[Arobin]

I have a Windows application I wrote while traveling and I'm planning to sell it online to generate some passive income. I've done professional software development for about 6 years, but always as an employee and always strictly as a developer. This will be my first time handling the end-to-end concept to shipping process. I know there are several guys here with good knowledge of the software world (e.g. oldnemesis), so I'm hoping you guys can drop some wisdom on me if you've self-published software or been involved in something similar.

Assumptions
-I don't expect this program to be wildly popular. It will appeal to a small group and I'd be happy if I could sell 20-50 copies per month at $4.99.
-Because of the program's likely obscurity, I kept copy protection and anti-reversing mechanisms to a minimum.
-There are at least 3 programs available that do the same basic thing as mine, but they are all low quality and cost ~$20.

About the Program
(I don't want to get too specific because I'd like to keep my professional identity separate from the identity that gets girls to fuck him in exchange for blueberries)
-It's .NET 4.0 Client Platform, so it'll work on XP, Vista, and Win7.
-It's deployed through ClickOnce, so it has built in auto-update.
-The installer installs a trial version that's fully functional for 2 weeks, after which they need to register to use it.
-Error reporting is built in, so I get phone home reporting of crashes with stack traces (user can decline this to preserve privacy).
-I'm planning to deploy the .pdb (debug) files along with the binaries so that I can get more accurate crash information, even though it makes it almost trivial to reverse engineer.
-Registration keys are just offline hashes of the user's email address. When user pays, the server generates a key and emails it to the user. User enters it in the program and the program just does the same calculation to verify a match.
-The EULA and privacy policy are boilerplate copied from the Internet (EULA, Privacy Policy).

Plan of Sale
-I have a web site advertising the program's features.
-I will launch a small beta program getting 20-30 people to install and use the application.
-Based on feedback and error reports from the beta, I'll create a release version and begin accepting payment through PayPal for licenses.
-I'll buy Google AdWords to promote the site.
-I'll do SEO myself to increase search rankings or I may hire someone with experience in SEO if I'm not getting results I want.
-Profit!

Anyone who's been through this before have any gotchas to warn me about? Any big mistakes I'm making in the plan I've described?

[oldnemesis]

How many hours you gonna put working on this software? IMHO too much work for making $250 a month.

[worldwidetraveler]

Software isn't a passive income business. You will have a hard time breaking even with Adwords at that price point.

[Roosh]

Even if you break even, the lessons learned in the roll-out will help you with the next project. I wouldn't be discouraged by potential low profits.

[Arobin]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

(08-30-2011 06:33 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

How many hours you gonna put working on this software? IMHO too much work for making $250 a month.

(08-30-2011 09:35 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Even if you break even, the lessons learned in the roll-out will help you with the next project. I wouldn't be discouraged by potential low profits.

Yeah, basically what Roosh said. I knew from the start that this wasn't a very lucrative venture. I haven't tracked hours carefully but somewhere between 100-150 hours put in so far, so moneywise, I'd have probably been better off collecting aluminum cans to cash in. I did it because I enjoy creating software and I wanted to see what it's like handling the entire process, rather than just writing a small piece of a very large program. I don't care much about making a lot of money on this so much as I'm interested in executing the creation to shipping process the best that I can. I also like it as an experiment generating passive income, something I'd like to get better at.

(08-30-2011 08:58 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Software isn't a passive income business. You will have a hard time breaking even with Adwords at that price point.

Why do you say that it's not a passive income business? My only work once it's shipped is to oversee sales / the web site. I can fix bugs if I want to (and I plan to) but I could technically not and keep generating sales. The search queries I plan to buy are pretty cheap (I'm expecting sub $10/mo) and my only other variable cost is web hosting, which is less than $20/mo, meaning I break even for variable costs if I sell 7 copies per month (I take a $0.40 hit on PayPal payment processing).

[worldwidetraveler]

(08-30-2011 09:57 PM)Arobin Wrote:  

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Yeah, basically what Roosh said.

Good for you Arobin.

Quote:

Why do you say that it's not a passive income business? My only work once it's shipped is to oversee sales / the web site. I can fix bugs if I want to (and I plan to) but I could technically not and keep generating sales. The search queries I plan to buy are pretty cheap (I'm expecting sub $10/mo) and my only other variable cost is web hosting, which is less than $20/mo, meaning I break even for variable costs if I sell 7 copies per month (I take a $0.40 hit on PayPal payment processing).

It sounds like you won't be offering support? You will have people emailing you for download links, installation problems, how to use the software, and so on...

You won't be able to get away from support unless you don't have a problem with chargebacks. Too many chargebacks and your payment processor will drop you.

SEO will require work. I don't see that ever stopping unless you have no competition.

Adwords will require work. It is close to set and forget but you still need to monitor your campaigns, landing pages. Google has a tendency to changing your quality score quickly. Learning this will be awesome since most people fail at it. Definitely a skill to master.

What do you think you will pay for Adword clicks? What type of conversion will you get? You pay for every click but that doesn't mean every click will buy.

A lot of people on Adwords actually lose money on their initial offer. They make it up in their sales funnel by selling them more stuff. Check out what type of products are out that market. You might be able to sign up as an affiliate and make additional money besides the intial software sale.

Don't forget Facebook when it comes to buying ads.

Edited: I forgot to add that the best passive way to get traffic would be getting affiliates signed up to promote your program. It won't cost you anything and they do all the work.

