My Software Project officially launches online advertising service

TORONTO, March 21 - 2008 – My Software Project today announced it will be the first company to offer an online advertising service designed solely for software developers and software development companies operating in both the United States and Canada.

“Now software developers and software development companies in both countries will have access to one of the most powerful marketing tools in the software development industry”, said Jim Hlad, CEO of My Software Project. “It is our job to find a ‘home’ for each and every software project posted on our site, so we have set up a talented team of individuals dedicated to achieving this goal”.

Using a model that allows “software buyers” (the individuals or companies who need custom-built software) to post descriptions of their software projects for free on its website, My Software Project attracts people who are looking to “shop around” in order to find the perfect (and often least costly) developer for their project. Amongst this group of software buyers are Canadian and American entrepreneurs – many of which need websites for their new businesses or software to run their day to day operations. “It is estimated that approximately 672,000 new companies (with employees) were created in 2005 in the United States alone, a figure which has been steadily increasing over the past decade” said Mr. Hlad. “We intend to capitalize on this on this unique market trend”.

But other companies have already been capitalizing on this market opportunity for some time now. Take, for example, Exhedra Solutions Inc, owner of the popular RentACoder website. Like the My Software Project website, RentACoder.com also allows software buyers to post descriptions of their software projects on its website for free. RentACoder, however, operates according to an entirely different business model. At RentACoder, the software developers do not advertise in the same way that they do on the My Software Project website. Instead, they place monetary “bids” for the software projects that they are interested in. Buyers are free to choose whichever software developer they want for their project. RentACoder makes money by collecting a percentage of the amount paid to the developer by the software buyer.

When asked about websites like RentACoder.com and a few of its clones (which also operate according to a bidding-oriented business model), Mr. Hlad did have a few things to say: “I guess there is a sense in which we are competing with websites like RentACoder.com – after all, we too aim to bring together software buyers and software developers. But there is also a sense in which we are not even in the same ball game. Here at My Software Project, we are trying to focus on a somewhat different customer demographic – namely software buyer companies with larger software projects. We believe that these types of buyers will feel more comfortable posting descriptions of their projects in an environment that contains more projects similar to their own”.