Mint Marketing and Promotion - Retail DVD with booklet

[trangtrainam]

Hello,

I am new to Linux and a non-technical end user. I searched Forums for promotion of mint and found about promotion tools like t-shirts, banners, blogging, displaying batch on website.etc but could not find any way to promote Live DVDs. In India, even 256 kbps is defined as broadband. Many home users have limited Mb plan, as surfing do not consume much Mbs, for them 800 MB is too time consuming and sometimes costly affair. They prefer to purchase DVD for Rs 100/- (USD 2) and then can of course share it with friends for free.

I have some thoughts about spreading Mint. I think hard copies of DVDs are great way to market Mint. The question is - how to reach to end users?. These are my thoughts

DVD should contain a small booklets which has mint manual, link to forum, a small articles of advantage of Linux and the Advantage of Live DVD. Booklet could also advise user to install it inside Vitualbox. A small intro of Virtualbox would be handy. Again explaining License and liberty to copy and distribute would be beneficial too. - This will gain their confidence and remove / reduce fear.

1. Give Live DVD with popular Magazine related to computer technology. The collaboration can be worked out. Either offer very cheap DVDs or include to cost of DVD in the magazine. Then publishers would give some percentage to mint foundation.

2. Offer DVDs at cheap price in Retail shops – stationary shops keeping computer items like pen drive, cords, computer hardware stores etc. Retails shore owners generally do not demand extra money, if they are assured of some credit if we are ready to take back sold DVDs.Malls can also be approached too.

3. Free giveaways. Give a free laptop pre-configured with Dual Boot of Win 7 and Linux Mint or just Mint. Run a contest or a lucky draw. Participant will have to donate minimum amount say, USD $ 5. After you get double amount of the the item to be given free, you do a lucky draw and offer lucky participant a laptop.

4. You can also collaborate about lucky draw with hardware vendors, Laptop vendors and let them do the marketing.

5. Tech Geeks can approach Schools, Colleges to educate mint and offer free DVDs to Teachers and DVDs at a nominal price to students.

6. Tech Geeks can approach Computer training institutes to teach / introduce linux or mint. Make students aware of virtual machines like virtualbox, so that they can toy with any Guest OS. (I was not aware of Virtualbox till I came across the name in forums).

I know this can be very demanding Job. It also requires one to be technically sound. Just wished to share my thoughts.