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Twenty dollars in an envelope

justinjackson.ca

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Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#31

Post by mijustin »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #27

From 2004-2009, I basically built things I could have charged for, but didn't. I was afraid to take money from people. DHH (et al) to the rescue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY This is where the "Nice little Italian restaurant" SaaS meme was sourced from. He was hilariously spot-on. I caved and started building things I would charge for. I'm still just part-timing it, but my stuff is growing. And, frankly…

So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking money from people?

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#32

Post by thetrumanshow »

mijustin wrote: post #31
thetrumanshow wrote: post #27

From 2004-2009, I basically built things I could have charged for, but didn't. I was afraid to take money from people. DHH (et al) to the rescue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY This is where the "Nice little Italian restaurant" SaaS meme was sourced from. He was hilariously spot-on. I caved and started building things I would charge for. I'm still just part-timing it, but my stuff is growing. And, frankly…

So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking money from people?

In those days, two things:

1) The possiblility of "Oh, crap, I just bumped the decimal to the right, by accident, on 1000 customers."

2) The likelihood that someone would tell me that I was "a joke", to be charging money for my software.

So, fear of rejection and fear of screwing up on the money side. Thankfully, there are billing services which eliminated #1 a few years ago, and that was probably the tipping point for me. #2 is an ongoing concern, and always will be.

Thanks for the question!

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#33

Post by lelandbatey »

_ea1k wrote: post #16
ck2 wrote: post #3

While the story is lovely, it's also quaint to think of the days when a young kid put his home address on the internet and bad things didn't happen. Also, this is another "right time right place" story - his code wasn't just good, it was one of the few solutions at the time. Had he tried to do it a few years after that, I doubt the results would have been the same.

> it's also quaint to think of the days when a young kid put his home address on the internet and bad things didn't happen. Why would bad things happen due to that? Are there roving gangs of thieves desperately searching the internet for the addresses of people to rob? I really doubt things have much in this regard, and one likely could do this just as easily (and with the same relative safety) as in the past. OTOH,…

Indeed, I've found that worrying about your "real persona" on the internet to pretty much not be worth it. Since I was about 15 I have started doing everything using my real name, as well as having my address and phone number highly available.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#34

Post by fyi80 »

When I was a kid, I mailed $5 to the address listed on a shareware disk, to get an unlock code for the full program. Never got a response.

I think that was last time I fell for the rebranding-resale scam.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#35

Post by mijustin »

AckermanMD wrote: post #28

Jason Fried is so cool, he knew how terrible Filemaker Pro was before it existed! (Alright… it was probably 1990 already. Just had to point out the potential anachronism of 25 years ago being 1988 and Filemaker Pro being released in October 1990.)

Ha ha. Either the dates are a little hazy, or he was actually using FileMaker Plus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMaker#History

Here's the earliest record I could find for AudioFile (1997): http://web.archive.org/web/19971221191641/http://spinfree.co...

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#36

Post by mijustin »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #32
mijustin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking money from people?

In those days, two things: 1) The possiblility of "Oh, crap, I just bumped the decimal to the right, by accident, on 1000 customers." 2) The likelihood that someone would tell me that I was "a joke", to be charging money for my software. So, fear of rejection and fear of screwing up on the money side. Thankfully, there are billing services which eliminated #1 a few years ago, and that was probably the tipping point f…

I think the fear of rejection is huge. I'm a pretty confident guy (I'll speak in front of crowds without too much trouble). But the idea of putting a price tag on something and asking people to pay for it is scary. The biggest fear: "What if no one buys it?"

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#37

Post by nja »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #32
mijustin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking money from people?

In those days, two things: 1) The possiblility of "Oh, crap, I just bumped the decimal to the right, by accident, on 1000 customers." 2) The likelihood that someone would tell me that I was "a joke", to be charging money for my software. So, fear of rejection and fear of screwing up on the money side. Thankfully, there are billing services which eliminated #1 a few years ago, and that was probably the tipping point f…

Not to mention the fear of anger from free software advocates...

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

mijustin wrote: post #2

I'd be interested in hearing more shareware stories. Did anyone else here have success selling shareware in the 80's and 90's?

So perhaps not much of a story, but the Amiga came out and the first (for me) compelling "dungeon crawler" game on it was Dungeon Master. I spent a lot of time on it, and as was my custom, kept notes in my notebook. Pretty soon I had a pretty complete set of maps for the place, which a friend of mine wanted a copy of. So I made copies of the pages of my notes but they were hard to interpret (except for me!) and disorganized, so I opened up Deluxe Paint and just drew them (they were all 32 x 32 squares I believe) anyway, the drawing lead me to go in and check things, and I went back and looked for every single secret room etc, and end the end had a complete set. So I printed them out and gave them to my friend, who offered to pay me $5 for them.

I wondered if anyone else would want them, and so I offered them up, a copy for anyone for $5. Sold a couple hundred copies. And to top it off, a German company that made 'player guides' bought a copy, decided they wanted to use it in one of their guides and offered me $50 for the "rights" to do that, and I gladly accepted.

That ended up funding my purchase of a lot of games for the Amiga.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#39

Post by thetrumanshow »

mijustin wrote: post #36
thetrumanshow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those days, two things: 1) The possiblility of "Oh, crap, I just bumped the decimal to the right, by accident, on 1000 customers." 2) The likelihood that someone would tell me that I was "a joke", to be charging money for my software. So, fear of rejection and fear of screwing up on the money side. Thankfully, there are billing services which eliminated #1 a few years ago, and that was probably the tipping point f…

I think the fear of rejection is huge. I'm a pretty confident guy (I'll speak in front of crowds without too much trouble). But the idea of putting a price tag on something and asking people to pay for it is scary. The biggest fear: "What if no one buys it?"

I had a leg up to begin with. I started with an audience (of sorts) that I was able to poll to gauge interest. I didn't start building until literally 200 people told me they would buy it from me. Turns out most of them were blowing some kind of sunshine (or else they found another solution before I could launch one to meet their needs), and very few converted...

But, just the fact that they said yes to my product and price point gave me the confidence to start.

But, I think you can hijack someone else's product-confidence... by which I mean you should find a 800-pound gorilla competitor in your market and just follow them into battle, and eventually outflank them. Not gonna lie, I did this too, because I got to a place where my market-vision was limited... so I piggybacked on a competitors market vision. :)

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#40

Post by matwood »

mijustin wrote: post #31
thetrumanshow wrote: post #27

From 2004-2009, I basically built things I could have charged for, but didn't. I was afraid to take money from people. DHH (et al) to the rescue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY This is where the "Nice little Italian restaurant" SaaS meme was sourced from. He was hilariously spot-on. I caved and started building things I would charge for. I'm still just part-timing it, but my stuff is growing. And, frankly…

So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking money from people?

I used to sell a small iOS app. For me, my biggest fear was not delivering value for the $2.99 someone paid me. It's dumb when I think about it logically because it's only $2.99, but I wanted anyone who paid to also be happy with their purchase. I will say though that people giving you money directly for something you built is a rush.
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