Ask HN: Alternatives to selling desktop software

12 points by SvenAndersson 10 years ago | 5 comments

Good morning HN!

I've been developing (~5 months) a cross-platform (OSX, Win and Linux) desktop application, as an after-work-hobby-project, that is soon nearing alpha state.

Up until now I have mostly kept on coding since it's something I personally have a need for, and it's a fun project, but I also believe there is clique of other people that would find it useful as well. I would love to have other people use it, but I don't think there is enough of a business there to actually sell it, at least in its current form. [1]

I like the "hobbyish sharewarey business" of how Sublime Text started out, and I think my application cater to much of the same audience. But I feel I would not be able to give support or have time to go all in on this project at this stage, having a real job as well.

What are my options to distribute my software, even at an early stage (alpha/beta), without going full business and still be a at least a bit profitable?

Donation-ware? Patreon? Would love some data!

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[1] There are other both big and small company alternatives, there are also some open source (imho shitty) alternatives. The closed source alternatives come in both subscription and one-time-license models. These alternatives also have much more features of course (but so does Visual Studio compared to Sublime Text I guess... :-) ).

mherrmann 10 years ago |

Firstly, I hope for you that your project becomes popular enough so you can make money with it in theory.

When that happens, I would suggest going the way of Sublime Text: Unobtrusive, friendly reminders asking the user to purchase the software. From my own experience I know that it's difficult and extremely tedious to implement a copy protection scheme because it involves a whole lot of things you don't think of at first: how do you ensure that your license keys aren't posted on the internet? Does the customer need internet access to activate a key? What if the customer complains that the license key doesn't work? What about new versions of your software? Keep it simple.

amorphid 10 years ago | |

I paid for Sublime Text to make the annoying "buy me" message go away. I probably wouldn't have paid if it didn't nag me, and I never would have tried it if it weren't freemium.

SvenAndersson 10 years ago | |

Thanks! Yes, this is something I agree with fully, and one of the things I feel works great with Sublime.

edit: And while I might not have been it clear enough in my post, I'm not delusional thinking I might be sitting on a gold mine here. But I think it would be nice for people to show their appreciation if they also benefit from the app as well, but for it to work there needs to be as little friction as possible. And I don't know if/what such service exist, and if it is worth the hassle.

meir_yanovich 10 years ago |

I love to hear also , I love desktop apps I wish it will do comeback soon. I will be happy to hear about more developers working on desktop apps

andersthue 10 years ago |

I started by creating a free version of my Windows software and when it was more mature and had some traction, I added some more advanced features and stared charging.

Now it is a nice side income that helps me bootstrap my SaaS app :)