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Selling Software - Shareware, Piracy, and Profit?
qjereq asks: "A few months after being laid off from a large corporation early last year, I decided to create some image browsing software to sell on the web and, perhaps later, in stores. Unfortunately, besides competing with hundreds of other similar shareware and freeware products, I have found that the bulk of my product's downloads come from pirate web sites. I have tried unsuccessfully to make my software hack-proof. I have also looked into selling the product in-stores, but I have only heard bad things about this including the possibility of having to eat the cost of returned merchandise. I am running low on cash and am on the brink of giving up, but I know that the product is good. Do any Slashdot readers have any success stories about how they were able to make money by selling software? My product is currently sold as Shareware. Should I consider a combination of Freeware and a Full Version? Is it worth the hassle of trying to get onto store shelves? Help."
It is a trivial task to discover any changes to the registry/hdd etc. with any of several tools designed for large-scale software rollouts which take binary "snapshots" and compare before and after.
The rest of that scheme can be bypassed very easily simply be running the installer through a debugger or ICE setup and/or running the final installation through the same.
The only way something like what you're suggesting would have a hope of working would be if the entire installation program and files were encrypted using a key unique to each package.
The installer then would consist of a huge "blob" with a tiny little front end that connected to the author's own server to do a challenge/response to get the key for that package.
Unfortunately all this does is shift the target to the author's own server which would be haxored in about 30 seconds and all his precious keys would flow out like blood on a digital battlefield.
Now, having said all this, the real flaw in his approach was not studying his market well enough and realising that he should have had a different product or different customers or both.
Good luck to ya buddy!
(Maybe with a little searching you'll run across one of those interview with Phil Katz, author of PKZip and owner of PKWare, where he moans about how tough it is in the shareware market!!!)
Have you thought about targeted digital photography neophytes? Forums, tutorials (I see you have some already), and other material could draw these people in. I've participated in a number of forums at various digital photo websites and it has been fun. I liked the photo of the day and the themed monthly group photo assignment the most.
On a side note, what might help draw these people to your new site is your participation in other sites and usenet groups. If you know how to do this right, which I think of as being an active and useful member of the community (not spamming), you will get click throughs to your site (best with your website's URL in your sig). This is a fine line to tread and it does take time.
One other idea -- make integration into your community website a part of your program (ie, submit this photo for photo of the day/month/?, add photo to online portfolio, etc). When the program is installed or run for the first time, make the registration into the community an option.
This brings up bandwidth issues if portfolios are online but it might also bring up additional revenue possibilities if you're interested in providing services along with the program itself.
I am one of the people that pays for shareware on occasion. At present, I have at least ten pieces of shareware on my computer that I have paid for.
Requirements for me to pay for shareware:
1) Best in class: I paid my $29 for iCab. Why would I do that when I can get it for free? Simple - iCab offers the best feature set for a web browser. I have yet to see any web browser that offers the filtering powers iCab offers in an easy-to-set-up manner.
2) Great software: I am currently shopping for an OS X IRC client. Right now I am using iRC which is good, but not great. It is shareware, but I am not going to pay for it since I can easily imagine a better client out there.
3) Annoying, but not obtrusive reminders: I paid for GraphicConverter for OS X because it has a simple "Click Here to Run the Program" dialog box when you start it off. it reminds me every time I used it without paying for it just how often I was using it.
4) Full feature, unlimited demo: At the same time, with GC, it offers all of its features for as long as you want to put up with the nag screen. Since I use a program for a couple of months before deciding if it is worth paying for, a timed demo never gets my money (it stops working before I get a chance to fully evaluate it in my day-to-day life). Not giving me the full features also prevents me from fully evaluating my need and, as a result, will never get me to pay for something.
5) Professional company/website: I paid for a shareware type of BBEdit, and paid for the MissingSync. The web sites for these companies offered a lot of help and support, and made me confident that I was not going to get ripped off. Since I hate PayPal, any shareware that only uses that form of payment will not get my money.
6) Unique and worth money: I paid for the MissingSync because I needed it to sync my Clie with OS X. It was the only software that would allow this (PalmDesktop now offers this built-in). If a piece of shareware competes with a freeware alternative, the shareware software had better be significantly better than the free alternatives.
7) Good upgrade policy: This is a big one. GraphicConverter and others allow free upgrades for a *very* long time once you pay. I am not going to hand over money for v2.1 of some software if I know I am going to have to pay for v3.0 in three months and then v3.5 three months after that. I would say that, in general, I am willing to pay for a paid upgrade every two years or so.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I can't help you with any software success stories, but I can give you my first impresion of your product, for what it's worth- At first glance it comes across like any other image viewer, which is not good because I already have irfanview, and am quite happy with it, so why should I pay for yours? Well, after going over the features, there are a couple of things your product offers that most image editors don't offer. Don't market it as an image editor. Sell it as a "Network Image Grabber". Organize your list of features under categories, like Networking features, Editing features and Thumbnailing features, and make the most unique categories the most prominant. As far as hackers stealing your work, consider opening up the source code under the GPL. At least that way you would stand a chance of getting something in return(improved code), for what is already being taken. You could give the code away, and still sell the binaries.
I suppose you could make it incredibly trivial for crackers to break, but hard for the average user. Maybe, in the binary, put "Copy protection: y". How many average users would be able to edit a binary without ruining it ?
Then, if a cracker posted it for bragging rights, people could laugh, removing that incentive.
Back in 1982 on the Apple II there was Kabul Spy, an adventure game which alo had this multi-layer anti cracking thing. But instead of bailing out or giving you an error the game simply went on but in such a way that there was no way out.
Basically, you crossed a border, and if it detected a crack it threw you in prison but it looked like a normal part of the game and you would NEVER know this was copy protection.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
On copy protection: The best advice I ever heard was that one should create copy protection to keep the honest people honest. A person who's going to pirate will pirate, and there's nothing you can do about it. A person who is genuinely evaluating your application may not register if you don't give them some sort of little prod.
What I did was to limit my evaluation version to a certain number of entries. It was enough that the user could see and use every single feature in the application, yet since the number of entries was limited it forced a user to make a choice of whether or not to purchase after not too terribly long.
I also had a freeware version available. I didn't hear that it actually helped sales, but it might have.
On distributing in stores: I seriously doubt it'd be worth it. It's a high initial cost for a none too sure return.
It's very hard to distinguish yourself in a large field of competitors. My sales dropped dramatically when others with higher bugdets came into play -- I went from making around $700/month to $30/month when two or three new competitors entered the field. Even new versions haven't increased sales significantly.
It can be worth it, however.
Sean.