Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 174 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#141

Post by carlosjobim »

gregmac wrote: post #112
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #19

I believe they are called "apps" now, it's a $500B market. As far as desktop software, it's the same as it ever was... you make a product, you release it for download, you sell a license. No mystery to it. 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, supp…

Yeah, at the core of it I see this as a value problem. If you charge a lot, it's a tough or impossible sell for users who aren't yet sure they'll get that amount of value from it. If you charge too little, you're leaving money on the table from big customers who would be willing to pay much more. Setting the up-front cost also requires you to estimate a bunch of things: what will it cost you to build (including futur…

> If you're very successful and saturate your market, why build new versions?

I don't think you can ever be saturated in number of customers, if you have a good thing and are on the right track, the moon is the limit. You build new versions to increase the user base.

If you're in a niche market that can actually become saturated, then your customers are likely professionals and willing to pay much more than consumers, since they make money from your software.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#142

Post by tonyedgecombe »

gregmac wrote: post #112
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #19

I believe they are called "apps" now, it's a $500B market. As far as desktop software, it's the same as it ever was... you make a product, you release it for download, you sell a license. No mystery to it. 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, supp…

Yeah, at the core of it I see this as a value problem. If you charge a lot, it's a tough or impossible sell for users who aren't yet sure they'll get that amount of value from it. If you charge too little, you're leaving money on the table from big customers who would be willing to pay much more. Setting the up-front cost also requires you to estimate a bunch of things: what will it cost you to build (including futur…

>If you charge a lot, it's a tough or impossible sell for users who aren't yet sure they'll get that amount of value from it.

Customers often value things by how much they pay for them. I saw my sales increase after my first price rise.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#143

Post by tonyedgecombe »

DarrenDev wrote: post #97

I switched off sales of my last desktop app a couple of months ago. It was still bringing in sales of about $600 a month, but it felt like a weight hanging around my neck. Despite shutting it down I expect I'll still get a couple of support emails a month for the next 10 years. We're building a desktop / SaaS app right now that we'll be selling using a SaaS model. A combination of desktop app built with Electron and…

>It was still bringing in sales of about $600 a month, but it felt like a weight hanging around my neck.

I had the same feeling when I shut down mine last year. In theory I could have left it running for some pocket money but after 23 years I had had enough. After a couple of really slow months I decided to discontinue it and retire.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#144

Post by tonyedgecombe »

elemcontrib wrote: post #79

Slightly tangential but perhaps somebody could answer this question: So having decided that rather than trade as a fictitious company and go the "personal brand" route, I'm interested to know who has successfully sold their own desktop apps from a website with their personal domain eg. JoeBloggs.com. Do buyers really care so long as the software meets their requirements, or does the psychology of a trading entity rea…

I'd keep it separate just for liability reasons. Also if it fails and you have to go back to a normal job you may want to obfuscate that part of your CV, that's going to be easier to do if you presented yourself as an organisation.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#145

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Gigachad wrote: post #56
kijin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to work back when the software market was growing exponentially. You could take care of old customers using revenue from new customers, because you always had more new customers than old ones. Upgrade cycles also used to be much shorter, and nobody cared about security bugs. So you didn't really have to maintain old versions for long. It was a Ponzi scheme of sorts, and it worked for a while. Obviously it can…

Yeah this is exactly how I see it. A one time price for a continuously delivered service is obviously unsustainable in the long term. At some point adobe has sold photoshop to basically every person who wants to buy it.

Almost nobody sold one time purchases though, they all (including Adobe) charged for upgrades.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#146

Post by tonyedgecombe »

quantumwoke wrote: post #16
Insanity wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which stack did you end up using?

It's actually an old Java stack using SWT.

It mostly doesn't matter, I can only recall one customer ever asking me about the underlying technology.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#147

Post by p0w3n3d »

Jetbrains is still selling their IDE using old method as well as new. You can buy perpetual license but if you want upgrades, you pay again. That's how I bought my Clion and still use it personally from time to time. Buying a plan for me is too expensive - I do tinkering at home rarely. The same with any Photoshop or Lightroom - I bought a last available license and won't buy the cloud version especially because it has exit fees.

Minecraft - having huge community - still sells lifetime license with upgrades. I wouldn't pay for it monthly neither.

I also bought some software like GuitarTuna perpetual license and they turned it off (the possibility of buying it that way) but I still use it this way (despite they used to nag me to pay monthly). The problem is that one private person cannot hold to many subscriptions. It's killing the budget. Keep this in mind. Also companies tend to switch to cheaper subscriptions after they calculated where did they go in terms of monthly payments.

I know I didn't answer your question because my perspective is different, but I wanted to highlight the other side of the deal. If you want $$$$ go for it. If you have a mission or want to gather community or you want small people to use it from time to time - maybe hybrid both solutions is the way to go?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#148

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #98
lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little off topic, but, if you'll indulge me: Why do you think nobody has been able to make a successful alternative to Photoshop? Everybody I know complains about it constantly, and yet it's still the industry standard.

Pixelmator was a wildly successful Photoshop competitor. Their company was successful too; Apple recently purchased them. The speculation is that Apple will now compete with Adobe’s subscriptionware.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#149

Post by [deleted] »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #115
satvikpendem wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are too often just VMs running an installed solution in a 3rd party cloud, run like garbage and cost way too much I mean, you try making such software and let me know how that goes for you. This type of vague criticism sounds a lot like the typical engineer retort of "I can build it myself in a weekend," discounting the real complexity involved.

I'll try to be more specific. Stuffing a win32 app into a Citrix box and selling it to the next private equity that will offshore your support while your customer's contract milks them for another 3 years doesn't make for an enticing offer for decision makers. It makes a lot of sense for the private equity purchaser who will sell the company again before those contracts run dry and the software is shuttered or replac…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#150

Post by herbst »

SideQuark wrote: post #89
thayne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Adobe photoshop is what people are tought how to use. It is the same thing with excel. It isn't enough to have a superior product, you also have to overcome the momentum of the prevailing software. That's not to say it is impossible, but Photoshop has a significant advantage.

Photoshop isn’t on top simply because people know how to use it. There’s simply no better tool for most users who need that level of photo editing tool. I’ve never seen a superior product to either Photoshop or Excel. Have you? Maybe they’re on top because they really are good products.

Googles spreadsheet is much more performant, useable and shareable for me. I also never got warm with excel weird and heavily limited language, no matter how much I tried to.

For Photoshop I agree that no software has the same amount of tools built in. However I have been Happy with gimp ever since, and know plenty of people who prefer Krita or something because their interesting is in drawing and not design.

Post reply on HN