Magnetic Pages Article | 1993-10-14 | 9KB | 52 lines
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& This article is some ideas I had&after reading Andrew Woods' guide to&writing shareware. Read his article&first or this column will seem a bit
incomplete.
Payment
[23m& Credit Card payment is the easiest&way for overseas users to pay®istration fees so if you can&provide the service then do so. I&haven't bought shareware from overseas&but I've bought PD from eight&different libraries over the last few&years and it's quick and efficient&with the disks arriving back within&two weeks from the UK and even quicker&from Australia. I've only been burnt&once which was from the first and only&library I tried in the USA. He blamed&the postal service. I blame him, and will remember his name for ever.
Documentation
[23m& Spell-check your docs and read them&again a few days after you've written&them to see just what you've really&written. Sloppy docs make me wonder if
the code is sloppy too.& An AmigaGuide
Help file is good&for quick and detailed searching when&you strike a problem within a program&but it's not so good for the first&read of what a program can do and how&it should be used. If using&AmigaGuide
for the docs or a Help&file then an overview of the whole&program should also be included either&as a normal text file or as one large%node within the AmigaGuide
document.
Advertising
[23m& Those who have read my editorial in& issue one of Amy PD Review will know&I advertised it in a few New Zealand&provincial newspapers. This was in the&For Sale columns with the first issue&free to those who sent in a disk and&SSAE. This produced a reasonable&response but few subscriptions. I wish&now I had also offered something else&free to those who replied as an&encouragement for subscribing or for&explaining why they've not done so.&Finding out why people don't want to&buy is the hard part. This type of&advertising does get feedback though&and it's a cheap way of finding out&the likely response you'll get if you
advertise nation-wide.
PD Libraries
[23m& Treatment from libraries can be&interesting. Here's the listing for&the first issue of APDR as written in&one catalogue. Their spelling and
capitalization.
& "A submission from an austrailian i&think. A bit like a disk mag reviewing&all the latest pd software available
on the SCENE.!!!"
& I won't name the library as they&also offered some good, if brief,&advice. Very rare. And I don't mean of&the "Great Mag!" variety. Those kinds&of comments are useless for those&trying to improve something. Being&told what's wrong with your software&is what's helpful, as is finding out
the parts people like about it.& If you don't know a good library&then buy a few disks from some until&you find one that seems to respect&both the users and producers of&shareware and PD. Judge them by their
catalogues and promptness.
Reviews
[23m& So the paper magazines in the UK&don't review submissions from&shareware producers eh? Perhaps they&should review them and then send the&disks to all the PD libraries who&advertise in their pages and say in&the review that the disks are "widely&available". This would make everybody
happy wouldn't it?
Shareware Restrictions
[23m& Andrew's shareware has a month's&time limit on it after which you are&supposed to pay the shareware fee or
TinyClock" A perfect example of cardware.# I'd feel safe using shareware the% coder of this elegant little program
may someday produce.
[23m&erase the program. I don't think&there's much point in this as the only&ones who'll respect it are the type&who may pay up in the future when they&perhaps start using it after all.&Honest users need to be cultivated,¬ lost. When they format that disk&your address goes too. They are also&the type who will always point out to&others that a program is shareware
when they pass on a copy.
Creating a mailing list
[23m& Most programmers don't write a&massive application with their first&effort. If you're planning to get into&shareware and have written a few&little utilities or simple games then&don't make them shareware. Instead&make them giftware or cardware. Asking&for a postcard or a disk or two of PD&won't make you rich but when you do&write that masterpiece you should have&a list of honest and friendly Amiga&users to send it to first. You could&also think about selling it to them a
bit cheaper too.
& That's all from me on shareware at&the moment. Thanks to Andrew Woods for&kicking off the subject in his first&of hopefully many columns. It's great&to have you aboard Andrew and thanks&for just getting the article in on&time. If the mag wasn't running late&though it would have missed it by a&day. For once I'm glad it's a bit&late. And no, I'm not going to&elaborate on the meaning of "great" as
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