Selling your software

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:15 pm

Hi,

Say you have created a simple software you would like to sell on Download.com. You want to let users download the software as trial version. How would you go about supporting payments? Should the users pay through PayPal? Bank Notes?

P.S: The amount of money they have to pay is very small.

01000101 · Post by **01000101** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:43 pm

I would deffinately go through paypal.
I use it, and I find it to make purchases easier.

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:16 pm

Buy would you expect all your users to have PayPal accounts?

Alboin · Post by **Alboin** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:31 pm

XCHG wrote:Buy would you expect all your users to have PayPal accounts?

No, most certainly not. I don't have a paypal account, for instance, so for people like me, I would accept money orders through the mail.

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Alboin wrote:
XCHG wrote:Buy would you expect all your users to have PayPal accounts?
No, most certainly not. I don't have a paypal account, for instance, so for people like me, I would accept money orders through the mail.

Let's say you paid for the product. How would you expect the product to be activated as full-version?

Alboin · Post by **Alboin** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:10 pm

I would just expect some sort of download, and then a key in an email: the same method as if I were to use paypal.

mathematician · Post by **mathematician** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:58 pm

Unless I am mistaken, you don't need an account with Paypal before you can pay through them. The exception to that, for some reason, is if you are buying through Ebay

Paypal is probably easiest if only small amounts of money are involved; otherwise there is Netbanx and other similar.

jerryleecooper · Post by **jerryleecooper** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:23 pm

You can sell your software through www.lulu.com
they will even produce cds with jewel boxes for you.

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:35 am

jerryleecooper wrote:You can sell your software through www.lulu.com
they will even produce cds with jewel boxes for you.

Unfortunately, lulu.com is not that mainstream yet. I considered publishing and selling my books there but I decided against it after seeing the selling revenue of other publishers. It was really sad.

AndrewAPrice · Post by **AndrewAPrice** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:53 pm

XCHG wrote:
jerryleecooper wrote:You can sell your software through www.lulu.com
they will even produce cds with jewel boxes for you.
Unfortunately, lulu.com is not that mainstream yet. I considered publishing and selling my books there but I decided against it after seeing the selling revenue of other publishers. It was really sad.

Why not take orders privately then buy them through lulu.com and forward them onto your buyers.

HLA91 · Post by **HLA91** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:27 pm

Personally I would make the software open source and maybe only charge for tech support something like that but whatever you want to do

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:13 pm

HLA91 wrote:Personally I would make the software open source and maybe only charge for tech support something like that but whatever you want to do

I usually don't make my software open-source unless I have a good reason to do that. For example, if you have worked on something for a year while writing your PhD dissertation with lack of time, money and budget, what could possibly make you think you could make your software's source available for free to everybody? To me for example, if I know the source code is worthless and is full of possible bugs and etc, I would definitely make it open-source. But if the source is great, the software works great, I have spent so much time on it, I make money by programming; I would never make it open-source

But if you give me your reasons, I might consider doing that. Right now, I am thinking about just allowing donations instead of payments for the software since it didn't really take me that long to code but still ... it's my baby

Alboin · Post by **Alboin** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:43 pm

XCHG wrote:
HLA91 wrote:Personally I would make the software open source and maybe only charge for tech support something like that but whatever you want to do
I usually don't make my software open-source unless I have a good reason to do that. For example, if you have worked on something for a year while writing your PhD dissertation with lack of time, money and budget, what could possibly make you think you could make your software's source available for free to everybody? To me for example, if I know the source code is worthless and is full of possible bugs and etc, I would definitely make it open-source. But if the source is great, the software works great, I have spent so much time on it, I make money by programming; I would never make it open-source

It's kind of a moral issue. The chances of you making much money at all by selling a random piece of software off your website are somewhat slim. At the same time, by making your software FOSS, you have the possibility of helping many people.

XCHG · Post by **XCHG** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:10 pm

Alboin wrote: It's kind of a moral issue. The chances of you making much money at all by selling a random piece of software off your website are somewhat slim. At the same time, by making your software FOSS, you have the possibility of helping many people.

I do agree with you but I think by making the software free to public and only expect donations I already am helping people although I could make no money at all

xyjamepa · Post by **xyjamepa** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:27 pm

May I ask how much is this a littel amount of money?in U.S. dollars