Beginners shareware and all those who decided to conduct their business on the Internet
Making money online every day is becoming more popular. This is evidenced by the statistics of the most frequent search queries on Google, Yandex and Yahoo! In the imagination of many people, the phrase "Internet business" evokes images related to the ability to sleep longer, work at home for a cup of coffee, or in the park, in the fresh air, holding your favorite laptop on your lap.
So, when I was thinking, I was dreaming about business, which I will spend 2-3 hours a day and which will bring me a decent income for it. I have heard a lot about the shareware business, that many people get out of it nischem, and that not everyone has a place in the so-called financial freedom, but all this, I thought, was not said about me. My motto was: “The main thing to start!” This post will be devoted to my experience, as it seemed then, in a simple and clear online business. Well, let's start ...
The idea is nothing! You are deeply mistaken if you think that an idea is worth something. In our information world, the price of an idea is equated to zero.
Generally, what is the idea?
This is when you come up with something that is unique.
When an idea is in your head, it can seem fantastic, super profitable. But you can not sell it. The idea is worth nothing. You can only tell her to someone, write. Maybe you will refuse her at all, especially if your friend says that this is “complete mess.”
It’s not a fact that at this very moment, the same idea did not come to another person, moreover, completely independently of you. Or maybe he already sat down to realize it, and you are only thinking about it. Who has the advantage now?
But, if you can implement an idea into a product, then your main asset will be no longer an idea, but your product that needs to be sold.
So how do you find this very idea that will lead us to the heights of online business?
I will tell you personally about my experience of finding ideas. Being a programmer, I have been thinking for a long time about a product that will be in demand, and therefore sold. Looking at the software market (PP), I gave up, everything is there, from utilities in 15 lines of code to mega projects with 10 years of experience. There was no point in writing small programs and various utilities, and I naturally could not compete with such giants as Microsoft and Adobe. Question: what to do? The answer was somewhere in the middle, I needed an idea for a program that I could develop on my own and in the aisle of a short time (within a month). If you think that there are no such projects left, then you are mistaken, there are many projects for which large companies are not profitable to undertake, because the income of $ 10,000 is not large for them, but for you ?! At that time, I did not reason like this, but something prompted me to start. Months went by, but the idea did not come to my head in this way, or rather the ideas were, but they were so “crazy” that their implementation was wasted time.
It seemed that the idea had become something unattainable for me, and at the same time, it podzadorivo me even more.
It all started when I got a new job, in the office, where about 50 people worked, there was 1 main network printer, which was printed from all computers. One day, the boss cursed for the unknown where the paper was wasted, everyone shrugged their shoulders saying that only the necessary things were printed. As you guessed, the idea of ​​creating a print control program, paper and ink consumption flashed in my head.
I quickly “browsed” the Internet, in particular its Russian part, for the presence of such programs, and to my great joy they were, there were few of them, but still they were, and as one of the main marketing rules says: “The presence of competitors is this is a good sign. A sign that a niche is in demand, and therefore there is money in it! ” Let me explain what exactly pushed me to continue moving in this direction. I researched the programs of competitors, it turned out that they required $ 100 for one copy of the program for insignificant functionality, but my program would be cheaper, with no less, or even more functionality, so at that moment I was thinking ...
')
Obsessed with the idea and the fact that I will soon receive the fruits of my labor in monetary terms, did not give me rest at night and in the afternoon. I wrote code everywhere, almost on a “push”. Now I understand that I did it for a reason, dear, know that a lot depends on the speed of development. Having finished the job, you will realize that the development of the software itself took you a third of the time spent on the entire product development cycle. I will say that the PP must be developed by one person, for a period of up to one month , this is the only way you can meet all the deadlines of the planned activities.
After completing the process of creating product version 1.0, I started testing it, for which I spent another week (plus my month), and this included debugging. The finished product had version 1.3.0.0, to which I was extremely happy. There were no questions about the functionality of the program, it met all the requirements for the software being developed. The boss was happy with the established order, but for me it meant that it was time to move far, let's say, to conquer the vastness of online business.
I asked exactly the same question at the next stage of my activity. There is a product, I will not deny that it is necessary and useful to more than one dozen people who wanted to control consumables in their organizations. But how do all these people learn about him, acquire, install, etc. The answer now everyone has in mind, the world wide web, the Internet.
I haven’t dreamed about boxed versions yet, because the program weighed by the order of 5 MB (the exe file itself is executable) is silly to sell in a store on the shelf, and in material terms it threatened me with big expenses. Hope remained on the Internet, more precisely on the shareware business. I want to note that the prerequisite for this was the system for registering a licensed copy of the product created in the program and prepared for this. The principle is simple: the program was distributed as a Demo version, with limited functionality in an unregistered version, I think about it in detail to tell you it makes no sense.
