getting paid

[Kee Nethery]

>>I'm still trying to figure out how to protect my time investment.

As someone who deals with thousands of people who sell shareware, 
I'll toss in my opinion.

First rule: Software authors who focus on how to prevent people from 
using their software are rarely as successful as authors who focus on 
how to get more people using their software.

Some of the most successful software sold at Kagi has the lamest 
protection mechanisms you have ever seen. Is the software used 
without being paid for, yes. Do the majority of people using it pay, 
yes. Does the author make a ton of bucks, yes.

If you can afford to do it, my recommendation is to give the software 
away for free with an absolute kill date a year from now. The version 
you give away today, stops working 12 months from now. Build up a 
following. Communicate with your users. Develop a mailing list of 
everyone who uses your software and communicate with them. For each 
revision, extend the kill date. Eventually, when you have a large 
following and the code base is creaky, plan on building rev 2.0 and 
hire someone with talent to make the user interface as professional 
as possible. Then charge for the upgrade. Via your mailing list let 
people know that the existing rev 1.0 versions will expire on XYZ 
date and that the upgrade price is ABC and for new users the purchase 
price is WXY.

Focus on getting people to use your software, not on preventing 
people from using your software.

Second rule: Find as big a potential market as possible.

(I'm making up these numbers) For example, 6 billion people in the 
world, 0.1% are palm users, 1% are palm developers, 1% are palm 
developers using Forth programming language, your entire market is 
600 palm developers who might consider an alternate palm Forth 
development environment.

Compare that to:  6 billion people in the world, 0.1% are palm users, 
30% are concerned with losing their palm and having someone else read 
their data, a screen lock/erase palm if stolen app has a potential 
market of 1.8 million.

Even if the screen lock/erase if stolen product is horrible and has a 
tiny fraction of the market, they will make a ton of bucks. The Forth 
development environment will have to be perfect and even if, they 
will make hardly anything.

Choose an application that has as wide a target market as possible.

Kee Nethery