Quote:
Originally Posted by mores
How many copies of your programs have you sold with just your own website and self-made marketing? Oh, so you want to box it up and put it on shelves at Walmart, Saturn, Virgin etc.? Well guess what, your program needs to comply with some rules.
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I used to sell my own software for about 5 years back in the mid 90s. I had to sign up with an online merchant system (I used two but mainly Regsoft - I think they took 30% I can't remember now ). I had to run a web site (~ 8/month). I had to buy my developer tools (~ $500 at the time). I had to get my programs mentioned and found on other web sites by listing them on shareware sites and interest forums. It was up to me to make it available for people to find.
Now that said, I actually did pretty well as far as I was concerned. I typically sold 8-12 copies (~$20 each) a month for a good 4 years or around 500 copies by the time I stopped selling. It's not a large number but it was a hobby that paid for itself and I was amazed that people all over the world were buying my software.
I've been messing around with the iPhone dev kit lately (and to reiterate, it's free to download and program with and run in the emulator - you just can't load your app onto a device). The hardest part has been coming up with an idea that I both want to do and will have some interest. With such a flooded market with frankly, pretty quality written software, this has me at the drawing board still.
But I think it will be neat to publish a couple iPad apps that will maybe float around the App Store long after I'm gone...