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Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#121

Post by jrgoj »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #18

I've built a small tool that I distributed as "free for personal use, contact me for a commercial license", without technical enforcement, not even a nag screen. I made one (1) sale, despite receiving e-mails from several people thanking me that they're happily using it at work, and that sale was to a company who wanted customization, and only ended up actually paying the invoice when they asked for another round of…

One thing developers of products like this can do is offer an accessibly priced license for individual users in a corporation. If it's an indispensable tool for me that I use at work, and the bureaucracy for obtaining even $0.01 USD from the company is not going to happen, the individual license can be a nice middle ground. I can write it off at tax season too.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#122

Post by gerasim_sergey »

eps wrote: post #55

Go with a trial model with online license activation. This works really well. More specifically - allow to use the program without a license for X days and the cripple it in some annoying way until the installation is licensed. Activation should pass some machine details to the licensing server, which will then pass back them hashed and signed. The program should have the public part of the licensing key embedded, so…

Please tell me more, I have a small Shareware business and I earn more than $ 500 ;-). interesting statics ... i'm not sure that function restriction works better

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#124

Post by quickthrower2 »

davidgh wrote: post #110

I’ve been attached to the “shareware” industry since the 90’s, providing platforms to software developers to sell their products. It’s given me an angle of the industry that few get, namely, I’ve seem the sales number for literally thousands of different companies in the industry. The first thing I would say is that shareware (in the classic definition) is not really a thing anymore, but “try before you buy” software…

Great comment. Absolutely packed full of gold nuggets.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#126

Post by jolmg »

anoncake wrote: post #112
jolmg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If supporting someone with X€ is any kind of "vote", it's a vote that they should get X€ more than they currently get for their work. No, think of each unit of currency as equaling 1 vote. It's a vote that, between the various things that they could be doing, they should continue doing what they're currently doing. For example, in a programmer's case, he could be employed by a company which will give $X votes. He c…

Votes and currency work completely differently. In an election, you have one vote. You can use it to support someone or not. If you don't vote, you don't get to keep your vote and use it for a different election. Equating votes and money just does not work. If: - I believe that someone's work is worth 50,000€ - They currently get 50,000€ from Patreon - Because their earnings are secret I give them another 1000€ - Bec…

> Votes and currency work completely differently. In an election, you have one vote.

Not all voting systems are created equal. There are voting systems that permit using more than 1 vote, like this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting

(If you go to the bottom of the article, you can see a blue box that says "Electoral Systems" with "[show]" on the right. You can click that to have the box display a variety of voting systems and related articles.)

> If you don't vote, you don't get to keep your vote and use it for a different election.

I agree that it's different in that there is no formal, delimited election time, like in other voting systems. Here it's like the election is always ongoing in various dimensions. Despite that, I believe the way capitalism works remains very similar to voting systems.

> If:

> - I believe that someone's work is worth 50,000€

> - They currently get 50,000€ from Patreon

> - Because their earnings are secret I give them another 1000€

> - Because of my support, they refuse an offer for 50,500€

> then the resource allocation system failed. The creator is now doing work worth 50,000€ even though they could be doing work worth 50,500€.

I feel that logic is weird. When you go to a service provider (like a freelancer), do you wish you could see what they earned monthly so you can decide whether to offer to pay them to do your job request or to just request of them to do it for free because otherwise you'd feel they'd be earning too much? I would think not. Why do you insist on deciding what to pay based on what their earnings are?

I think what you decide to pay them should only be based on the benefit you receive. What is "fair" is naturally decided by the economic system, not the individuals.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#127

Post by Applejinx »

john_moscow wrote: post #27
Applejinx wrote: post #9

It's called Patreon. You've got to be established, though: can't come out of nowhere with a thing and expect to see much traction. I literally went from using Kagi for ten years, to using Patreon. At first it's a decimating change because you're going from 'sale of a product' to 'literally giving product away free and telling people they can support you if they like'. However, if your cashflow isn't too tough, one be…

There's one big catch there - once you reach a "fair" income level, many people will think that you are already getting enough and won't bother to sponsor you. Look at the statistics [0]: unless you are in the top 100 creators, you'll get far less than your regular FAANG pay. [0]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators

Maybe people should not get FAANG pay… I started this sub-thread and to me, my life is a big experiment in what a life is even meant to be. I can't imagine seeing the Patreon blow up to the point that it's like FAANG pay (I had to look it up to even know what that was) and am not at all sure that it should: I live in Vermont and I'm gonna die at some point anyway, what's the use of having vast piles of cash left over?

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#128

Post by exlurker »

john_moscow wrote: post #27
Applejinx wrote: post #9

It's called Patreon. You've got to be established, though: can't come out of nowhere with a thing and expect to see much traction. I literally went from using Kagi for ten years, to using Patreon. At first it's a decimating change because you're going from 'sale of a product' to 'literally giving product away free and telling people they can support you if they like'. However, if your cashflow isn't too tough, one be…

There's one big catch there - once you reach a "fair" income level, many people will think that you are already getting enough and won't bother to sponsor you. Look at the statistics [0]: unless you are in the top 100 creators, you'll get far less than your regular FAANG pay. [0]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators

FAANG: An acronym for the market's five most popular and best-performing tech stocks, namely Facebook, Apple , Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet's Google.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#129

Post by jakobegger »

huhtenberg wrote: post #87
monokai_nl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a color scheme, user interface theme and icon set in one. Why do you think it's nuts to charge €10 for that? Do you think it should be free?

Rationally it makes some sense, but irrationally - charging money for such triviality as a choice of colors is ridiculous. I can see buying _icons_ being a bit more justified, because it implies at least some amount of non-trivial work on your end, but I don't really know anyone willing to pay for better code editor icons. Also the fact that you offering to buy a "license" is off-putting, again considering the contex…

I've spent a lot of time picking colors for my app, and there's nothing "trivial" about it. It's a lot of work.

I totally understand that someone would charge money for it.

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