h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

winzip?
I've seen screens that say day 100000 out of your 28 left they'll never make cash that way
b4 u ask i use a freeware one (ithink)

I've seen software that gets around that by locking up your computer for five seconds for every day over the trial period when you launch it... There's a pop-up that's locked "on top" with a reminder to register and a *very slow* countdown.

note how all of the programs being talked about use the kitchen sink style of progrma writting, where everything you can think of (but will never use) is included in the program and then they try and force you to pay for it.

I prefer the unix/linux approach of making a small tool to do a specific job very well, and charging a minimal fee for it.

If you then make it command line (and thus scriptable) you can collect a set of these together and make a large sweet of programs.

It doesn't guarantee income, but it is a lot less likely to rub your customers up the wrong way than trying to force payment for overly bloated applications.

Agreed, now if I could just make this DirectX Object Orientated Program work and I might just beable to aply that...

I thought that was what Windows DLLs were for anyway (just not available to everyone)

-- DoctorMO --

The best things I've found to convince me to buy shareware are:

1) Support. Being able to email or login to a website for support on the product is great. An extension type thing of this is to simply provide a registered users forum and let the all the people who've paid to register help each other. Very cheap.

2) Add Ins. I've got a couple of art packages kicking around where when you register, and pay, you get access to download a load of extra bits and pieces, filters, clipart, brushes. On a couple of games you can get extra levels or characters and so on.

Let's face it, it's possible and easy to get either a hack, crack or serial for almost anything that you can download, and you can download almost anything. So trying to charge for software these days is a bit of a losing game. Providing small things is good, but the support is better.

Suport is somthing that you can't crack

-- DoctorMO --

True - but support involves an ongoing cost which must be added to the recovery of initial investment in developing the product itself - which makes the support very expensive....

true, support is very expensive.

but not as expensive as needing it and not being able to get it after dan computers went bust because people went to dixons (or some other shop who don't know the technology) for a £5.00 discount.

Support your experts, it costs you money in the short term, but saves you it in the long term when you have problems.

The thing with support these days is that it doesn't necessarily have to be you providing it.
Put on the web a sort of online manual with hints and such, then set up a forum structure off the manual for registered users and let them help each other.

Wrap it all up away from the demo users, and add such things as updates and freebies, and you have a nice way to encourage software buying.

-- DoctorMO --

There we go then, we've solved the problem

I'm sure when DNA mentioned the Great Super computer (MI!) he ment H2G2, just pop in a question, and at some point an anwser will pop out, even if it is just 42.

-- DoctorMO --

I've got a shareware program on a computer at home which keeps telling me on loading that I have over 3000 days LEFT in my 30 day trial period. Y2K, don't you love it?

He should have used a better time system, or at least longs instead of integers.

hehe

-- DoctorMO --

Or UNC time stored in a LARGE_INTEGER (64 bits) corresponding to the number of milliseconds since Jan 01 1601. That seems to be the "standard" for file times....

Shame VB dosn't suport Milli seconds...

Doesn't it? I thought that was what the timer "ticks" were counted in at their lowest level...? I haven't used it seriously since v3, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that when I was optimising subroutines I had a millisecond execution timer running.

You right about the timer, but all date and time formatting dosn't

I tried this one a while back...

You know all these get paid to surf programs and what have you? Use them.

Sell your registration for, say, $10. but then offer them $5 for anybody they introduce after that. People WILL register your shareware, unfortunately, it wont be because the program is any good - it'll be because they can make a buck, but you'll still get your money. And it works.

If you just want to do it normally, forget it. Only a handful of people registered Doom (apparently) and the internet has gotten rid of the 'homebrew' options too

I'd build good software and give it away

£2 for a product thats good is better than $200 a year registration, so I'm happy to buy things, Trillian, AW-IRC ect ect