How to sell your program

If you use the search , it turns out that there are a lot of articles with this title. Many of them are devoted 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” were not disclosed there.



Let's start from the very beginning ...

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

Idea

Actually, if your program is already ready, then in the next two paragraphs you can not read it.

And so, you 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 it better by adding your own unique functions (for example, make an mp3 player with broadcasting the name of the song on social networks);
• Take a closer look at your daily computer operations, perhaps you would like to automate some process (for example, make a program that sorts photos into folders, taking date information from EXIF and saving it to dropbox.com);
• View thematic forums and sites 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);

Once you have decided on the idea and decided that such a brilliant and necessary program has not yet existed, be sure to look for competitors on the Internet! 99.99% sure that something like this someone has already tried to do or did. This is not a reason to be upset, study your competitors, find their weaknesses and do better. Also, look at the prices of competitors, think about whether it makes any sense to create a similar program if the competitors are already ready, the prices do not break or are they distributed free of charge?

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

<Product name> is <product category> for <target audience> which is <primary objective> through <uniqueness>.

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

Development

The process has begun. You make a program, it's almost ready. But at this stage, there is still much to be provided for, so that by the time sales begin everything is ready.

Here are the highlights:

• Come up with and make protection against hacking (if you quickly hack, then your sales will be zero);
• Make a demo version of the program;
• Write a certificate;
• Video clips were also good 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 describing the program, take screenshots of the main windows;
• Create accounts on social networks for promotion and communication with users;
• Decide how you will accept payment for the program;
• Test on different versions of Windows (give the program to friends, so they pushed "not there");
• Build the distribution kit and check for viruses;

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

Also, make sure that the demo works flawlessly. Indeed, it is the demo that users will use and decide whether or not to buy the full version.

In general, before starting sales, check everything 10 times . And do it better right away, because:

There is nothing more permanent than temporary

Sale

The time has come X, or rather hour P - sales. The program is ready and tested, the site is working. It's time to declare itself:

• To begin with, you need to add your program to all popular and not so program directories. Automate this process will help the program RoboSoft . Here we will need prepared descriptions of the program and screenshots;
• Post information on your new program on thematic forums, with a description, a link to a demo, etc. The video will be a big plus;
• Take up the promotion of the site so that your program and site can be found through search engines. This is the topic of a separate article. It is worth mentioning about the set of programs from PromoSoft, here both the distribution of announcements and registration in catalogs 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 on social networks;

Some sales went, the first users appeared ...

Now we need to focus on user reviews, quickly fix malfunctions. The more satisfied the first users, the better. Earnings word of mouth . On forums, you can arrange some kind of action, discounts, a license for reviewing your program on a blog, for example. Try it, you are a businessman, promote your product :)

All this is an ongoing process. But the process is interesting and sometimes profitable. Having 2-3 programs for sale can make 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 to newcomers to shareware.