Grrrr. Mr Cranky wrote some shareware utilities for the animation software he uses. They were good, too. So good the president of the company called him and hired him, after chiding him that his stuff was “too good to give away.” They eventually made some of his shareware stuff a part of the software. But before they did, it was downloaded over a thousand times. He had no lock or nagware on it… and he never got ONE SINGLE PAYMENT. Not one.
I wonder if things are better now that there is paypal and other methods for easily paying someone over the net?
Anyway, after marrying him and hearing that story, I always pay for shareware, although I don’t use much of it. I paid $20 for some wedding planning shareware.
TgtSoft’s StyleXP is the only shareware I’ve purchased lately. Upon upgrading to Windows XP, I learned that it had been shipped with only 3 desktop color schemes and no way for the user to create their own. After a little searching, I found the above site, which allowed me to download an almost-fully functional version of StyleXP to try for 30 days. They also have software for creating your own “visual styles” (I haven’t tried it yet), which are available for free at various web sites.
Registration was $19.95, and that includes two years’ worth of free updates.
I’ve registered a few - Pirhana Panic, Winzip,, WebBBS. I find that most of the time I delete shareware within hours, or days at most. I either thought it would be cool and it wasn’t, I needed it for a particular task (OCR, for example) and didn’t feel I’d ever use it again, or it caused problems with things I cared about more.
I guess my feeling would be - make online registration easy and skip the nag screen, but either limit the functions/lifetime, or make it so good that people will want to support you. I paid for Pirhana Panic because it was not too expensive and after the first couple of levels I knew it was a fun game and I would want to play more. I paid for Winzip because it is the best out there. I paid for WebBBS because it was a great product, didn’t cost too much, and gave me unlimited updates forever (but all that was already available for free, the only thing I got for paying was an admin GUI. I really paid because it was a great product and the guy deserves to be paid.)
Back when I played the game ‘Magic’ I wrote a program called ‘Decksealer’ that simulated sealed decks. I first released it as shareware, but after ONE person registered it I figured I should just go ahead and release the thing as freeware.
My program (Visual IRC) is freeware, but I’ve received two donations of $25 each.
I’m terrible at registering shareware, though, which is one reason why I’ve avoided writing any. I registered Kali back in the good ol’ days, but that was it.
If I had money to spare, I’d pay $5 to $30 depending on how good the software was. I like GoldWave’s policy… each feature has a “cost”, and once the trial period is up, you can only “spend” a certain amount before it quits and you have to restart.
I’ve written a program to randomly generate mazes, then allow you to print them or solve them onscreen. I’m thinking $7.50 as a contribution. Sound fair?
Is there some reason that someone would buy your software rather than, say, fire up the Win95 “maze” screen saver? Or, hell, just go grab themselves a copy of the shareware version of Doom if they’re in that kinda mood?
I’m not dumping on your program here, I’m just asking - why would a user want to register it? I assume that if they have no reason to, they won’t bother. I do honestly believe that people are inherently lazy.
-Ben
If you are distributing a completely uncrippled version and the $7.50 is more or less 'optional", then sure. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother. You don’t want to have to track registrations and give out registered copies only to a few people.
My biggest peeve about shareware is the one-trick-pony software. Someone will make a program that, say, removes ID3 tags from mp3s or something. Something useful, but not incredibly so, and then want $10 from it. It seems fine to them, but what they fail to realize is that Joe User who might use their program is also using fifty other programs, all of twhom also think they are useful. $10 here and there adds up fast, and sooner or later you’re overwhelmed by it.
Allow me to make my previous post useful by adding that I paid $30 for Audion (the player and encoder version) and $33 for Action GoMac.Action Menus normally goes for $30 as well, but I was fortunate enough to get it when they were having a downloads-only freebie promotion.
I am willing to pay more for shareware than most people if I think it’ll be something I’ll use a lot. I use Audion for hours each day, for example, and since Action Menus adds navigation features, I use it daily without thinking about it. I don’t think I’d pay more than $50 for shareware, though.
yosemitebabe, I had no idea Fetch was shareware. I’ve been using it for years. :guilty smilie:
I buy shareware all the time - mainly games. The Mac RPGs made by Spiderweb Software are so good I buy them straight out, not even playing through the free demos first.
I’ve also bought several shareware RPGs from other developers, as well as other programs and utilities. I’ve often paid voluntary shareware (eg when the software isn’t locked/limited but you pay just on an honesty basis) as well as voluntary site subscription such as ChezMark. However if the price is much above $25/$30, it starts to go into the league of commercial release price, which I don’t think is right.
A little story about the joys of registering shareware
A year or so ago I downloaded a little patch for Simpletext (mac text editor) called “Simpletext Colour Menu” As well as giving a menu to change the colour of text, it also gave a wordcount feature.
I paid for it - though you didn’t have to as it wasn’t locked - and emailed the developer about how much I liked it, and how useful it would be to have a command to just wordcount a selection (as opposed to a whole document).
The next day he emailed me a new version of the patch with such a function built into it, at my suggestion. It works perfectly and has been amazingly useful.
I must confess that I used it for 7 years before I got around to registering it, but that was partly because I didn’t know it was still being made or if the address I had for the guy still existed (I was using a 1989 copy until I got on the net in 1998!). I love it - and best of all, if you join the BK mailing list, the author contributes there. He’s incredibly helpful. Considering all the bad things I’ve heard about one of the major genealogy software developers, John Steed and Brother’s Keeper will always be my first choice and recommendation.
Oh - and the shareware version of Brother’s Keeper has all but about about 5 features enabled, and you can temporarily enable the others to try them out.
As a programmer, I like to support other programmers that write good software. I will always pay for shareware that I use often. Especially since I can afford it now.
I bought a few games that I like, one of which is a jigsaw puzzle game that takes a photo and makes a puzzle out of it for you to assemble on screen. This program was limited in the shareware version. The registered version has lots of great features.
I bought EditPad Pro after using the free Editpad classic for a while. Though not exactly shareware, it’s still the same thing, since there is a free version with less features.
I also bought some good utilities, like GetRight and Agent newsreader.
I find that $20 is my limit as far as price goes, unless it’s REALLY REALLY good. Nag screens just annoy me, and if I think the software is too expensive, I’ll just download a crack instead. Limiting the shareware version is fine though, and is probably the best way to get people to buy your software.
Over the years I’ve registered a few things–mostly Palm games and PC Utilities. Like everyone else, my limit is about $10-$15 and then only if it’s something I’m really gonna keep using.
In the early 90s I authored a program called TutorDOS that helped new users understand how to work with Mr. Gates (then) premier OS. It was released widely in shareware catalogs and I didn’t cripple it in any way. All I asked was that users send me a little money if it helped them understand their computers better. (Oh, and if you used it in a profit-making corporation, I REQUIRED you to register.)
Over the course of two or three years I got enough money to cover the gap between my teacher’s salary and my living expenses. Not tons of money, but enough to make it worth my while.
And, just last year, I got a really nice letter from a guy who said that my program changed his life and got him on the road to becoming a newtork manager making a good salary. That’s probably the best reward of all.
I’ve registered a flashcard/memorization program called Tester (15 bucks), Bejeweled (whatever the cost was, it’s worth it, the wife plays all the time), and Zillions of Games (probably a waste of money, I hardly ever play it.)
I’d like to have the source code for tester, because the display doesn’t wordwrap.