How To Make A Small Fortune Giving Away Software!

If you were to look up some shareware called Spyware Doctor 3.2 on www.Tucows.com you’ll see that about half a million users download a free copy every week. Want more fireworks? OK, go to www.download.com and you’ll see that another shareware title called AVG AntiVirus Free Edition was downloaded about 1,126,408 times when I last checked. These huge download numbers hover close to this figure every week!

Many shareware titles never hit these big download numbers but what if you had a title that got downloaded just 100,000 times every week. Could you make some money with it?

Here are a few ideas how you can make money with shareware: First, you need the rights to a universally needed software program. Look for an application that most everyone on the Internet has a need for. However, there are plenty of niche markets with extremely high demand as well. Research the categories that are in high demand.

2. Research your market to see what the competition is doing. If the market is big enough you may decide to spend the time and money to improve on the most popular title out there. Get lots of free publicity with word of mouth advertising by developing a five star shareware program.

Remember two things. First, software is a digital product. Your cost per unit is zero because sites like tucows and http://www.download.com/ are only too happy to provide the bandwidth resources so that millions of people can download your software.

The download numbers for titles like Spyware Doctor are astronomical! Download.com shows over 10,000,000 downloads so far. Sites like www.download.com get so much traffic that their Alexa ranking is among the best of any site on the Internet. If your shareware is listed on hundreds if not thousands of download/shareware sites your download numbers can soar.

Millions of sites are listed when you search under the terms free software, shareware or freeware. So, for you to get maximum exposure the key is to post your title to the most shareware sites possible.

Show Me The Money! When I was a bit less informed I asked my personal computer/Internet guru, Thomas Deedy, how these software developers made any money. His answer opened my eyes.

One of Tom’s favorite ways to monetize shareware is to offer support services. This is the “real” business and the shareware is just the means to feed it. Your technical person collects every possible support issue and puts them into a support database “solution tree”. Then, this tree is the way support staff troubleshoot problems.

You can actually sell support by the minute, hour or for an annual fee. You can install your trouble-shooting tree on a site accessible only by support staff. The database of solutions keeps growing until there is virtually no problem that a mildly technical support person can suss out by following the support issue tree.

When the database of issues is about as complete as it can get the support system can charge, say $10 per issue. But, it will only take the staff a couple of seconds to look up the solution and deliver it. So, they make money all day long.

Believe it or not 900 numbers can be a profit source with support. The user simply picks up the phone and is charged either by the minute of a flat fee.

A more advanced approach is to professionally prepare an installation and support video with actual screen shots from the shareware. You can include a troubleshooting menu and sell the training and support package for $250 including a couple hours of live support if needed.

Companies are more than happy to pay $250 for a support package like this. The numbers could get very exciting if your shareware was downloaded 250,000 times and only 2% purchased support.

That works out to 5000 orders for the video and trouble-shooting software @ $250 each or $1,250,000!

If you handle it this way you can actually automate the entire business and your costs are limited to the initial development costs for the software and the cost to create a powerful video tutorial and help file. You can outsource all this work simply by creating a detailed flow chart of exactly what you want the program to accomplish and how you envision it working for customers.

Then, go to http://www.elance.com or http://www.scriptlance.com or www.Vworker.com and enter your Project Proposal (no charge) to get a pile of bids from experienced programmers who want to work for you. You will be shocked at how reasonably you can get powerful software programs designed and built.

As the creator of the project you own the copyrights and you’ll need to pay no royalties on your earnings. but, you can make more money if you sell a private label license to a software company.

This may be America’s easiest way to become a multimillionaire and you don’t even have to be a programmer to do it!

Support is where the big money is but some simpler software programs don’t really have any support issues; they are that good! Developers of simpler software can make money in other ways.

Many programs are offered on a free trial basis. After 30 to 40 days the program requires you to register and pay the license fee or it expires. Or, you can set up a “DONATE BUTTON” and collect donations. As an incentive offer your users unlimited access to any upgrades plus some support for their modest donation.

————————————————————————————————————————– ” Please support my efforts to provide users with support and improve this software with a small donation. In return, you’ll receive a link to an extensive tutorial, help files and you’ll be advised when you can download the latest updated version of XYZ software. You’ll receive lifetime updates all for your small contribution of $10 or more.” ————————————————————————————————————————–

It is easy to setup a donate button using PayPal. Set up three buttons if you like starting with $5 and go on up.

You can be sure a substantial number of people will contribute $$ but the capturing of the user’s name and email address may ultimately be worth more than the donation. Anyone who can build a massive opt-in emailing list has the potential to earn roughly a dollar per name per month. Major players like Mark Joyner built lists of around a million names. A single email to his list could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.

My Advice: Get started on this project right now but avoid creating software that has too narrow a market. You want the most universally needed application you can imagine. You want to create a title that nearly everyone on the Internet knows they need and really wants. You could look at the download numbers and identify a massively popular program and then improve upon it (if that’s possible) by making it more powerful, easier to use or with special features that no other software has.

Finally here are a few more ways to make money with free software.

1. Make your basic shareware version good but show the users what they are missing by displaying lots of powerful features that only come with the Pro Version. When they click on the upgrade link email them the unlock code to all the Pro Version features.

2. Build an email list by offering something to your customers like an e-zine with insider user tips. Or, simply bribe them by offering them another of your software programs free when they register their copy of XYZ software that they just downloaded. As I said, above, owning a massive opt-in email list can be worth a fortune.

3. I created lesson authoring software to make free lessons. You could download it free. But, I also made an upgrade version that permitted the teacher to make Super Lessons that could be sold on my site. So, I make money from people purchasing the Professional Lesson Authoring Software for $1995 and from sale of the Super Lessons. Of course I split the revenue for the Super Lessons with the authors of these lessons. See www.Tutorbug.com

I hope this has been helpful and that you realize that coders can do all the technical stuff for you. If so, you may just have found the perfect way to become a shareware millionaire.

Before you spend your hard eanred money creating software consider becoming a shareware distributor to earn a fee on every paid upgrade. Click on SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTOR for complete details. Also published at How To Make A Small Fortune Giving Away Software!.