Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!mips!news.cs.indiana.edu!bronze!yawei
From: yawei@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (mr. yawei)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Cracking games
Message-ID: <1991Mar22.202246.29113@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 91 20:22:46 GMT
References: <27442@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <31600016@hpcvra.cv.hp.com.>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 31

In article <31600016@hpcvra.cv.hp.com.> everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) writes:
>]Face it.  With shareware, you will get maybe 1 in 50 people that are
>]really using your program to send you money for it. 

Agree very much. I have released a few sharewares myself and have
received about 80 bucks for them during the last 4 years. On the
contrary, a far simpler program, which I decided not to go shareware,
but somehow managed to get the word out, has brought me ca 10000 bucks
in about a year. Not bad for 3 evenings of programming, would you say?

Shareware authors basically just skip the marketings. They just want
their products to go out to the real world and propagating and sending
money home. Propagating they might, but sending money home may be too
much to hope for.  From my experience, the marketing step may be a lot
more work, and a lot more difficult for us programmers (I am still
very confused about how most of the market works), but it is crucial
in having your products sending money home.

Another factor that contributes to the monetary failure of sharewares,
in my opinion, is a misconception in most users that price reflects
quality. This is not just for rich businesses, but for ordinary users
as well. If you have not paid for a program, you tend to be able to
delete it from your harddisk without much regret. If you have paid for
it, you may somehow feel obliged to keep it for a longer while. 

Since most programs tend to have a short life-span (after which the user 
start to feel the pressure to get a new one), users also may not be
inclined to pay for something that they know they probably want to
replace in the very near future.

yawei