If i have a freeware and i have 1,000,000 users

[Tomer]

can i make lot of money out of it?
anyone has any experience with it?

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

can i make lot of money out of it?
anyone has any experience with it?

I don't have a million users, but a conservative estimate would be
50.000+. I opened up for donations three month ago and so far 9 people
has given 5-10 EUR each.

My plea for donations is fairly modest, with a "Donate" menu entry
under the Help-menu, and a webpage that suggests 5 EUR and points out
that the happy giver should do it out of generosity, not of guilt.

So no, not a lot of money. But enough to buy me a gadget now and then.

 

[Tomer]

Did you think of putting a banner in your application or something like
that?

(note that i dont have 1 million users but currently a couple of tens
of thousands but its growing fast and i wonder if i can make money of
it)

 

[John Jay Smith]

you can make money from your site that has the application on it... can you
send me an url?

 

[George]

I think he is talking about this:

http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/

 

[Vic Dura]

I don't have a million users, but a conservative estimate would be
50.000+. I opened up for donations three month ago and so far 9 people
has given 5-10 EUR each.

That's about what I would expect from the free-lunch crowd.

 

[Craig]

That's about what I would expect from the free-lunch crowd.

<urp> You gonna finish that?

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

Did you think of putting a banner in your application or something
like that?

No. In my book that would be borderline nagware or at least similar to
adware. As long as I claim that the program is freeware, it has to be
free from intrusions like that.

(note that i dont have 1 million users but currently a couple of
tens of thousands but its growing fast and i wonder if i can make
money of it)

Don't make the mistake of extrapolating the current, probably
exponential, growth too far into the future. Somewhere you'll hit a
saturation point, where the growth will be more linear.

At least thet's my very limited experience. If you promote it actively,
you can probably postpone the saturation point quite a bit. I would
recommend that you also ask your question in one of the shareware-
author groups, as they are - naturally - more concerned about revenue.

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

I think he is talking about this:

http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/

No. That's my program. I don't know which program Tomer is hinting at.

Banners on the site is something I have considered, but so far
abandoned, as I generally find that there's enough junk on webpages
already. Very targeted commercials, e.g. for other graphic-oriented
programs in my case, might be worth considering.

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

That's about what I would expect from the free-lunch crowd.

A rough estimate would be that there's a donation for every 2000
downloads. And I mean rough, as the estimate spans three versions plus
distribution by download.com and a computer magazine, from which I have
no statistics.


It would be interesting if more freeware authors would share their
thoughts and experiences on this subject.

 

[Simone Tellini]

A rough estimate would be that there's a donation for every 2000
downloads. And I mean rough, as the estimate spans three versions plus
distribution by download.com and a computer magazine, from which I have
no statistics.

It would be interesting if more freeware authors would share their
thoughts and experiences on this subject.

I had a couple of software released as 'giftware' with no nags.

During the years, they've been downloaded more than 100k times,
considering only WinSite and download.com statistics. Considering
distribution on magazine CD's and other download sites I guess that
figure could be doubled, at least.

Anyway, those who sent a gift are about 1 for every 3000 downloads in
the best case, 1 on 10000 if you wish to be more realistic.

 

[Vic Dura]

Anyway, those who sent a gift are about 1 for every 3000 downloads in
the best case, 1 on 10000 if you wish to be more realistic.

That sounds about right for the free-lunch bunch.

 

[Tomer]

Yes sending

you can make money from your site that has the application on it... can you
send me an url?

 

[Terry Russell]

That sounds about right for the free-lunch bunch.

google "lunch deductible"

of the 10^15 joules of solar heat, light, water distillation for rain
etc that keep the planet going each second, worth about
$50 million a second retail rates nobody actually pays anything

of the 10^22 Joules mankind has used in all our history
mostly scavanged from the small proportion of residue accumulated
in ages past nobody actually paid anything for it to be created

the lunch has always been free, the label is what costs