Making Money - selling downloads?

nickmack

Depends alot on what the software is. If it's very good and/or unique you may have some success.

Otherwise, my guess is your income will be limited. There's alot of software out there, including decent free apps. Generally, people don't like paying for software, even if it is good. You need to convince them otherwise, which I think will be a challenge.

lushlady

nickmack wrote: »

Depends alot on what the software is. If it's very good and/or unique you may have some success.

Otherwise, my guess is your income will be limited. There's alot of software out there, including decent free apps. Generally, people don't like paying for software, even if it is good. You need to convince them otherwise, which I think will be a challenge.

we have already had a very positive response from many people with a basic example online

the marketing side is not an issue

all we need know is how to make it available online!!

webguy_2

How big is the download?


regards

webguy

Hermann

Getting a site up and working shouldn't be too difficult and I'd agree with webguy Fantastico would be a straightforward way to go.

The one thing you need to consider is 'monthly bandwidth', if your site creates a lot of traffic or you provide considerable downloads (either a few large files or lots of small ones) you will need to make sure your monthly allowance is enough or things could get expensive.

Free or low cost hosts won't be suitable for high bandwidth use, so you need to work out a rough monthly figure. (estimated sales x size of download perhaps?)

budgetflyer

I agree with Griogair, www.Payloadz.com is excellent. Its a fully automated solution that integrates with Paypal and ebay if you want. They host your software and generate a unique download link as soon as payment is recieved.

faevilangel

i can code html, php, css java brilliantly and have started learning c#

is there a market for people to send me a program they want written, i write the program then they pay me etc

geordie_joe

faevilangel wrote: »

i can code html, php, css java brilliantly and have started learning c#

is there a market for people to send me a program they want written, i write the program then they pay me etc

Yes but it is difficult. There are free scripts and templates to cover what most people want, and if they can't find a free one they can buy one out of the box.

Then there's the difficulty of getting paid, how do you work that?

You write the program, sending it to the customer and never hear from him again

You demand money up front and the customer thinks if they send you money they will never hear from you again.

I did see a site that brought programmers and people wanting programmers together. But to be honest I didn't think it was worth it as it was like an auction. Someone would place an ad for a program to do such and such and a hundred programmers would reply saying they could do it and giving a price.

The buyer paid the money to the site, who then passed it on to the programmer when the job was completed to the buyers satisfaction. The site also took a cut of the fee, and if there was a dispute over the work it kept all the money. "We can't give it back to the buyer as the programmer has done work on the program, we can't give it to the programmer because they haven't done the job to the required specs. So I guess we'll just have to keep it."

You could try writing something you think people will pay for, but you'd have to make sure they couldn't get it free.