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CHAPTER.5
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1991-04-12
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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)