
Twenty dollars in an envelope - mijustin
http://justinjackson.ca/jason-fried-high-school/
======
the_unknown
In my final year of University I decided to write some basic shareware that
was helpful in creating your own custom theme for the recently-new Windows 95.
After completing the app I put it out there to the shareware community.

I attached a note to the program asking for $20 if you liked it. I was very
clear with the program though that there were no additional benefits to
registering other than a clean karma. The program was fully functional from
day 1 and payment though highly appreciated was not necessary. Being the poor
student that I was I also offered a great incentive to people - instead of
sending me $20 they could photocopy $20 and just send me the scan. Yes, being
a 20something about to graduate encouraged me to ask for money but I was still
too scared to jump in fully.

The crazy thing was that I started getting cheques from all over the world -
and received some really cool scans of foreign currency that I hung on the
walls as art. I even had the strange experience of receiving a note from
somebody who lived in the apartment across from me who found the program and
wanted to thank me (he was a student too so no money but having somebody at my
University send me a thank you was even better than a cheque would have been).

I'm glad I wrote the software and put it out there. Even though I didn't make
enough to retire I had finally realized that working for yourself can be
intensely rewarding in many ways.

(I also learned a valuable lesson that even big companies can have problems
writing cheques sometimes - I had one very well known software company send me
some free games rather than a cheque.)

~~~
mijustin
Surprised that the big companies had a hard time cutting cheques (normally,
that's a non-issue). Maybe because your software was too "fun"?

Do you remember how many people ended up paying you?

~~~
kingnothing
It's a giant hassle to get a purchase order approved for software at many
large companies.

------
saddino
I too, made my first sale as a shareware author on AOL, selling a Tetris clone
for the Mac called Blox. I asked for $5 checks sent to my home address, and
while I sold less than 100, the feeling of accomplishment and the incredibly
nice notes included with those payments definitely kickstarted my
entrepreneurial career and taught me to listen to my customers (hence Blox
Arcade II released a year later for $10, sold via Kagi, and selling thousands
of copies).

------
exDM69
When I was a kid in the early 1990's, there was a very vibrant shareware game
community in my home country Finland. I remember putting my pocket money to
envelopes and sending it to these hobbyist game authors, to their home address
and then waiting for weeks for them to ship my game back in a floppy disk.

There was a magazine that had monthly reviews of games and software and the
magazine hosted a BBS where you could download the demos. There were so many
Finnish shareware games back in the day that they had separate sections for
Finnish and Foreign games and apps in the mag. Some of the local games had
mild international success too.

Some of the games I still remember by name: Triplane Turmoil, Mine bombers,
Slicks'n'Slide.

The internet has brought us many things, but we've also lost something because
of that.

------
thetrumanshow
From 2004-2009, I basically built things I could have charged for, but didn't.
I was afraid to take money from people.

DHH (et al) to the rescue: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY>

This is where the "Nice little Italian restaurant" SaaS meme was sourced from.
He was hilariously spot-on.

I caved and started building things I would charge for. I'm still just part-
timing it, but my stuff is growing. And, frankly, I'm not the best
Rails/iOS/Java developer out there. Literally if I can do it, you can too.

Great, inspiring article.

~~~
mijustin
So many people feel the same way. What was the scariest part about taking
money from people?

~~~
thetrumanshow
In those days, two things:

1) The possiblility of "Oh, crap, I just bumped the decimal to the right, by
accident, on 1000 customers."

2) The likelihood that someone would tell me that I was "a joke", to be
charging money for my software.

So, fear of rejection and fear of screwing up on the money side. Thankfully,
there are billing services which eliminated #1 a few years ago, and that was
probably the tipping point for me. #2 is an ongoing concern, and always will
be.

Thanks for the question!

~~~
mijustin
I think the fear of rejection is huge. I'm a pretty confident guy (I'll speak
in front of crowds without too much trouble). But the idea of putting a price
tag on something and asking people to pay for it _is_ scary. The biggest fear:
"What if no one buys it?"

