If you were to look up some shareware called Spyware Doctor 3.2 on www.Tucows.com you’ll see that about half a million users download a free copy every week. Want more fireworks? OK, go to www.download.com and you’ll see that another shareware title called AVG AntiVirus Free Edition was downloaded about 1,126,408 times when I last checked. These huge download numbers hover close to this figure every week!
Many shareware titles never hit these big download numbers but what if you had a title that got downloaded just 100,000 times every week. Could you make some money with it?
Learn what millionaire shareware developers already know. Here are some tips: 1. You can acquire the rights to an existing shareware program. Some developers create great programs but fail to promote them. Sometimes you can purchase the source code very inexpensively.
2. Research your market to see what the competition is doing. If the market is big enough you may decide to spend the time and money to improve on the most popular title out there. Get lots of free publicity with word of mouth advertising by developing a five star shareware program.
The good news is that shareware is a digital product. There are no delivery or manufacturing costs once bandwidth issues are handled. It costs you little or nothing to get your title into the hands of millions of users. Consider this an enormous source of free advertising.
With over ten million people having downloaded Spyware Doctor so far you can see that the traffic to a site like www.Download.com is enormous putting their Alexa traffic ranking around 89. Post your shareware to similar shareware sites to have a chance of having your title downloaded a lot.
Were you to search for free software, shareware or freeware on Google you’d no doubt see over a million sites listed. Simply by posting your shareware titles using a PAD file to numerous shareware sites you can get the benefit of free promotion.
Shareware Millions Most people are unaware of all the ways someone can make money giving away free software. Here’s some ideas Thomas Deedy told me about that might surprise you as much as it did me.
There are a multitude of ways you can make some money. One of the biggest is by offering users support services. The key here is to carefully and meticulously develop a database covering every possible support issue. This database is installed into a trouble-shooting solution key for the technical people handling support.
You can actually sell support by the minute, hour or for an annual fee. You can install your trouble-shooting tree on a site accessible only by support staff. The database of solutions keeps growing until there is virtually no problem that a mildly technical support person can suss out by following the support issue tree.
When the database of issues is about as complete as it can get the support system can charge, say $10 per issue. But, it will only take the staff a couple of seconds to look up the solution and deliver it. So, they make money all day long.
Some support services even use 900 numbers and charge per call. Or, they precharge for X number of hours of support. It is like a reserve account and users use it if needed.
An alternative would be to create a detailed installation and use video that shows actual screen shots of how to use the software and has a built-in trouble-shooting program. For a complicated and valuable program you could price the video/software combination at $250.00 and bundle it with two free hours of support services.
Now, imagine that 250,000 people have downloaded your software that’s designed for small businesses and would have cost them upwards of $2500 if something comparable was available. Let’s imagine for a second that just 2% of those 250,000 people decide not to be frustrated trying to install and use the software with the basic instructions.
Do the math: 5000 orders @ $250 each is $1,250,000 in gross sales!
If you handle it this way you can actually automate the entire business and your costs are limited to the initial development costs for the software and the cost to create a powerful video tutorial and help file. You can outsource all this work simply by creating a detailed flow chart of exactly what you want the program to accomplish and how you envision it working for customers.
Sound interesting? Why not visit www.elance.com or www.Vworker.com? You can enter a project proposal free of charge and have professional coders bidding to work with you within 24 hours. Outsourcing to coders in other countries can be very reasonable.
Once your shareware has been created and tested you own the rights. That means you can license the program to other companies to collect royalties on all their sales or agree that you will provide support services and keep 100% of the revenues from support.
I think you’ll agree that this is a great way to become a multimillionaire yet you don’t have to be a coder to make this happen.
Support is where the big money is but some simpler software programs don’t really have any support issues; they are that good! Developers of simpler software can make money in other ways.
Try it before you buy it shareware puts the software into the hands of the user risk-free. If they like it they can donate or pay an upgrade fee to get a full-functioning version of the shareware. Many such programs install a donate or upgrade button right in the software.
————————————————————————————————————————– ” Please support my efforts to provide users with support and improve this software with a small donation. In return, you’ll receive a link to an extensive tutorial, help files and you’ll be advised when you can download the latest updated version of XYZ software. You’ll receive lifetime updates all for your small contribution of $10 or more.” ————————————————————————————————————————–
I would then include three pay links. To contribute $10 click here. To contribute $15 click here. To contribute $25 click here. I would add a bonus of some really nifty software worth several hundred dollars for those who donate $25.
Part of the value of using an upgrade or donate button is that you capture the emails of your users. You can build a wopping big subscriber list which may actually be worth more than the donation. A good opt-in list can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
If you’d like to become a shareware millionaire try and find an application that will have wide-spread appeal. Look at what others have done and then do it better.
Other ways to make money with shareware:
1. Make your basic shareware version good but show the users what they are missing by displaying lots of powerful features that only come with the Pro Version. When they click on the upgrade link email them the unlock code to all the Pro Version features.
2. Build an email list by offering something to your customers like an e-zine with insider user tips. Or, simply bribe them by offering them another of your software programs free when they register their copy of XYZ software that they just downloaded. As I said, above, owning a massive opt-in email list can be worth a fortune.
3. I created lesson authoring software to make free lessons. You could download it free. But, I also made an upgrade version that permitted the teacher to make Super Lessons that could be sold on my site. So, I make money from people purchasing the Professional Lesson Authoring Software for $1995 and from sale of the Super Lessons. Of course I split the revenue for the Super Lessons with the authors of these lessons. See www.Tutorbug.com
I hope this has been helpful and that you realize that coders can do all the technical stuff for you. If so, you may just have found the perfect way to become a shareware millionaire.
Before you spend your money creating software consider becoming a shareware posting agent to earn a fee on every paid upgrade. Click on shareware posting agent for complete details. Also published at Source Code Millions.