Since the Internet means a site, not just a site, but a seller. Then you will understand why I emphasize this.
Still inspired by the idea, I started developing a selling site, at that time I did not know what it should be, but I knew that it should become a kind of portal between the customer and my program. Fortunately, by that time I already knew how to create websites, and writing a site in a CMS with 10 pages took me about a week to complete. Do not forget at this time I had the main work.
And so what then was on this site:
The site was ready, and I had to wait for the first visitors. I think many have noticed that I did not create a selling page, with a link to buy. Why? I will be happy to tell you about it, but a little later ...
A month passed, the second, while the site was indexed by robots of all known search engines, and as soon as the site appeared in the search results for the main keywords, I began to follow the audience. The first month, many getting to the main page from other sites, immediately left, and without starting the download of the product, not to mention the sale, which was not there yet.
This told me about one thing, about the lack of marketing on my site, he simply did not inspire confidence and did not perform the main functions.
I urgently needed a real selling site.
The Internet is full of sources that talk about the methods of creating selling sites, but then I wasn’t exactly clear, a huge amount of information was spinning in my head, and I just got confused and didn’t know where to start.
At that time I met an outstanding man who had achieved many successes in this difficult task. It was Sergey Berdachuk with one of his worthy projects dedicated to the creation and promotion of sites - shareware-steps.ru (“Customers for Life”).
I got to know him better, working in tandem, we managed to create a website based on the sale of my product. Ultimately, there was the following structure:
And how nonstrange it gave its results. Visits during the day increased tenfold, plus I used a little effort on seo-optimization and site promotion. For 2 weeks, the program was downloaded more than 100 times, I was at the peak of delight from the work done for 2.5 months, the cherished dream is about to come true.
But there was, again, selling pages, with the necessary button to buy ...
All the time that I was engaged in the creation, promotion and promotion of the site, and therefore my product, I was constantly thinking about selling. And everything was incomprehensible to me, but gradually I began to delve into the intricacies of selling goods through the Internet, the more I learned about it, the less I wanted to do it. You will ask why?".
And now I will gladly answer you.
You have two options for selling the product:
In my case, the partner fell away, since the selling site was created.
For sale, I chose the most popular payment system in the post-Soviet space - Webmoney (webmoney.ru)
With their interface for automated payment acceptance "Merchant WebMoney".
In order to connect the payment system to your site you need:
1. Create a wmid, in other words, a wallet, on the webmoney.ru website
2. After filling out the passport data, get the "Initial Certificate".
3. After receiving the "Initial Certificate", you need to apply for a "Personal Certificate". And here the most interesting begins, in order to receive this certificate, you need a personal meeting with the registrar, or the transfer of the necessary contracts by mail having assured them at the notary in advance. In our country, the registrar is one, and he is in Minsk.
4. Obtaining a certificate is possible for individuals and legal entities, but for sales on the site is possible only after obtaining the status of legal. faces. For example, an Individual Entrepreneur. The cost of obtaining a certificate 500 000 Bel. rub. (~ $ 100).
5. Pay certification. At first I wanted to pay in cash in the bank itself, but decided to ask again by e-mail. I was answered:
“This is difficult because there is a resolution of the National Bank on the restriction of 50 base per month. It is necessary to clarify on the day of payment in our accounting and there is a chance to get a refusal. "
Thus, it is desirable for an IP to pay through a checking account, since the National Bank only allows banks to receive cash from legal entities for a certain small amount per month. And it may happen that this limit will end before you enter the bank.
In Russia, these numbers depend on the registrar, and there are an order of magnitude more of them. Please note that the program has not brought even a ruble of profit.
6. After receiving a personal certificate, after small formalities, you will receive a “Seller Certificate”, and only then you can proceed to setting up a payment system on your website.
7. To do this, you must have considerable web-programming skills to “pull” the payment system on your website. After checking the system, you are finally ready to accept payment. But it was not there…
8. You can only accept payment in the currency in the wallet from which you received a certificate. In our case, this Belarusian bunnies. The user will have to translate their currency into yours, but this is not so difficult. Because you can only remove Belarusian rubles from your wallet. In Russia, the situation is less tense.
9. But about the cashing of money legends are going on, each person engaged in online business has developed for himself his own scheme of this process. Well, how convenient for anyone. By the way, there are some nuances about the amounts that you will withdraw from this wallet, the higher they are, the more difficult this process will be for you.
