Net Software Distribution
Volume Number: 13
Issue Number: 11
Column Tag: Software Business
Distributing Software on the Internet
by by Kee Nethery & Kagi clients, Berkeley California USA
Advice from people who have learned the hard way
All programmers dream of retiring on money earned from a program written in their
spare time. They know the coding part and they can envision the retired part, it's the
steps between where "magic happens" that are just a bit fuzzy in the dream.
Magic Happens
Absolutely the most successful products distributed on the Internet are those that: are
good, are usable by the largest number of people, are easy for people to use on a trial
basis, and have a compelling reason for people to pay. No one is born knowing how to
create such a product or getting people to pay you. While you spend lots of time
learning all these skills...
Do Not Quit Your Day Job
Even if your product is wildly successful and you are earning many times more than
your day job, keep in mind that your massively successful product could become
obsolete tomorrow and your income could suddenly cease. You and your family will
sleep easier if you keep a day job that pays the bills and puts food on your table.
Consider reducing your monthly overhead by paying for your home, paying off all your
loans, saving money for future large expenses, etc. As you reduce your monthly
expenses, you can safely reduce from a full time job to a part time job. When your
monthly expenses are so small that you can earn that amount each month by working a
day or two as a consultant, you'll know that the day job is not required. Until then,
always have a way to pay your bills because the chances are that your first product
will need lots of tweaking over a long period of time before it has a chance of being
successful. You will not be able to program if you are worried about finances.
The above advice has nothing to do with creating a good product. So how to create a good
product. Telling someone to write a good product is like telling them to...
Buy Low and Sell High
You should write a product that everyone will want to purchase. Well, duh. :-) Write
software that others think is better than the competition. One easy way to be better
than the competition is to create a product that leverages some expertise or passion
that you already have. If you spend idle time pondering some subject area, chances are
good that you might be the best informed programmer in that subject area.
You should be able to do a very good job of writing software in your subject area
because you know it so well. Within your area of passion and expertise there will be a
wide range of products that you could create. Look at the existing products and envision
one such that...
Everyone Will Want It
Before you write one line of code, find twenty or more people who would want your
type of product and ask them what they would want it to do. If you cannot find enough
people to give you suggestions, either there is not a big enough market or you need to
first figure out how to locate these people. These people will be your beta testers. Once
you start to get suggestions from lots of people, consider if this market has money to
pay for this kind of software and if what they want will sell to lots of people or just a
very tiny segment of these people.
Within your target market, imagine all the people who use your chosen computing
platform (for the purposes of this article, Macintosh users). Imagine what percentage
of these people share your passion. This will be a small subset, lets say 1 out of 100 of
the overall users of that platform, 1%. Within this small subset, you have a variety of