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Twenty dollars in an envelope

justinjackson.ca

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Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#61

Post by tanzam75 »

orangethirty wrote: post #46
mijustin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. Only an "idiot" would talk about sales? Patio11 - http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-o... Nathan Barry - http://nathanbarry.com/2012-year-quitting-job/ Brennan Dunn - http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-consulta...

A handful of people from thousands who prefer to keep quiet. Plus only those who do talk about them do it to help themselves (as a marketing tool). Any time you talk about amazing sales you risk alerting your competition about your niche.

Indeed.

I read all four of the blog posts. All four of them make the majority of their money from consulting or from training -- books, videos, and workshops -- rather than from products. The split ranges from around 50/50 to almost 90/10.

In 2012, Patrick made 20% of his income (not revenues) from products, and 80% of his income from consulting and training, primarily client engagements. (He did not disclose revenues from his second product -- but careful reading of his blog suggests that it probably has not quadrupled his product income.)

In 2010, Amy made 32% of her revenues from products, and 68% from consulting and training, primarily workshops. (The 68% has to be split 50/50 with her husband, but even after splitting it in half, it's still 48% vs 52% -- with the majority coming from consulting and training.)

In 2012, Nathan made 18% of his revenue from products, and 82% from consulting and training, primarily books.

In 2012, Brennan Dunn made 13% of his revenue from products, and 87% from training and consulting, primarily consulting. Interestingly, he took Amy's course and did a 180-degree reversal of direction.

They have all discovered that the money is not in gold mining -- or even in selling shovels to the gold miners. It's in giving presentations about gold-mining, and selling videos teaching them how to pan for gold. Patrick wrote about wrestling with his conscience before charging for his expertise, but ultimately discovered that it tripled his income. They have all turned their blogging popularity into cash -- and that's why they continue to blog.

The people who are making most of their money from gold-mining are not blogging about the location of their mine.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#63

Post by davebindy »

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?

Coming from a somewhat different viewpoint other than as a developer, I spent 10 years working as a full-time reviewer for one of the largest shareware disk vendors, Public Brand Software, and then later for Ziff when they bought PBS. (In fact, my first day at PBS was also the day Ziff took over the company...)

There was a lot of money being made from shareware in the 80s and 90s. I was involved in the Summer Shareware Seminars (later rebranded Shareware Industry Awards) and got to talk to quite a few developers/authors who were making mid-6 figure incomes from shareware, and of course there were a handful that had made their million(s). They were pretty aggressive marketers, though, and not the kind who just wrote a program, distributed it through the BBS ecosystem, and waited to see what would happen.

Disk vendors could make a considerable amount of money, as well. PBS was no Mom-and-Pop affair. Thinking back on it, there were 25-30 full-time employees (office staff, order takers, tech support, reviewers, catalog editors, in-house disk duplicating staff, 20+ line BBS, etc.) I have no idea what type of revenue the company generated, but it was a bustling place!

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#64

Post by orangethirty »

tanzam75 wrote: post #61
orangethirty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A handful of people from thousands who prefer to keep quiet. Plus only those who do talk about them do it to help themselves (as a marketing tool). Any time you talk about amazing sales you risk alerting your competition about your niche.

Indeed. I read all four of the blog posts. All four of them make the majority of their money from consulting or from training -- books, videos, and workshops -- rather than from products. The split ranges from around 50/50 to almost 90/10. In 2012, Patrick made 20% of his income (not revenues) from products, and 80% of his income from consulting and training, primarily client engagements. (He did not disclose revenue…

The people who are making most of their money from gold-mining are not blogging about the location of their mine.

Perfectly put.