Above, I just visually introduced you to the 9 rings of hell, if I began to talk about the processes associated with the signing of contracts and documents, they would become an order of magnitude more. All this, you must do if you do not want problems with the tax and other authorized bodies.
In our country, and in neighboring countries, even in the courtyard and the 21st century, there is still no normal, uniform payment system for all, because of this, many, like me, had to switch to the freeware business. If you now I'll shout about Yandex money, etc. these are crushed systems by the giant Webmoney, capable only of paying utility bills and mobile communications. The only bright future that awaits us is the transition to credit cards, but for now, they are avoiding it.
Do not believe me, get acquainted with the interview with Vladimir Romanov, the author of the first download manager in history - the ReGet program. Shareware has a hard future.
I think on the Internet you will find a lot more information about the shareware business.
Statistics show that about 85% of people who are trying to start their online business, eventually give up and refuse to fight in the first year of work. These are people who believed promises that wealth would come quickly (and easily), or those who simply could not stand the competition and gave up too early.
Oh yes, what about my program and website? The site works well, the program is well downloaded, but I had to forget about the sale. Alas, the harsh reality of average software and shareware business. You ask why I did not give the program to partners, I was not allowed to do this honor. I went from a programmer to a marketer, and I am extremely happy about that. Please do not condemn me.
In order to conduct business on the Internet, you must have very bold dreams and habits, more daringly than ever were mine. Do not forget that we live in the post-Soviet space, that in the West for a long time the norm has only just begun to appear. A person when meeting with shareware starts frantically writing in search of a crack to “the name of your program”, without finding anything, he will simply use the one that is free, even if it is worse. Freebie, be it wrong.
Remember - the online business pie continues to grow at an incredible rate every day. There is enough space for everyone, so dig and enjoy. Forward to your success.
Internet business is the naked truth
We cash WebMoney in Belarus. Officially!
See you soon…
So, when I was thinking, I was dreaming about business, which I will spend 2-3 hours a day and which will bring me a decent income for it. I have heard a lot about the shareware business, that many people get out of it nischem, and that not everyone has a place in the so-called financial freedom, but all this, I thought, was not said about me. My motto was: “The main thing to start!” This post will be devoted to my experience, as it seemed then, in a simple and clear online business. Well, let's start ...
The main idea ?!
The idea is nothing! You are deeply mistaken if you think that an idea is worth something. In our information world, the price of an idea is equated to zero.
Generally, what is the idea?
This is when you come up with something that is unique.
When an idea is in your head, it can seem fantastic, super profitable. But you can not sell it. The idea is worth nothing. You can only tell her to someone, write. Maybe you will refuse her at all, especially if your friend says that this is “complete mess.”
It’s not a fact that at this very moment, the same idea did not come to another person, moreover, completely independently of you. Or maybe he already sat down to realize it, and you are only thinking about it. Who has the advantage now?
But, if you can implement an idea into a product, then your main asset will be no longer an idea, but your product that needs to be sold.
Where are you idea?
So how do you find this very idea that will lead us to the heights of online business?
I will tell you personally about my experience of finding ideas. Being a programmer, I have been thinking for a long time about a product that will be in demand, and therefore sold. Looking at the software market (PP), I gave up, everything is there, from utilities in 15 lines of code to mega projects with 10 years of experience. There was no point in writing small programs and various utilities, and I naturally could not compete with such giants as Microsoft and Adobe. Question: what to do? The answer was somewhere in the middle, I needed an idea for a program that I could develop on my own and in the aisle of a short time (within a month). If you think that there are no such projects left, then you are mistaken, there are many projects for which large companies are not profitable to undertake, because the income of $ 10,000 is not large for them, but for you ?! At that time, I did not reason like this, but something prompted me to start. Months went by, but the idea did not come to my head in this way, or rather the ideas were, but they were so “crazy” that their implementation was wasted time.
It seemed that the idea had become something unattainable for me, and at the same time, it podzadorivo me even more.
It all started when I got a new job, in the office, where about 50 people worked, there was 1 main network printer, which was printed from all computers. One day, the boss cursed for the unknown where the paper was wasted, everyone shrugged their shoulders saying that only the necessary things were printed. As you guessed, the idea of ​​creating a print control program, paper and ink consumption flashed in my head.
I quickly “browsed” the Internet, in particular its Russian part, for the presence of such programs, and to my great joy they were, there were few of them, but still they were, and as one of the main marketing rules says: “The presence of competitors is this is a good sign. A sign that a niche is in demand, and therefore there is money in it! ” Let me explain what exactly pushed me to continue moving in this direction. I researched the programs of competitors, it turned out that they required $ 100 for one copy of the program for insignificant functionality, but my program would be cheaper, with no less, or even more functionality, so at that moment I was thinking ...
