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- Money
- Freeware from Another Company
-
-
- Chapter 5
- Making Money With Programming
-
-
-
- If you can write programs in Basic, Pascal, C, Clipper,
- anything at all, even if you can only write text with a word
- processor, you can make money! You won't have to work in an
- office doing programming for someone else. You can write
- exactly the kind of programs you want to write, and make
- money at home!
-
- The 'secret' is shareware. Does it work? You bet! You
- can easily have a small success, making some extra spending
- money each month, or with some practice, you can have a wild
- success, and make a fine living! There are some millionaires
- who make their ever-growing fortune entirely through
- shareware.
-
- Here's what you do:
-
- Write a program, preferably something that many people
- will find unique and useful. Make your program as easy to
- use and understand as possible. Many shareware buyers have
- trouble operating any program more complex than an automated
- bank teller machine. Make it as artistic as possible. Put
- boxes around menus, use lots of icons in graphics-based
- programs. If you can write pull-down menus, help screens and
- offer control of on-screen colors to your users, that's even
- better.
-
- Make a few copies of your program and give it to
- friends for testing. No doubt, they will find problems that
- you couldn't have imagined while you were writing it. Then
- make changes in your program to fix all the holes your
- friends fell through.
-
- When the program is perfect, make it into shareware.
- This means you have to put something into it to make people
- want to send you money. If you are a prolific writer, put in
- ads for other programs you have written. Or send additional
- features in trade for 'registration' (payment). Whatever you
- do, don't cripple your program. In other words, if your
- program is called "Automated Lawn-Mowing Program," don't
- leave out the lawn mower. People must be able to use the
- program without first sending money. But you can leave out
- the grass bagger attachment. Tell people how wonderful it
- would be to use your lawn-mowing program along with the
- bagger, and "for only $19.95 they can have the bagger."
-
- Here's something that has not yet been written (to my
- knowledge) but would bring some easy money for the author:
-
- BEGINNING GUITAR LESSONS on DISK
-
- What you would do is to give the first volume away as
- shareware or freeware ('freeware' requires no registration).
- People would get your lesson program and would learn some
- basics. Included in your program or text would be an ad for
- INTERMEDIATE GUITAR LESSONS on DISK and ADVANCED GUITAR
- LESSONS on DISK. For these, you can bet people would send
- you money.
- How many people? Well no one knows for sure, but there
- are 72 million IBM-compatbile users in America, and of those,
- 10 percent will know about your GUITAR LESSONS. Those who
- are interested may only be 2 percent, but 2% of 10% of 72
- million is still a lot of people. In fact, its 144,000
- people. Now, perhaps only one out of 100 of these folks will
- send you $19.95 for the Intermediate lessons, but that is
- still a profit of over 28,000.00! And, of course it doesn't
- end there, you can sell the Advanced Lessons, the Very
- Advanced Lessons, Blues Guitar Lessons, possibly even Bass
- Guitar Lessons. And this is a small example, dealing with a
- specialized group!
-
- What next? Send a copy of your program to every
- shareware distributor you can manage. Don't worry, unless
- your program is badly written, they won't reject it. In
- fact, they all want shareware submissions! Just send them a
- disk along with a simple cover letter.
- The cover letter would authorize a distributor to
- distribute your program, and would list any specific
- equipment required by the program. For instance, by telling
- the distributor that your program requires CGA graphics and
- 512k of RAM would prevent sales to people who are not
- equipped to run it. Most important, the cover letter should
- contain a brief discription of your program for their
- catalog. Without this, they may write their own catalog
- description, one which you might not like.
-
- The more distributors you can have selling your program,
- the better, because you will quickly gain exposure to your
- millions of users.
-
- Do not expect overnight success. It takes about 8 months
- to a year for money to start coming in. This is because there
- is a delay between when your disks arrive and when the
- distributors issue a new catalog with a listing for your
- program. There is another delay between the new catalogs and
- when customers place orders and get their disks. And
- finally, it takes awhile for customers to digest your program
- and then decide to send you money.
-
- For those of you who are interested in this unique and
- wonderful home business we have a special disk for you:
-
- SUCCESS WITH PROGRAMMING!
-
- ANOTHER COMPANY shows you everything. Besides our own
- shareware successes, including ALMANAC 1991, BICYCLE TUNE-UP
- AND REPAIR, and MONEY, we have researched the shareware
- market, we have interviewed other shareware authors and have
- learned about all sides of the rapidly expanding shareware
- business.
- We show you how to write programs that capture the
- public's interest, how to make sure your customers
- 'register', and how to get money by other means through your
- shareware. We show you more. We show you frequency charts
- indicating which types of programs sell best, we offer
- suggestions for programs as yet unwritten, we talk about
- your on-disk instruction manuals, we even show you how to
- write user-friendlieness into your programs.
- Can you succeed without SUCCESS WITH PROGRAMMING? Yes!
- But why do it the hard way? We have learned all the
- super-professional approaches, the pitfalls and the
- shortcuts. We'll tell you all about it, and then instead of
- stumbling around for the first couple of years, you'll be
- able to start like an old pro!
-
- Price: $19.95 (not available as shareware)