[Arobin]

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

It sounds like you won't be offering support? You will have people emailing you for download links, installation problems, how to use the software, and so on...

The user license is that the software is offered as-is, with no guarantee of support, but I do plan to provide support as time allows. I'm expecting not to have to spend a lot of time on support, but I suppose that could be making optimistic assumptions about the number of bugs hidden in my software and the level of intelligence of my users.

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

You won't be able to get away from support unless you don't have a problem with chargebacks. Too many chargebacks and your payment processor will drop you.

I was planning to offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee where I just refund money to anyone who asks for it. When you say chargebacks, do you mean people filing claims with PayPal? Their credit card company? I didn't know I could get dropped for excessive chargebacks. Do you know roughly what this number is?

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

SEO will require work. I don't see that ever stopping unless you have no competition.

Good to know.

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Adwords will require work. It is close to set and forget but you still need to monitor your campaigns, landing pages. Google has a tendency to changing your quality score quickly. Learning this will be awesome since most people fail at it. Definitely a skill to master.

What do you think you will pay for Adword clicks? What type of conversion will you get? You pay for every click but that doesn't mean every click will buy.

A lot of people on Adwords actually lose money on their initial offer. They make it up in their sales funnel by selling them more stuff. Check out what type of products are out that market. You might be able to sign up as an affiliate and make additional money besides the intial software sale.

Good info to know. I have zero experience with AdWords. I just spent about an hour playing around with query estimates and it seemed like queries I wanted are entered about 40k times / month collectively, but the CPC listed was $0.00, which I interpreted as meaning it's such a low demand query that CPC is < $0.01, but I could be misunderstanding this.

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Don't forget Facebook when it comes to buying ads.

Good idea. I hadn't thought of that.

(08-30-2011 10:09 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

Edited: I forgot to add that the best passive way to get traffic would be getting affiliates signed up to promote your program. It won't cost you anything and they do all the work.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the detailed advice. I appreciate it!

[worldwidetraveler]

(08-30-2011 10:38 PM)Arobin Wrote:  

The user license is that the software is offered as-is, with no guarantee of support, but I do plan to provide support as time allows. I'm expecting not to have to spend a lot of time on support, but I suppose that could be making optimistic assumptions about the number of bugs hidden in my software and the level of intelligence of my users.

You will still get some support requests. Like I said, some people won't get the download link, some may need help installing... I guess you can just refund them right away but that seems a little overkill.

Quote:

I was planning to offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee where I just refund money to anyone who asks for it. When you say chargebacks, do you mean people filing claims with PayPal? Their credit card company? I didn't know I could get dropped for excessive chargebacks. Do you know roughly what this number is?

Charge backs are through the credit card company. No idea when it comes to how many before they will drop you. Each processor has their own risk tolerance. You can avoid a lot of problems with support which is what I was getting at.

This isn't something you should be scared of but you do need some type of support to avoid these types of situations. Luckily, support may not take up a lot of time each day.

You would be surprised at the amount of people who file a claim with paypal instead of just emailing you for their money back. I always fight paypal claims and win most of them even when I offer a money back guarantee.

If they want their money back, then they need to go through me and not fuck with my payment processor.

Quote:

Good info to know. I have zero experience with AdWords. I just spent about an hour playing around with query estimates and it seemed like queries I wanted are entered about 40k times / month collectively, but the CPC listed was $0.00, which I interpreted as meaning it's such a low demand query that CPC is < $0.01, but I could be misunderstanding this.

The only way to know traffic volume and how much you will pay is by running the campaign. The estimator should only be used as a rough estimate. Yeah, it doesn't sound good if there is no cpc.

There is a lot that affects your cpc when it comes to adwords. The page you send traffic is a major concern to google when it comes to relevance. They don't like it if you sent Feminism traffic to Mail Order Bride sites. The landing page must be relevant to the ad. Then they take into account your click through rate. You could end up paying less per click and still get high rankings.

[oldnemesis]

(08-30-2011 09:57 PM)Arobin Wrote:  

Yeah, basically what Roosh said. I knew from the start that this wasn't a very lucrative venture. I haven't tracked hours carefully but somewhere between 100-150 hours put in so far, so moneywise, I'd have probably been better off collecting aluminum cans to cash in.

This is not that bad. If you worked for a software company, you'd probably make around $50 an hour, meaning you'd make around 5K at least. You may even break even at some point.

[oldnemesis]

(08-30-2011 10:53 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

You will still get some support requests. Like I said, some people won't get the download link, some may need help installing... I guess you can just refund them right away but that seems a little overkill.

You can use online activation, and only charge them once the license was activated.

[Arobin]

(08-31-2011 07:06 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

You can use online activation, and only charge them once the license was activated.

Yeah, that's essentially what I'm doing. Everyone.downloads the same binaries free, but you can't use it more than 2 weeks without a registration code you get when you buy, but verification of the key is all done offline (has of the email address) so it's easier to pirate, but less likely to lock out legitimate customers mistakenly.

[worldwidetraveler]

(08-31-2011 07:06 PM)oldnemesis Wrote:  

You can use online activation, and only charge them once the license was activated.

Good idea and can help with some support problems. You can still lose sales if you don't want to help those that have problems downloading and installing.

I sell my own software for a living. So try out your plan and let me know because I would love to not have to deal with support.