~~~
thetrumanshow
I had a leg up to begin with. I started with an audience (of sorts) that I was
able to poll to gauge interest. I didn't start building until literally 200
people told me they would buy it from me. Turns out most of them were blowing
some kind of sunshine (or else they found another solution before I could
launch one to meet their needs), and very few converted...

But, just the fact that they said yes to my product and price point gave me
the confidence to start.

But, I think you can hijack someone else's product-confidence... by which I
mean you should find a 800-pound gorilla competitor in your market and just
follow them into battle, and eventually outflank them. Not gonna lie, I did
this too, because I got to a place where my market-vision was limited... so I
piggybacked on a competitors market vision. :)

------
rhplus
_People are happy to pay for things that are good. Don’t be afraid to charge
for your services._

"would pay", 5,200 results

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22would+pay%22+site:news.yc...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22would+pay%22+site:news.ycombinator.com)

"wouldn't pay", 38,000 results

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22wouldn%27t+pay%22+site:ne...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22wouldn%27t+pay%22+site:news.ycombinator.com)

(OK, so it's kind of a joke response, but the abundance of free software and
services has really driven down the expectations around reasonable payment
compared to box software's heyday, even for software developers themselves).

~~~
orangethirty
Don't drink the kool aid. There is still a lot of money being made. You don't
hear about it because only an idiot would talk about his/her amazing sales.

~~~
mijustin
Hmmm. Only an "idiot" would talk about sales?

Patio11 - [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-
and-o...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-other-
stuff-year-in-review-2012/)

Nathan Barry - <http://nathanbarry.com/2012-year-quitting-job/>

Brennan Dunn - [http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-
consulta...](http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-consultancy/)

~~~
orangethirty
A handful of people from thousands who prefer to keep quiet. Plus only those
who do talk about them do it to help themselves (as a marketing tool). Any
time you talk about amazing sales you risk alerting your competition about
your niche.

~~~
tanzam75
Indeed.

I read all four of the blog posts. _All four_ of them make the majority of
their money from consulting or from training -- books, videos, and workshops
-- rather than from products. The split ranges from around 50/50 to almost
90/10.

In 2012, Patrick made 20% of his income (not revenues) from products, and 80%
of his income from consulting and training, primarily client engagements. (He
did not disclose revenues from his second product -- but careful reading of
his blog suggests that it probably has not quadrupled his product income.)

In 2010, Amy made 32% of her revenues from products, and 68% from consulting
and training, primarily workshops. (The 68% has to be split 50/50 with her
husband, but even after splitting it in half, it's still 48% vs 52% -- with
the majority coming from consulting and training.)

In 2012, Nathan made 18% of his revenue from products, and 82% from consulting
and training, primarily books.

In 2012, Brennan Dunn made 13% of his revenue from products, and 87% from
training and consulting, primarily consulting. Interestingly, he took Amy's
course and did a 180-degree reversal of direction.

They have all discovered that the money is not in gold mining -- or even in
selling shovels to the gold miners. It's in giving presentations about gold-
mining, and selling videos teaching them how to pan for gold. Patrick wrote
about wrestling with his conscience before charging for his expertise, but
ultimately discovered that it tripled his income. They have all turned their
blogging popularity into cash -- and that's why they continue to blog.

The people who are making most of their money from gold-mining are not
blogging about the location of their mine.

~~~
bdunn
Here's what I think is being missed in this discussion:

Product != Software

People buy software because they desire some intended outcome. For instance, I
recently switched to Xero because emailing spreadsheets of categorizations
back and forth to my accountant is messy and frustrating. And I might buy a
book on bookkeeping because I suck at it. Or a course on cashflow because I
never learned how to properly budget.

I think if you were to ask me, Patrick, Amy, Nathan, etc... if we see a huge
difference between, say, a SaaS product we run and a workshop we teach, we
wouldn't. The goal's the same: make someone better off than they were before.

It's really frustrating, but understandable on HN, to see people downplay
products that aren't software. When writing Planscope, my goal was to help
increase project transparency between consultants and their clients. After
talking with many customres, I realized a large number of them needed help on
something much more foundational to their business: how to price. So I built
another product that helped people with that.

(Also, I honestly don't think that posting some — hopefully helpful — content
on what I learned in trying to sell a book is going to result in "Double UR
Freelancing Ratez" coming out and crushing my sales anytime soon.)

