Secrets Of Shareware Millionaires
If you were to look up some shareware called Spyware Doctor 3.2 on www.Tucows.com you’ll see that about half a million users download a free copy every week. Want more fireworks? OK, go to www.download.com and you’ll see that another shareware title called AVG AntiVirus Free Edition was downloaded about 1,126,408 times when I last checked. These huge download numbers hover close to this figure every week!
Many shareware titles never hit these big download numbers but what if you had a title that got downloaded just 100,000 times every week. Could you make some money with it?
What do shareware developers know that most people don’t? Here are some ideas: 1. To achieve big download numbers try to develop an application that has mass market appeal. However, even niche market applications can do very well.
Second, you need to spend the money and time to create a product that out-performs everything else out there regardless of the cost. Most good shareware creates a “buzz” in the Internet community. People love passing on a good deal and if you can tell a friend about a five star rated program that is not only rated the best but is free to download you will have earned a whole pile of brownie points with your friends!
The good news is that shareware is a digital product. There are no delivery or manufacturing costs once bandwidth issues are handled. It costs you little or nothing to get your title into the hands of millions of users. Consider this an enormous source of free advertising.
With over ten million people having downloaded Spyware Doctor so far you can see that the traffic to a site like www.Download.com is enormous putting their Alexa traffic ranking around 89. Post your shareware to similar shareware sites to have a chance of having your title downloaded a lot.
Were you to search for free software, shareware or freeware on Google you’d no doubt see over a million sites listed. Simply by posting your shareware titles using a PAD file to numerous shareware sites you can get the benefit of free promotion.
Shareware Millions Most people are unaware of all the ways someone can make money giving away free software. Here’s some ideas Thomas Deedy told me about that might surprise you as much as it did me.
One of Tom’s favorite ways to monetize shareware is to offer support services. This is the “real” business and the shareware is just the means to feed it. Your technical person collects every possible support issue and puts them into a support database “solution tree”. Then, this tree is the way support staff troubleshoot problems.
Then, they sell support packages at $50 to $150 an hour. The developer installs the trouble-shooting menu tree software on the computers of a support staff. He hires a programmer who may be constantly working to refine and improve the software to manage the support room. He provides the support when the trouble shooting menu doesn’t have all the answers.
As users call in with support issues they are added to the trouble shooting menu that is shared by all support personnel. Once the support tree has reached this stage the overhead cost of providing support drops very low. For example, you could charge $10 per issue to users. But, since all issues may only take a minute or less to locate and deliver from the support tree this is nearly pure profit.
Believe it or not 900 numbers can be a profit source with support. The user simply picks up the phone and is charged either by the minute of a flat fee.
A more advanced approach is to professionally prepare an installation and support video with actual screen shots from the shareware. You can include a troubleshooting menu and sell the training and support package for $250 including a couple hours of live support if needed.
Now, imagine that 250,000 people have downloaded your software that’s designed for small businesses and would have cost them upwards of $2500 if something comparable was available. Let’s imagine for a second that just 2% of those 250,000 people decide not to be frustrated trying to install and use the software with the basic instructions.
That works out to 5000 orders for the video and trouble-shooting software @ $250 each or $1,250,000!
The video/support software concept makes it possible to automate your support business. This work can be outsourced to save you time and aggravation.
Then, go to http://www.elance.com or http://www.scriptlance.com or www.Vworker.com and enter your Project Proposal (no charge) to get a pile of bids from experienced programmers who want to work for you. You will be shocked at how reasonably you can get powerful software programs designed and built.
Once your shareware has been created and tested you own the rights. That means you can license the program to other companies to collect royalties on all their sales or agree that you will provide support services and keep 100% of the revenues from support.
This may be America’s easiest way to become a multimillionaire and you don’t even have to be a programmer to do it!
While you can make money providing support many simpler program make money in other ways.
Try it before you buy it shareware puts the software into the hands of the user risk-free. If they like it they can donate or pay an upgrade fee to get a full-functioning version of the shareware. Many such programs install a donate or upgrade button right in the software.
————————————————————————————————————————– ” Please support my efforts to provide users with support and improve this software with a small donation. In return, you’ll receive a link to an extensive tutorial, help files and you’ll be advised when you can download the latest updated version of XYZ software. You’ll receive lifetime updates all for your small contribution of $10 or more.” ————————————————————————————————————————–
You can leave the amount of the donation up to the user but I recommend putting in three contribution levels: A $5 donate button, a $10 donate button and a $25 button that offers bonus software valued at hundreds of dollars at that level.
Every time a user donates or purchases the upgrade option you collect his name and email address. Ultimately, building a big opt-in list has the most value!
My Advice: Get started on this project right now but avoid creating software that has too narrow a market. You want the most universally needed application you can imagine. You want to create a title that nearly everyone on the Internet knows they need and really wants. You could look at the download numbers and identify a massively popular program and then improve upon it (if that’s possible) by making it more powerful, easier to use or with special features that no other software has.
Finally here are a few more ways to make money with free software.
1. Make your basic shareware version good but show the users what they are missing by displaying lots of powerful features that only come with the Pro Version. When they click on the upgrade link email them the unlock code to all the Pro Version features.
2. Offer other shareware to users just for subscribing. The bigger your subscriber list the more money you can make. Sell some of your more powerful titles.
3. I created a free lesson creator and reader for students. Then, I set it up so that teachers could purchase a much more powerful lesson creator which would enable them to create Advanced Lessons that they can sell on my site. I share the revenue from these Advanced Lessons. See www.Tutorbug.com
Yes, some of these ideas will take effort and cash to set up. But, I believe this may be one of the most realistic ways an ordinary person can become a millionaire almost overnight.
Before you spend your hard eanred money creating killer software titles consider becoming a shareware distributor to earn a fee on every paid upgrade. Click on SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTOR for complete details.
