11–20 of 174 posts
My brother acquired an aging app (from an aging founder) built on Delphi used by many dozens (or low hundred) of the world’s leading shipping, energy and commodities companies, used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). It used to cost $5k for a perpetual license tied to usb based key that had to be plugged in to activate. If you wanted to use on…
Just the music software industry alone, for example, sells about 4 billion dollars worth of VSTs, DAWs, etc every year, most of it without subscriptions.
As the software is of the nature that it will require updates indefinitely (as OS updates come and go), and given the fact that the license is specifically for commercial use, I decided to go with a subscription model instead of a one-time payment model to ensure its long-term sustainability.
I am lucky that this specific software is very "sticky" and already has a die-hard fan base. It also helps that people in the Windows ecosystem are used to paying for commercial use software licenses.
This month to date I have made $800 on license sales. It will be interesting to see how the license sales continue to progress (or don't?) throughout the rest of the year.
My brother acquired an aging app (from an aging founder) built on Delphi used by many dozens (or low hundred) of the world’s leading shipping, energy and commodities companies, used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). It used to cost $5k for a perpetual license tied to usb based key that had to be plugged in to activate. If you wanted to use on…
Yes, I have a side project making ~$40k/year doing this in a niche market. I am fortunate in that I have some volunteers helping me with support so all up I spend about 5-10 hours per week doing support and development work. In terms of business model, I have been quite generous and provide a perpetual support model for free and paid customers and do not charge for upgrades (currently). As my time has become more lim…
Which stack did you end up using?
I charged for major version upgrades that introduced substantial new functionality (discounted for existing customers); minor version upgrades were free.
I was probably too generous with support, but it resulted in very satisfied customers and a solid reputation that paid in spades with the more lucrative opportunities.
Not sure how the market is these days for that model, but I can give you a datapoint of one in that I strongly prefer it over subscriptions in almost all cases (the exception being when there's legit ongoing service being delivered).
How much "traditional downloadable software" do you have? How much other such software is sold and makes a living for those making it? Just the music software industry alone, for example, sells about 4 billion dollars worth of VSTs, DAWs, etc every year, most of it without subscriptions.
But it often makes more sense to sell it as a subscription; you can make it very cheap for the user up front, and get a continuous revenue stream. Subscriptions make more sense if you provide constant updates, support or online services.
If you don't do those things, one-time purchase might be better. Require a new license for major versions, put your killer new features in there. Traditional vendors like Microsoft do this with their software.
You can also just combine the two, and let people purchase it once for one release, and subscribe to get support and more services/features.