names. Moreover, when users ask “how do I do this and that” and our program does exactly “this and that” I recommend out program and explain how to use it.

It does not take much time to monitor newsgroups. You just need a convenient clipping service. I use NetNews Tracker. It searches newsgroups twice a day and sends alerts to my e-mail.