
Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals (2003) - Tomte
http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-shareware-professionals.htm
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rffn
While the article has a point on the differences which makes success or not in
shareware the phrase

Ask empowering questions like, "How can I increase sales by 20% or more?"

sounds a lot like bullshit bingo.

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SyneRyder
On its own it is, but I think the idea behind it is to quantify your goals
with specific numbers _and_ quantify how you intend to get there.

For example, one way to increase sales by 20% might be to increase visitors to
your website by 20%. But another method, if only 10% of visitors download your
software, increasing that to a 12% conversion rate will also increase sales by
20%. Lifting downloads from 10% to 12% might be easier than finding 20% more
visitors. By thinking in specific numbers, you can brainstorm different ways
to achieve the goal and choose the method that is fastest / least effort.

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ido
A good old article. Not really from 2011 - I'd say it's probably a decade
older than that (I remember reading it a LONG time ago, and Pavlina has left
the business long before 2011).

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sireat
Are there even any sustaining (lifestyle income) desktop shareware vendors
left?

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ghaff
As iso suggests, the shareware term sort of degraded and then faded away.
Shareware initially was this reaction to commercial retail software that you
bought for hundreds of dollars and might not even be returnable if it didn't
run properly on your system for some reason. The Association of Shareware
Professionals in particular promoted try-before-you-buy without crippling. (I
was an ASP member in the 90s though I didn't work at it full-time.)

After I stopped selling software, what continued to be called shareware
generally degraded into a lot of crippleware and demoware. At the same time,
limited time software trials became ubiquitous, open source started becoming
important in the mainstream desktop world, and the Web eroded a lot of the
traditional distribution distinction between "real" retail software and small
operations.

So "shareware" as a meaningful category just sort of faded away.

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CM30
Talking of open source, it seems like many of the people who'd have once been
shareware developers are now the one making add ons and mods for open source
software. Just look at how much of the WordPress plugin repository is filled
with 'lite' versions of commercial plugins, many of which act like shareware
software of old.

Same with the plugin scene for other scripts, including some commercial ones.

