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!
Now, think about this for a moment. If you had 500,000+ people looking at your product every week do you believe you could think of a way to make some money?
Here are a few ideas how you can make money with shareware: First, you need the rights to a universally needed software program. Look for an application that most everyone on the Internet has a need for. However, there are plenty of niche markets with extremely high demand as well. Research the categories that are in high demand.
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.
The download numbers for titles like Spyware Doctor are astronomical! Download.com shows over 10,000,000 downloads so far. Sites like www.download.com get so much traffic that their Alexa ranking is among the best of any site on the Internet. If your shareware is listed on hundreds if not thousands of download/shareware sites your download numbers can soar.
My research showed tens of thousands of such sites but there are probably more. Just type in free downloads or free software as a search term in Google, Alexa or Yahoo.com . You could not spend enough money to get anywhere close to that level of traffic. So, why bother? Why even have a web site?
Can You Get Rich With Shareware? Mr. Thomas Deedy, a developer and closet genius, revealed many ways that shareware developers make money giving away software.
There are several powerful income generators that you could employ. For example, if you create a complicated program that has many applications you may want to offer paid support services. Some developers know the answers to every possible complication in the installation, development or on-going operation of their software. So, they create a powerful trouble-shooting menu tree that any technical person can follow.
You can actually sell support by the minute, hour or for an annual fee. You can install your trouble-shooting tree on a site accessible only by support staff. The database of solutions keeps growing until there is virtually no problem that a mildly technical support person can suss out by following the support issue tree.
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.
For example, you could design the support service so that the client calls a 900 phone line @ $5 a minute or he can purchase a full hour of support for $75 and use it in ten minute increments on an “as-needed” basis.
An alternative would be to create a detailed installation and use video that shows actual screen shots of how to use the software and has a built-in trouble-shooting program. For a complicated and valuable program you could price the video/software combination at $250.00 and bundle it with two free hours of support services.
Companies are more than happy to pay $250 for a support package like this. The numbers could get very exciting if your shareware was downloaded 250,000 times and only 2% purchased support.
That works out to 5000 orders for the video and trouble-shooting software @ $250 each or $1,250,000!
If you handle it this way you can actually automate the entire business and your costs are limited to the initial development costs for the software and the cost to create a powerful video tutorial and help file. You can outsource all this work simply by creating a detailed flow chart of exactly what you want the program to accomplish and how you envision it working for customers.
Sound interesting? Why not visit www.elance.com or www.Vworker.com? You can enter a project proposal free of charge and have professional coders bidding to work with you within 24 hours. Outsourcing to coders in other countries can be very reasonable.
As the creator of the project you own the copyrights and you’ll need to pay no royalties on your earnings. but, you can make more money if you sell a private label license to a software company.
This may be America’s easiest way to become a multimillionaire and you don’t even have to be a programmer to do it!
Simpler shareware programs don’t require much if any support but they can be equally profitable.
One way is simply to ask users for a monetary contribution, a donation, within the software. By inserting a pay-link for a donation to support the programmer many people who like the software will decide to contribute five, ten or twenty dollars. After all, they’ve received really useful software at no charge and they want to encourage the programmer to support his software and come out with newer, improved editions. And, that is exactly what programmers say:
————————————————————————————————————————– ” 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.” ————————————————————————————————————————–
I would then include three pay links. To contribute $10 click here. To contribute $15 click here. To contribute $25 click here. I would add a bonus of some really nifty software worth several hundred dollars for those who donate $25.
You can be sure a substantial number of people will contribute $$ but the capturing of the user’s name and email address may ultimately be worth more than the donation. Anyone who can build a massive opt-in emailing list has the potential to earn roughly a dollar per name per month. Major players like Mark Joyner built lists of around a million names. A single email to his list could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.
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.
Other ways to make money with shareware:
1. Include an upgrade option. Let your customer download a pretty cool basic version for free; then show him that there is a new, improved and five times more powerful version available for just $39.95 that includes lifetime support and upgrades. If you add enough valuable features and show that they can’t really live without the more powerful version your sales will go through the roof!
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 lesson authoring software to make free lessons. You could download it free. But, I also made an upgrade version that permitted the teacher to make Super Lessons that could be sold on my site. So, I make money from people purchasing the Professional Lesson Authoring Software for $1995 and from sale of the Super Lessons. Of course I split the revenue for the Super Lessons with the authors of these lessons. See www.Tutorbug.com
I hope this has been helpful and that you realize that coders can do all the technical stuff for you. If so, you may just have found the perfect way to become a shareware millionaire.
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. Unique version for reprint here: How To Make A Small Fortune Giving Away Software!.