doing trial periods

[Richard Gaskin]

Malte Brill wrote:

> I prefer the cripple ware sheme.

Me too.  There are marketing advantages to this approach as well:

How often have you downloaded an app to evaluate it, run it once, got 
busy, and tried to get back to it after the expiration period?

It's happened to me enough that I don't use such a method. 30 days is 
hard enough to deal with in a busy office, but I've seen some programs 
attempt to limit to a specific number of days or hours far below what is 
needed for a good evaluation.  Trying to sell software to offices that 
aren't busy is much harder; if you focus on folks making money you'll 
hit a more desirable demographic, and folks making money are busy people.

Both the WebMerge and HyperRESEARCH products I write have no time limit 
on their demo mode, and have all features enabled to allow customers to 
really try out everything if they like.  Each of these programs is 
limited only in the quantity of work it will do without a valid reg 
code, but while these are low enough to prevent most professional use 
we've intentionally set them high enough to allow some limited but 
meangingful work to be done with the free versions of these products.

Here's the payoff:

There was a thread on the Freeway list some time ago about how 
WebMerge's free mode allows you to build custom content management 
solutions for clients with your favorite database product and use 
WebMerge to publish them -- for free.  WM's limit is 20 generated web 
pages, and most simple sites for services companies are fewer than 20 
pages.  I think usage like that is great -- sooner or later they'll need 
a 21st page, and when they do they'll already have a WebMerge-based 
workflow in place, so moving up is simply a matter of clicking our Buy 
Now link. :)

Same with HyperRESEARCH:  the limit there is lower than what someone 
would need to do a dissertation or run a professional usability study, 
but well within what's needed to learn the basics of qualitative 
methodologies.  This means teachers can use our program to teach qual 
basics to an entire lab at no cost to the university.  With acceptable 
limits for teaching and no time limit, it's been easy to get the 
software installed in labs at a great many universities -- they get a 
free teaching solution, and we get hands-on marketing in a critical venue.

Unless your app is the undisputed leader in its market, finding ways to 
encourage some form of free use that doesn't hurt sales too much will 
usually pay off much better than trying to squeeze blood from every 
turnip.

Remember that the real cost of software isn't the purchase price, but 
really it's the time you spend learning to use it well.  Make it easy 
for folks to reach productive competency with your software at no risk 
to themselves, and the goodwill you generate will come back to you many 
times over in the long run.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com