How to sell your program

If you use the search , it turns out that there are many articles with this title. Many of them are dedicated to making money on the Internet, which is natural. But they were written, in many cases, by people far from software development. Therefore, some interesting details of the process “Idea → Development → Sale” are not disclosed there.



Let's start from the beginning ...

By default, you are a programmer, you work in a company, you have the desire and the ability to do something of your own and get paid for it, regardless of the main job. Also, we will consider that you are developing desktop programs and under Windows - we focus on a larger audience.

Idea

Actually, if your program is already ready, then the next two paragraphs can and do not get a grasp.
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And so, you have sat down to do your miracle program and you have a desire, but there is no idea what to do. If so, here are some solutions to this "problem":

• Take some popular program / utility and do better by adding your unique features (for example, make an mp3 player with the broadcast of the song's name on social networks);
• Look at your daily operations at the computer, perhaps you would like to automate some process (for example, make a program that sorts photos into folders by taking the date information from EXIF and saves it on dropbox.com);
• See thematic forums and websites where users post their programs, maybe some program will give you an idea (for example, forum.searchengines.ru has a branch with programs for SEO optimizers);

As soon as you have decided on the idea and decided that such an ingenious and necessary program was not there yet, be sure to look for competitors on the Internet! 99.99% sure something someone has already tried or done. This is not a reason to get upset, study your competitors, find their disadvantages and make them better. Also, look at the prices of competitors, think, is there any point in doing a similar program, if the competitors are already ready, the prices do not break, or do they even distribute for free?

In order to somehow decide what you will have for the program and for whom, you can use this template:

<Product name> is <product category> for <target audience> which <main task> by means of <uniqueness>.

For example: Google is <search engine> for <internet users>, which <allows people to quickly find the necessary information>, using <the best algorithms to get fast and accurate search results>.

Development

The process has begun. You make the program, it is almost ready. But at this stage it is necessary to foresee a lot of things, so that by the time sales start everything is ready.

Here are the highlights:

• Come up with and make protection against hacking (if quickly hacked, your sales will be zero);
• Make a demo version of the program;
• Write help;
• It was also a good video if the program is not simple;
• Make a website with the announcement of the program, from which you will then sell the software and receive complaints from users (and they will);
• Write texts with the program description, take screenshots of the main windows;
• Create accounts in social networks, for promotion and communication with users;
• Decide how to take payment for the program;
• Test on different versions of Windows (give the program to your friends so that they click “not there”);
• Build a distribution kit and check for viruses;

Pay attention to the interface. It should be not only clear, beautiful, but also comfortable! Let your program perform some unique operations, but if it is impossible to use it, no one will buy it. Well, meet on clothes ... :)

Also, make sure the demo works flawlessly. After all, users will use the demo and decide whether or not to buy the full version.

In general, before you start selling, check everything 10 times . And do better at once "good", because:

Nothing is more permanent than temporary.

Sale

The time has come X, more precisely the time of P - sales. The program is ready and tested, the site is working. It's time to declare yourself:

• To begin with, you need to add your program to all popular and not very program directories. Automate this process will help the program RoboSoft . Here we will need the prepared program descriptions and screenshots;
• On thematic forums to place information about your new program, with a description, a link to a demo, etc. The video will be a big plus;
• It’s good to do site promotion so that your program and site can be found through search engines. This is a topic for a separate article. It is worth mentioning about a set of programs from PromoSoft, here and sending ads and registering in directories and site optimization. You can also use the services of automatic website promotion, such as Rookee or Seopult ;
• If possible, use contextual advertising Yandex.Direct and / or Google Adwords ;
• Post information about the program in social networks;

Some sales went, the first users appeared ...

Now we need to focus on user reviews, quickly fix faults. The more satisfied first users, the better. Earn " word of mouth ". On the forums, you can arrange a special offer, discounts, licenses for reviewing your program in a blog, for example. Try it, you're a businessman, promote your product :)

All this is an ongoing process. But the process is interesting and sometimes profitable. With 2-3 programs sold, you can earn good money. Moreover, the Internet is not limited to the Russian language and Russia - make multilingual support in your program and sell it anywhere.

That's all folks! I hope the article was useful for new users in shareware.