Re: OFF TOPIC: Success with shareware
Re: OFF TOPIC: Success with shareware
- Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: Success with shareware
- From: Pierre-Olivier Latour <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 04:33:30 +0200
>
Can anybody give any guides as to what percentage of people who download
>
a shareware program actually choose to buy it. Obviously this varies
>
greatly, I just want an idea of what expectations I should have, what to
>
aim for, how much effort I should put into a project at the expense of
>
other work. Is >1% dreaming, is > a possible outcome.
I would say you can have 2 goals when developing sharewares:
A) learn and have fun: create a cool product primary for your own use, then
eventually try to sell it
B) make money out of it
There's not a lot to say about case apart from the fact you gain experience,
and experience is valuable when applying for jobs.
Regarding case B, you first need to know that living from shareware incomes
is _extremely_ difficult. Unless you have _the_ genious idea, you would need
several products developed and sold at the same time with overlapping
lifecyles. I've learned from my personal experience that these products
should meet the following "development conditions":
Note: I'm just writing this off my head, so the order is approximate and I'm
probably missing some other "conditions" ;)
1) Develop a program for a specific market, or if possible create a new
market for it. DO NOT develop a program for your own use, that you would
later sell "as is". Know the users you are targeting.
2) When defining the program, select a market that is not saturated (e.g. do
not develop a web browser or an e-mail client), and where you can compete
(i.e. do not fight Microsoft or Adobe on their own market). Example: develop
a small CAD program especially for users that want to design their new home
but have absolutely no knowledge in architecture (I'm not saying it's a good
idea: it's just an example). Don't forget to estimate the size of this
market: if only 100 users are potentially interested, you may start looking
for another idea ;)
Targeting correctly your market will allow to sell your product at a good
price, because your customers will _need_ it.
3) Once you found a market, you will need to be able to develop a software
_better_ than the current available ones (make sure you have the programming
knowledge for this). "Better" could mean: more features, better UI, support
for new OS (e.g be the first on OS X - it might be a bit late for this one
now ;) ). Avoid fighting on price only, it's never a good long term
solution: everybody eventually loose at this game...
4) Build a "prototype" of the program in a minimal development time: it will
have ONLY essential features, only support one language and possibly one OS.
However, do not get me wrong: it has to be a quality software - the same
quality as the one you have in mind for your "final" product. See how it
sells and what's the user's feedback: if it doesn't work, stop now, you
won't have lost much ;)
5) If you decide to continue development, only add features that are
essential to most users (i.e. adding a feature requested by only 1 user is
not worth). Less features also means less code which means less bugs. It
also means a simpler UI, both creating less user support requests.
6) Design a well-thought User Interface adapted to the users you are
targeting (e.g. simple interface for basic users and so on). This will also
allow you to write a minimal user manual containing only stuff that cannot
be guessed from the UI.
7) Minimize your costs: sell only online, and have the user download the
software. Only create a nice but basic web page, not a whole promotion site.
Use mac sites as your promotion media: do not actually spend money on
promotion.
8) Make your source code clean and fragment it, so that you can re-use it
easily in other products.
9) Watch your product's lifecycle: it should have the shape of a "bell".
When you're reaching the end, this will mean you will have saturated your
market. Therefore, you'll have to take a decision: either stop development
(only do bug fixes), or add new "core" features (this means consequent
development time) to your app to gain new customers and have the current
ones buy the update; or search for new customers in other countries (develop
localized versions and partner with someone in the country to do promotion).
Concretely, I can give you 2 examples of products I've done recently:
1) One for case A: X-Tunes
->
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15557&db=mac
2) One for case B: Hold-Up (designed for the European market)
->
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11544&db=mac
I don't remember the typical percentage of registered users out of download
numbers, but it was not phenomenal. It can even be very low: I remember one
of my products that was downloaded 8'000 times a month at the very end of
its lifetime but only sold a few copies per month!
However, regarding income, the 2 "serious" sharewares I did among many other
software got me between 35'000 to 40'000 USD in net total I think - spread
on about 3 years that is!
Final thought from my personal experience:
Shareware as living? -> No (way too risky).
Shareware for fun + complementary incomes? -> Yes. ;)
_____________________________________________________________
Pierre-Olivier Latour email@hidden
Lausanne, Switzerland
http://www.pol-online.net
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