')
Product creation stage
Obsessed with the idea and the fact that I will soon receive the fruits of my labor in monetary terms, did not give me rest at night and in the afternoon. I wrote code everywhere, almost on a “push”. Now I understand that I did it for a reason, dear, know that a lot depends on the speed of development. Having finished the job, you will realize that the development of the software itself took you a third of the time spent on the entire product development cycle. I will say that the PP must be developed by one person, for a period of up to one month , this is the only way you can meet all the deadlines of the planned activities.
After completing the process of creating product version 1.0, I started testing it, for which I spent another week (plus my month), and this included debugging. The finished product had version 1.3.0.0, to which I was extremely happy. There were no questions about the functionality of the program, it met all the requirements for the software being developed. The boss was happy with the established order, but for me it meant that it was time to move far, let's say, to conquer the vastness of online business.
The product is, and what to do with it next?
I asked exactly the same question at the next stage of my activity. There is a product, I will not deny that it is necessary and useful to more than one dozen people who wanted to control consumables in their organizations. But how do all these people learn about him, acquire, install, etc. The answer now everyone has in mind, the world wide web, the Internet.
I haven’t dreamed about boxed versions yet, because the program weighed by the order of 5 MB (the exe file itself is executable) is silly to sell in a store on the shelf, and in material terms it threatened me with big expenses. Hope remained on the Internet, more precisely on the shareware business. I want to note that the prerequisite for this was the system for registering a licensed copy of the product created in the program and prepared for this. The principle is simple: the program was distributed as a Demo version, with limited functionality in an unregistered version, I think about it in detail to tell you it makes no sense.
Since the Internet means a site, not just a site, but a seller. Then you will understand why I emphasize this.
Creating a marketing site and its promotion
Still inspired by the idea, I started developing a selling site, at that time I did not know what it should be, but I knew that it should become a kind of portal between the customer and my program. Fortunately, by that time I already knew how to create websites, and writing a site in a CMS with 10 pages took me about a week to complete. Do not forget at this time I had the main work.
And so what then was on this site:
- Main page containing information about the main advantages of the program and advantages over competitors.
- Pages six descriptions of the program and the principles of the implementation of its main processes.
- Download page, with a link to the Demo version of the program.
- Also, faq, feedback, grateful feedback, contacts, etc.
The site was ready, and I had to wait for the first visitors. I think many have noticed that I did not create a selling page, with a link to buy. Why? I will be happy to tell you about it, but a little later ...
A month passed, the second, while the site was indexed by robots of all known search engines, and as soon as the site appeared in the search results for the main keywords, I began to follow the audience. The first month, many getting to the main page from other sites, immediately left, and without starting the download of the product, not to mention the sale, which was not there yet.
This told me about one thing, about the lack of marketing on my site, he simply did not inspire confidence and did not perform the main functions.
I urgently needed a real selling site.
The stage of creating a selling site
The Internet is full of sources that talk about the methods of creating selling sites, but then I wasn’t exactly clear, a huge amount of information was spinning in my head, and I just got confused and didn’t know where to start.
At that time I met an outstanding man who had achieved many successes in this difficult task. It was Sergey Berdachuk with one of his worthy projects dedicated to the creation and promotion of sites - shareware-steps.ru (“Customers for Life”).
I got to know him better, working in tandem, we managed to create a website based on the sale of my product. Ultimately, there was the following structure:
- The main page no longer allowed the visitor to leave the site so easily without downloading the demo version of the product;
- Created sections describing the principles of print control in any organization;
- Well-designed sections of the description for working with the program;
- I have created video tutorials for working with the program;
- Sections FAQ, We will make the program better, grateful reviews, feedback has been dropped to the bottom of the site
- and much more ...
And how nonstrange it gave its results. Visits during the day increased tenfold, plus I used a little effort on seo-optimization and site promotion. For 2 weeks, the program was downloaded more than 100 times, I was at the peak of delight from the work done for 2.5 months, the cherished dream is about to come true.
But there was, again, selling pages, with the necessary button to buy ...
Selling, the meaning of all shareware business
All the time that I was engaged in the creation, promotion and promotion of the site, and therefore my product, I was constantly thinking about selling. And everything was incomprehensible to me, but gradually I began to delve into the intricacies of selling goods through the Internet, the more I learned about it, the less I wanted to do it. You will ask why?".
