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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!rutgers!gatech!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!ihlpg!tainter
From: tainter@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Tainter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Shareware? Hah!
Message-ID: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM>
Date: 13 Feb 88 01:52:31 GMT
References: <8055@g.ms.uky.edu> <174@piring.cwi.nl> <39450@sun.uucp> <622@nuchat.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 34

In article <622@nuchat.UUCP>, peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
> I wrote one shareware program.

> It was a terminal program called "Smart TTY", for the PC.

> I got 3 letters from people wanting me to add features before they'd send
> their $35, and one guy claiming he wanted a free copy for a review. Wouldn't
> say what his magazine was.

And this was probably three quarters of the people who ever saw the program.

There is one aspect of SHAREWARE people are ignoring.  If your program
isn't getting into the hands of the people who might want it then you are
not going to get anything back from it.

If you want your shareware to succeed, then send it to EVERY magazine software
reviewer you can find, have heard of, or is even rumoured to exist.  Upload it
to GENIE, COMPUSERVE, etc.  Call into bulletin boards across the country
and upload it.  Post it to usenet.  When people make queries about applications
it can fulfill take the initiative and send them a copy on appropriate
medium.  Find a system manufacturer and get them to distribute it with new
system purchases.  Go into book stores and stick free copies of your software
into the magazines for the appropriate system.  Get software and bookstore
sellers of software to give your software away with other purchases, or just
give it away as good will for people browsing in their stores.

Yes a lot of these suggestions involve some cost.  But the original shareware
successes were never without cost to the producers either.  If nothing else
a shareware success has got to have some kind of support, and it has got to
be obvious to the casual reviewer of the product that you do give this support.

> -- a clone of Peter da Silva  `-_-'

--j.a.tainter