ml10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael A. Libes) (11/30/90)
Shareware, its cheap Shareware, its fun Shareware, it gives you a little spending money and a lot of headaches... I'm Lunarmobiscuit. I've released two Multifinder shareware utilities in the past year, _Launch and Darkness. In the entire world, about a dozen people use Darkness so we won't be talking about that. However, a few hundred people use _Launch. >-What are your average yearly returns on a piece of software? I consider _Launch a success. It made a few thousand dollars, a $10 Australian bill, a $15 Canadian check and a half-dozen postcards. >-What are the patterns of income over time. (High early on and then tapering > off, or gradual increase and gradual decrease...)? There's been very few weeks without one check. The mainly arrive in clumps, especially right after its posted to the Internet. >-Any differences in income between games and utilities? I've heard that at most you should expect 5% of the users to pay. I've bought a few Shareware utlities, but never any games. Generally, I find the games to be overpriced, although I find most computer games overpriced. >-Any interesting tax issues? Shhhh!!! It's just extraneous income. By itself, Shareware won't put a college student over the poverty limit. >-Any surprises? I get a lot of envelopes from Japan containing US cash. Two of these came registered mail. Since _Launch is only $10, it believe it costs more for the postage than the fee. The other thing I learned is that it takes forever for companies to pay for software. Fermilab sent me an order for a few copies of _Launch. I received the payment about a month and a half later. Luni's system for Shareware: Write the program for yourself. If you like it, fix the rest of the bugs. If you got through all the bug fixes and you still like the program, write up some docs. If you get some decent docs and still like the program, release it. Within the week, you will find out if everyone else likes it. Within that same week you'll get a dozen or two bug reports. Now return to sentence two for the next release... That's my impression of Shareware. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael Libes (Luni) Internet Address: MacMach Project ml10@andrew.cmu.edu Carnegie Mellon University ------------------------------------------------------------------