But hey, I'm a consultant. I understand why, and how they do it. I'm not knocking on them, because they do provide value and are not scamming anyone.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#65

Post by kingnothing »

mijustin wrote: post #60
the_unknown wrote: post #43

In my final year of University I decided to write some basic shareware that was helpful in creating your own custom theme for the recently-new Windows 95. After completing the app I put it out there to the shareware community. I attached a note to the program asking for $20 if you liked it. I was very clear with the program though that there were no additional benefits to registering other than a clean karma. The pro…

Surprised that the big companies had a hard time cutting cheques (normally, that's a non-issue). Maybe because your software was too "fun"? Do you remember how many people ended up paying you?

It's a giant hassle to get a purchase order approved for software at many large companies.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#66

Post by smartician »

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?

In high school I wrote a turn based strategy game (think "Empire" with resources, like a very very basic "Civilization") and sent it off to a shareware publisher. The Internet and self-distribution wasn't invented back then.

I was pretty disappointed when I received the rejection letter.

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#67

Post by th0ma5 »

mijustin wrote: post #25
th0ma5 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about selling, but I had a hobby project, my first in Pascal, that would translate ProBoard (ProBBS, or a PcBoard door program that did fancy things) to and from RBBS (the other open source board software). I uploaded it to a couple of boards, some of which were FidoNet connected. Anyway, a few months later got a call I think from someone somewhere in the Navy that wanted to use it, and asked if I had an…

Whoa! You were 8 or 9? I ran a little ProBoard BBS for awhile. ;)

well, maybe 10 or 11 now that i think back and do some googling around dates and such, but i know by like 12 or 13 i was more into guitar for a while

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#68

Post by cek »

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?

I had two wildly (for me anyway) successful Windows shareware apps in the '80s & '90s. WinPrint[1] and INIedit[2].

They were $25 a pop and I made way more than $10K from them over the years. Each payment (except a few juicy site licenses) came to me as a check in an envelope.

The best part was WinPrint became my resume for Microsoft. It demonstrated that I was an expert in an area where demand was high: Apps on Windows that could actually print.

[1] http://www.kindel.com/products/winprint/ [2] http://www.kindel.com/products/iniedit/

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#69

Post by cek »

cek wrote: post #68
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?

I had two wildly (for me anyway) successful Windows shareware apps in the '80s & '90s. WinPrint[1] and INIedit[2]. They were $25 a pop and I made way more than $10K from them over the years. Each payment (except a few juicy site licenses) came to me as a check in an envelope. The best part was WinPrint became my resume for Microsoft. It demonstrated that I was an expert in an area where demand was high: Apps on Windo…

This blast from the past made me poke around some old code. My first shareware app was called TAPES I wrote in high-school. It was a UCSD P-System (Pascal) app that printed J-Cards for cassette tapes (the cards that list what songs are on the tapes; you insert them into the cassette case...for you little kids who never used cassettes). Given how few people on CompuServe had access to UCSD P-System, I don't think I sold very many copies :-)

I eventually released TAPES using Turbo Pascal for the PC as well.[1]

Printing has always been my thing. Another app I built, that was freeware, was called Spit. Spit printed your source code with headers/footers...originally WinPrint was called WinSpit... I'm super embarrassed by my rebellion against K&R the source demonstrates [2].

[1] https://github.com/tig/Tigger/blob/master/College/MY_PAS/TAP... [2] https://github.com/tig/Tigger/blob/master/College/C_SRC/SPIT...

Re: Twenty dollars in an envelope

#70

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

orangethirty wrote: post #46
mijustin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. Only an "idiot" would talk about sales? Patio11 - http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-o... Nathan Barry - http://nathanbarry.com/2012-year-quitting-job/ Brennan Dunn - http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-consulta...

A handful of people from thousands who prefer to keep quiet. Plus only those who do talk about them do it to help themselves (as a marketing tool). Any time you talk about amazing sales you risk alerting your competition about your niche.

Not sure I understand that logic.

If you are selling to a niche, then by definition your competition is also. If you mean a narrower niche than you and your competition already share, then it's very unlikely that they also don't know about it or won't soon regardless of you talking about it.

The only way this statement seems true is for a very loose definition of "competition." But I would love to be shown I'm wrong.

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