Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucsd!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!dml
From: dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m6809
Subject: Re: Marketing Programs
Summary: $$, but not $$$$$$$
Keywords: Shareware
Message-ID: <1541@loral.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 88 23:14:08 GMT
References: <1554@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis)
Followup-To: comp.sys.m6809
Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
Lines: 41

In article <1554@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> koonce@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (tim koonce) writes:

>For the Color Computer market:

>Shareware will likely _not_ make you any money at all.  In any
>shareware situation, only a small percentage actually pay for the
>program.  In the PC market, where a few thousand copies are likely to
>get distributed, you will see some money, since that small percentage
>still amounts to a few hundred people.  For the CoCo market, shareware
>distribution is comparatively light, so you're not likely to see more
>than a dozen or so (if that many) people actually pay for it.  I may
>be overly pessimistic about this, though.

  I've never bothered to total it all up, but I've gotten about $250 for
some shareware. It hasn't brought me great fame and recognition, but I've
seen it on Compuserve, Delphi, and several bulletin boards. Actually it
consisted of several programs, including an improved OS-9 disk driver,
OS9Gen, Cobbler, and a bunch of other utilities that allowed OS-9 users
to run double-sided disk drives on their CoCo's. I distributed the sources
individually on net.micro.6809, with a little message saying "send $10 for
all the programs".

  For the $10 (some people sent more, thanks!) you got a disk containing
source and binary for 11 programs, 6 or 7 shell procedure files to automate
installation, and 5 pages of TROFF'd instructions with MAN-type descriptions
of all the commands. People who bought early versions got source upgrades
(on paper; I would have lost money sending a second disk) and bug fixes.

  The kicker is that I wrote all this stuff for my own use in the first
place. Of course, I'm pleased that other people found it useful, especially 
so that some of them sent money for it. Still, I didn't set out to make
money -- that just happened after I had these programs laying around.
Another benefit was that several people pointed out bugs (a couple even
dug in and figured out how to fix them) that I might never have found.

-------------------------------
          Dave Lewis    Loral Instrumentation   San Diego

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