~~~
tanzam75
That's exactly my point. You've chosen to be in a business where blogging
doesn't hurt you -- and in fact, it helps you.

As for giving non-software its due, that's a different discussion altogether.
I was commenting on a post that talked about receiving $20 in the mail for
shareware, on a thread that talked about the situation being tougher than in
"box software's heyday."

~~~
ahoyhere
"You've chosen to be in a business where blogging doesn't hurt you -- and in
fact, it helps you."

How is this different than any other business?

Sure, what Brennan blogs about attracts his customers. But it can and no doubt
will attract other people _like him_ as well. What's stopping his competitors,
or potential competitors, from copying what he's doing… of using his revenue
posts as proof of market?

~~~
tanzam75
Then why doesn't everyone do it?

Why does Patrick reveal all of his financials, _except for_ his second
product? (Which, by the way, I think is a smart thing to do.)

Web 2.0 software-as-a-service is not helped too much by blog posts about how
much money you're making. The site itself serves as promotion. A free trial is
a much better way to promote your product than just a blog post. (Of course,
you should do both.)

A training business is inherently more amenable to blogging as a form of
promotion, vs., say, Google Adwords. Selling training requires that people
trust what you have to say. The fact that you're making money convinces people
that you are deserving of trust. Blogging is like a free trial -- it gives
your customers a sample of what you can look forward to when they buy.

In Brennan's own words (speaking of his free newsletter):

[http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-
consulta...](http://planscope.io/blog/giving-up-a-million-dollar-consultancy/)
"I’m cultivating an audience who trusts my opinion and has received a lot of
value from me in the past. This makes, oh, selling a $1,199 workshop
exponentially easier than if I were to run a paid AdWords campaign for the
same workshop, which I daresay would be a fool’s error."

~~~
mijustin
Patio11 doesn't reveal financials for AR because he's thinking about taking on
investors for that project.

------
mijustin
I'd be interested in hearing more shareware stories. Did anyone else here have
success selling shareware in the 80's and 90's?

~~~
ChuckMcM
So perhaps not much of a story, but the Amiga came out and the first (for me)
compelling "dungeon crawler" game on it was Dungeon Master. I spent a lot of
time on it, and as was my custom, kept notes in my notebook. Pretty soon I had
a pretty complete set of maps for the place, which a friend of mine wanted a
copy of. So I made copies of the pages of my notes but they were hard to
interpret (except for me!) and disorganized, so I opened up Deluxe Paint and
just drew them (they were all 32 x 32 squares I believe) anyway, the drawing
lead me to go in and check things, and I went back and looked for every single
secret room etc, and end the end had a complete set. So I printed them out and
gave them to my friend, who offered to pay me $5 for them.

I wondered if anyone else would want them, and so I offered them up, a copy
for anyone for $5. Sold a couple hundred copies. And to top it off, a German
company that made 'player guides' bought a copy, decided they wanted to use it
in one of their guides and offered me $50 for the "rights" to do that, and I
gladly accepted.

