(June 2, 2012 at 12:02 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote:(June 2, 2012 at 11:55 am)Tiberius Wrote: Speaking as a consumer, I usually use Google to see what kind of products are out there, and I'll always give the free ones a try if they look good. I don't generally like shareware with a trial period that disables everything, and certainly in your case the free competition will completely destroy you if you go down that route (VLC, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, etc).
Hm... well yes but if his product is better and the free-trial period demonstrates this wouldn't alot of people be willing to pay alittle for the far better product regardless of whether the competitors are free?
NO NO NO NO NO!
It DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT.
Let's put ourselves in the position of the archetypical stupid user (I have to do this to simplify complex UI that the damn artists provide me for my game).
They're using the software every day. The software may or may not put up a dialog box going "I LIVE FOR (x) days!". The user mindlessly clicks "OK" and moves on.
One day their software stops working.
Panicked, they go to google and download something else.
This happens all the time.
When we experimented with timing out items in our games, we found that people would mistime themselves, bitch on our forums, and leave. We found that only by wrapping the time-limited items in a meta game that routed all access through it and provides a game -of-chance interface at "winning" said items.
That side stepped the customer getting pissed because they wanted to buy said item but couldn't because it disappeared/broke before it dawned on them that they /SHOULD/ buy the item.
Installment plans were a delusional invention of the Gen X'ers. Youth and the emerging young adult (18-25) as well as older Gen Y (25-30) markets don't respond to that at all. Shareware is just another installment plan. And it should stay dead.
The current big model for monetization is freemium done sparingly. Too much freemium and your product crashes. Too little and you've underutilized your audience.
But giving away most features free with a few that, by design, can only obtained with time OR money (the time is where "advertising fits in"), you can enthrall the largest audience.
They'll either sit through your advertisements (let's assume you made an adware version that disabled the ads from said ad network after 5 confirmed click throughs -- hacking it is not easy because you need the "ACK" from the ad network while making the ads become gradually disabled smooths out the "time v. money" costs) or buy the damn real version.
Everyone else, if they're happy with the one premium feature and/or freeware, will use it.
You want people using your code. As many as you can.
Slave to the Patriarchy no more
