Best approach?

[Reforged]

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?

[Autumnlicious]

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).

Donations are good, but they really require an existing fan base to work. You can always switch to that option later. I think the best option left is to have it free but with a trial for premium features. That gives the user a chance to try out the full product, rather than (from their perspective) taking a risk with their money.

Agree with your analysis. Disagree with your course, as you still recommended the annoying feature you hate -- disabling features.

NEVER give users features that you take away. They only feel like you're out to get them.

I recommend a middle route -- enable one premium feature for free, put that in the free build. If they want more, they pay you a small fee that gives them the CORRECT binary from your store that has ALL features.

Trust me, you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY don't want to "simply disable" or put a lock on your software. There are plenty of warez crackers I know who live to break that shit, giving them a full featured client for nothing.

REMOVE THE SOURCE CODE for the disabled features. Leaving only the UI elements.

[downbeatplumb]

No site yet, just me at the moment. I'm fed up making chess sets and want to get back to what I'm good at which is programming. I used to be a professional shareware author not too long ago and I'm trying to re-launch myself.

I'm thinking of going with a completely free version but with a host of premium features that the use can 'enable' for 30 days to try them out if they wish. If they don't then it simply remains free, if they do and decide not to upgrade, again, it reverts to the free version. If they do upgrade then I'm pretty happy about that

Dar your chess sets are fantastic and they were actually making you real money.

The software industry isnt like it was in t'old days.

What I'm saying is dont give up the chess sets until the programming makes money.

I'd trade my job for making those chess sets at home any day.

[Autumnlicious]

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.

[Cinjin]

Whatever feature makes your product the most unique should be the one they have to pay for.

Who cares if a lot of people are using something you created if you're not making any money?????

I use the free software Irfanview all the time. I don't know who designed it and I don't give a shit. Notoriety only means something if people actually know who you are, and since most of the world doesn't give a shit about programmers - go for the money. I'd rather make $50,000 from 2000 customers than $0 from 5,000,000 customers ....... customers who couldn't give a shit about who I am or what I've done.

[Napoléon]

Who cares if a lot of people are using something you created if you're not making any money?????

To quote Justin Timberlake (pretending to be Sean Parker)

"You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars."

It might not make money straight away but it's money in the bank if it attracts a shit load of people to use it and make them come to depend on it.

I use the free software Irfanview all the time. I don't know who designed it and I don't give a shit. Notoriety only means something if people actually know who you are, and since most of the world doesn't give a shit about programmers - go for the money. I'd rather make $50,000 from 2000 customers than $0 from 5,000,000 customers ....... customers who couldn't give a shit about who I am or what I've done.

I don't really think people care about Mark Zuckerberg. He ain't rich because of his own popularity, he is rich because of his creation.

I think the same can be said for Hypercube. If it's a great product and something people will use all the time, then you want to maximise that potential. Making people pay from the offset is no way to maximise that.

[Cinjin]

Please compare software to software, not software to the most popular website on the internet. In addition, comparing unknown software programmers to a world famous web-designer who had a huge block-buster movie written about him isn't a fair comparison either.


Apples to apples ... my comparison works. Media software compared to billion dollar websites are apples to oranges. Also, I never said that he shouldn't make some portion of it free.

In the end, Darwinian will do what must be done regardless, but telling someone to give their work away for free is something I will never EVER do.

[Napoléon]

Please compare software to software, not software to the most popular website on the internet. In addition, comparing unknown software programmers to a world famous web-designer who had a huge block-buster movie written about him isn't a fair comparison either.


Apples to apples ... my comparison works. Media software compared to billion dollar websites are apples to oranges. Also, I never said that he shouldn't make some portion of it free.

It's a fair point you make but I still think that my own point stands. Making people pay for it drastically reduces the amount of consumers you can potentially have. Once you have them hooked on the product, THEN you can introduce the option to donate and pay. I think that's a far more sound strategy.

In the end, Darwinian will do what must be done regardless, but telling someone to give their work away for free is something I will never EVER do.

But that's not the point. It's about what stands the chance to make the most money in the long run. If ofcourse that is what Dar is interested in. He may give it away for free to start with but that doesn't necessarily mean he is losing out on customers, in fact quite the opposite.

[Autumnlicious]

Please compare software to software, not software to the most popular website on the internet. In addition, comparing unknown software programmers to a world famous web-designer who had a huge block-buster movie written about him isn't a fair comparison either.

Facebook is not just a 'website', unless you wish to compare the trivialities of something like this to something like this and use the same term.

It is more akin to Software as a Service (SaaS) than 'website'. As such, we can compare the dynamic and programmatic nature of Facebook, from interface to Hadoop deep back end, to a massive piece of software. That is networked (we have plenty of examples of networking software, so it's not an unfair or rare comparison).

Apples to apples ... my comparison works. Media software compared to billion dollar websites are apples to oranges. Also, I never said that he shouldn't make some portion of it free.

In the end, Darwinian will do what must be done regardless, but telling someone to give their work away for free is something I will never EVER do.

You're wrong then and will never understand:
- Open source
- Things that make money off of open source
- et al

Giving away access, even temporarily, is what starts a crapload of niche apps and game studios from the ground up. You NEED users.

Not dollars.

Users. Monetization is an art and a science -- it requires precise timing (when the cost of acquiring new users is about to increase) and execution (you need to know what to monetize. Not everything can be).

And monetization can be applied to a media application, just like it is applied to all the hundreds of mobile apps and social apps. The pull for later monetization and relatively free (to get hooked onto using) access is so great that Apple has an increasingly growing and depended on App Store, Microsoft is eying that market and making strides for it, and Instagram made a killing for being first-to-market and first-to-scale-up-without-a-hitch.

It all lies in knowing what your users like for free as first metric.

Darwinian NEEDS to know what the free experiences HAS to be like before he can score in the PREMIUM market.

[Napoléon]

You NEED users.

Not dollars.

THIS!

A product which is free will always attract more interest than a product that is not. If you can get the same thing for free somewhere else then who is going to pay for your product? Not many people, I can tell you that. So why drastically reduce your target market when you can open it up to everyone, maximising sales in the long run.