That ended up funding my purchase of a lot of games for the Amiga.

~~~
mijustin
I love this story! How old were you at the time? How did you "offer it up for
others to buy?"

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hmm, lets see the Amiga came out in '84 so I was in my mid-twenties. I
originally posted availability on comp.sys.amiga as I recall. That spread to a
couple of Compuserve forums and to BIX[1]

[1] The BYTE Information eXchange which was a funny funny bulletin board
running on a VAX.

Edit: Apparently still valid in 1989 :-)
[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.games....](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.games.misc/MGgdtxn5RqA/B1Ypz4COGIUJ)
although that isn't my address any more.

------
coldpie
I host an archive of a free British political satire podcast. As far as I'm
aware, my archive is the only place on the 'net that provides downloads for
older episodes of this podcast. I receive something short of a terabyte of
transfer per month. It's been implicitly approved of by the podcast creators
by their linking directly to my archive.

To my surprise, in the two or so years I've been running the site, I've had no
fewer than 5 people go out of their way to email me and ask how to give me
money. I always redirect them to a charity, as I'm just redistributing someone
else's content and the hosting only costs $10/month anyway.

But this reflects what this article describes: people will pay for what they
perceive to be a quality product. I really wish the content industries
(entertainment, software, literature) would learn this lesson and stop with
the DRM nonsense. Make your product easy to use, easy to acquire, and easy to
pay for and people simply will pay you for it. It is a different business
model than what we've had in the past, and you'll have to get used to the fact
that some won't pay you at all, but it can and does work.

It's the future, folks. Time to give up on buggy whips.

------
ck2
While the story is lovely, it's also quaint to think of the days when a young
kid put his home address on the internet and bad things didn't happen.

Also, this is another "right time right place" story - his code wasn't just
good, it was one of the few solutions at the time. Had he tried to do it a few
years after that, I doubt the results would have been the same.

~~~
jsight
> it's also quaint to think of the days when a young kid put his home address
> on the internet and bad things didn't happen.

Why would bad things happen due to that? Are there roving gangs of thieves
desperately searching the internet for the addresses of people to rob?

I really doubt things have much in this regard, and one likely could do this
just as easily (and with the same relative safety) as in the past. OTOH, it
tends to be far less useful/necessary now.

~~~
lelandbatey
Indeed, I've found that worrying about your "real persona" on the internet to
pretty much not be worth it. Since I was about 15 I have started doing
everything using my real name, as well as having my address and phone number
highly available.

------
meerita
I literally sold dozen of games in diskettes back in the '90. I cannot say how
much money I've made, but certainly, a lot to buy a 50cc. motorcycle and a pro
BMX. Ah… those days! And also, I re-traded lot of shareware. I bought them
from the magazines and sold the copies for the same price…

------
Uncompetative
I sold my paintbox for £12 in 1988. It ran on a BBC Archimedes 310 in the shop
window of the computer store where I bought it doing abstract expressionist
artwork to show off its various calligraphic and airbrush tools in full
colour.

To put this in perspective Photoshop 1.0 was available back then, ran on a
more expensive Macintosh and was black & white.

I sold 4 copies and the shop took a cut.

------
AckermanMD
Jason Fried is so cool, he knew how terrible Filemaker Pro was before it
existed! (Alright… it was probably 1990 already. Just had to point out the
potential anachronism of 25 years ago being 1988 and Filemaker Pro being
released in October 1990.)

~~~
mijustin
Ha ha. Either the dates are a little hazy, or he was actually using FileMaker
Plus - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMaker#History>

Here's the earliest record I could find for AudioFile (1997):
[http://web.archive.org/web/19971221191641/http://spinfree.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/19971221191641/http://spinfree.com/p_audiofile.html)

------
Shivetya
my first experience was writing a call back verification program for WWIV BBS
systems. I do not recall how much I made, but it was a substantial amount. I
think it was named CBVWWIV, I forget as the code is long lost. It was written
in Turbo Pascal and supported ASCII, ANSI, and AVATAR, output.

That was an interesting time to be involved in and at times I think it was
more fun and entertaining that the net today.

------
easy_rider
The best piece of advice he actually gives it build something you would use
yourself (and would pay for it).

------
RyanMcGreal
Great interview. I assume the transcriber isn't a programmer: "database" and
"readme" are pretty canonical programming terms.

~~~
mijustin
OP here. I use a 3rd party transcribing service (so they're definitely not
programmers).

------
fyi80
When I was a kid, I mailed $5 to the address listed on a shareware disk, to
get an unlock code for the full program. Never got a response.

I think that was last time I fell for the rebranding-resale scam.

~~~
mijustin
Do you remember which program it was?