And now I will gladly answer you.
What is necessary to start selling the program on the Internet?
You have two options for selling the product:
- Directly on your website by connecting the sales system;
- Affiliate program or Affiliate - a form of business cooperation between the seller and partners in the sale of any product or provision of services. In this case, the partners will sell your product while you sleep, for this you will have to just share part of the proceeds.
In my case, the partner fell away, since the selling site was created.
The sale system on your site:
For sale, I chose the most popular payment system in the post-Soviet space - Webmoney (webmoney.ru)
With their interface for automated payment acceptance "Merchant WebMoney".
In order to connect the payment system to your site you need:
1. Create a wmid, in other words, a wallet, on the webmoney.ru website
2. After filling out the passport data, get the "Initial Certificate".
3. After receiving the "Initial Certificate", you need to apply for a "Personal Certificate". And here the most interesting begins, in order to receive this certificate, you need a personal meeting with the registrar, or the transfer of the necessary contracts by mail having assured them at the notary in advance. In our country, the registrar is one, and he is in Minsk.
4. Obtaining a certificate is possible for individuals and legal entities, but for sales on the site is possible only after obtaining the status of legal. faces. For example, an Individual Entrepreneur. The cost of obtaining a certificate 500 000 Bel. rub. (~ $ 100).
5. Pay certification. At first I wanted to pay in cash in the bank itself, but decided to ask again by e-mail. I was answered:
“This is difficult because there is a resolution of the National Bank on the restriction of 50 base per month. It is necessary to clarify on the day of payment in our accounting and there is a chance to get a refusal. "
Thus, it is desirable for an IP to pay through a checking account, since the National Bank only allows banks to receive cash from legal entities for a certain small amount per month. And it may happen that this limit will end before you enter the bank.
In Russia, these numbers depend on the registrar, and there are an order of magnitude more of them. Please note that the program has not brought even a ruble of profit.
6. After receiving a personal certificate, after small formalities, you will receive a “Seller Certificate”, and only then you can proceed to setting up a payment system on your website.
7. To do this, you must have considerable web-programming skills to “pull” the payment system on your website. After checking the system, you are finally ready to accept payment. But it was not there…
8. You can only accept payment in the currency in the wallet from which you received a certificate. In our case, this Belarusian bunnies. The user will have to translate their currency into yours, but this is not so difficult. Because you can only remove Belarusian rubles from your wallet. In Russia, the situation is less tense.
9. But about the cashing of money legends are going on, each person engaged in online business has developed for himself his own scheme of this process. Well, how convenient for anyone. By the way, there are some nuances about the amounts that you will withdraw from this wallet, the higher they are, the more difficult this process will be for you.
Above, I just visually introduced you to the 9 rings of hell, if I began to talk about the processes associated with the signing of contracts and documents, they would become an order of magnitude more. All this, you must do if you do not want problems with the tax and other authorized bodies.
Let's sum up
In our country, and in neighboring countries, even in the courtyard and the 21st century, there is still no normal, uniform payment system for all, because of this, many, like me, had to switch to the freeware business. If you now I'll shout about Yandex money, etc. these are crushed systems by the giant Webmoney, capable only of paying utility bills and mobile communications. The only bright future that awaits us is the transition to credit cards, but for now, they are avoiding it.
Do not believe me, get acquainted with the interview with Vladimir Romanov, the author of the first download manager in history - the ReGet program. Shareware has a hard future.
I think on the Internet you will find a lot more information about the shareware business.
Conclusion
Statistics show that about 85% of people who are trying to start their online business, eventually give up and refuse to fight in the first year of work. These are people who believed promises that wealth would come quickly (and easily), or those who simply could not stand the competition and gave up too early.
Oh yes, what about my program and website? The site works well, the program is well downloaded, but I had to forget about the sale. Alas, the harsh reality of average software and shareware business. You ask why I did not give the program to partners, I was not allowed to do this honor. I went from a programmer to a marketer, and I am extremely happy about that. Please do not condemn me.
In order to conduct business on the Internet, you must have very bold dreams and habits, more daringly than ever were mine. Do not forget that we live in the post-Soviet space, that in the West for a long time the norm has only just begun to appear. A person when meeting with shareware starts frantically writing in search of a crack to “the name of your program”, without finding anything, he will simply use the one that is free, even if it is worse. Freebie, be it wrong.
Remember - the online business pie continues to grow at an incredible rate every day. There is enough space for everyone, so dig and enjoy. Forward to your success.
Additional sources:
Internet business is the naked truth
We cash WebMoney in Belarus. Officially!
See you soon…
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123562/
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