The lessons of writing utilities for $ 1 000 000

In the fall of 2008, my friend and I spent two to three weeks of work-free time to write a small utility for database backup (MS SQL Server and then MySQL). Today, she brings us about $ 230,000 a year, and we can say with confidence that we will earn more than $ 1,000,000 on it in total.

Under the cut, I'll tell you how it happened and what lessons we learned from it. It is possible that we are just stupidly lucky and this experience is completely wrong and the theory does not match and only harm your undertaking - read at your own peril and risk.

Start

It all started with an unmet need. At our main work, we did various projects on .NET + SQL. And the simple task of creating a database backup, compressing it and transferring it to an FTP server often required a heap of scripts and utilities. We looked at the available solutions - they fell into one of three categories:

1. Dear and complex (RedGate, LiteSpeed, Idera).
2. It seems to be quite good for backing up files, but SQL backup is there as an unintelligible appendix (Handy Backup, IBackup).
3. Cheap or free VB6 styling.

The market clearly lacked a simple utilitarian product. I shared the idea with a friend who specialized in Windows applications and offered half the revenue. I had a GUI and a website, on a friend - the application itself.
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Interface

The strategy was defined as follows: it’s easy to do everything so that even a novice user can get a result with a minimum of clicks. Namely: select the database, archive, send to a folder or FTP, receive an email with confirmation and put in the daily schedule. We laid out all these actions on the main form, hiding the rest behind the Advanced and Configuration buttons.



Lesson 1 (the main one): Find the shortest of ways to satisfy the need and do not strain users with details.

Every other day we are offered to add this or that chip. The first question we ask is - what percentage of our users will need it. If less than 5%, we will not do this.

Lesson 2 (actually the continuation of the first): the functionality unnecessary to the majority is harmful because it complicates understanding.

Here is how we dealt with some of the difficulties:

1. The program was supposed to work with several projects / works . However, for most it is enough to create only one project by selecting several bases for backup. We made it so that the program itself opens the same project as last time and connects with the same SQL server - so most do not even think that you can work with several projects.
2. The SQL Connection String is still the most difficult part for the user. When you first start, without asking the user, we iterate through the most common Connection String, so by opening the program, most users have already connected to the server and see a list of their databases.
3. Sending emails - in order not to strain users with the SMTP setting, by default we send emails through a web service on our server. For free users, the chip is free for a week, and then you can either buy a paid version or use your Gmail or another SMTP server.
4. Schedule - most need Full Backup once a day. What can be done on the main form. For the more advanced, all settings are hidden behind the Settings button.

Money

After working a bit, we made the first version of the program. Then we put it in all shareware-sites and left comments on the forums on this topic. Gradually, customers have gone. Two months after the release, we were noticed by one big company whose product was based on SQL and its users with little technical knowledge were themselves responsible for the backup. For them, we were perfect and they sent all their users to us. In addition, they even took care of those support. Money flowed like a river.

The basic version (Standard) now costs $ 59. For those companies for which this is not money - we have Professional with the addition of AES encryption for $ 69. For the budget conscious - Lite (maximum 5 databases) for $ 29. About a year ago I read some article that the prices on the Prices page should be submitted from large to small so that the user, frightened by the first large numbers, the figure in the middle seemed relatively modest. We thought: what would let such an expensive release to frighten users? So the idea was born of the Lifetime version for $ 199 (now $ 149) with free lifetime updates. And we were very surprised when it began to cheerfully buy it!

Then comrade threw another idea that brought thousands of dollars. In addition to the products, we also sell Extended Support (for those who bought it - special attention with support) and a 1-year free update (1 month by default) for little money. Additional efforts are close to 0, and the money is gradually dripping ...

Lesson 3 - let the user pay as much as he wants and can.

Piracy and greed

From the first days of existence, we decided to spend only a minimum of time on the fight against piracy. The program is sewn algorithm for checking the license key that is easy to crack. The idea is this: if a person launches keygen for hacking, he would hardly have paid for the program without it. And so - it will be used and, perhaps, when it settles down, then it will feel the need to pay.
Many people install the key on several machines - we just send polite letters with a reminder that this is wrong. Companies in civilized countries are trying to comply with the agreement and buy the missing license. We could cope with less civilized ones by adding activation, but this would complicate life for most honest customers. And again: we are used and this is already good.

Lesson 4 - Focus on the product, not on the defense. Pirate today - customer tomorrow.

Most of the free version is enough in which you can do the same as in the standard, but with a limit of two databases. Grateful people even offer donations. Yes, we are glad: when the needs grow, then they will pay, and at the same time we will fight with free homemade products.
We recently added backups to Amazon S3, Google Drive and Dropbox. At first there was a desire to take extra money. But they decided not to strain users and just add to existing versions. There will be more users - it means that revenues will grow.

Lesson 5 - satisfied customers are more important than momentary pocket filling.

Further...

In the next article I will talk about how to work with contractors, how we dumped a lot of money where we don’t need, how we spun up, how our employee tried to create a competitive product, how we deal with difficult clients, how we receive and share money, how we look at financing, how to back up to the Cloud, how to enter the trial, what is with localization and where to go next.