Hey Cred Forums, I need your advice and I figured this is the best place to get a brutally honest opinion.
I wrote some software and I've been maintaining it for quite some time now. It's free and there are no ads anywhere. Unfortunately, this means I get almost no money for my efforts besides some minor donations every now and then.
I was fine with this when I first went public with the project, I didn't really expect much attention, but then it got kinda popular and people started relying on it.
Due to the nature of the tool, it takes a ton of research and has to be updated fairly often. So now I feel like I'm sorta stuck, dedicating a lot of my time to keep people happy and make no money from it.
Don't get me wrong, I love my users and it's awesome I somehow managed to make something useful to so many, but I can't keep this up forever.
So what would Cred Forums do to monetize a free software tool? I was thinking maybe something like a "premium/pro" version in addition to the free version, since I don't want to fuck people over by suddenly starting to charge for it outright, but have no ideas what extras to offer that would make them want to shell out the cash.
Fuck, sorry about the length of this post, it got away from me.
>fuck people over by suddenly starting to charge for it outright This is what I would do if I were in your shoes. Fuck people. Get paid
Luis Cook
If you really want to keep going, just make a pro version and a normal version. Add all the updates in the pro version and just fix bugs in the normal.
Or you can go full FOSS, throw up a git repo and let people add their own shit if they want it and merge requests, etc.
Landon Bell
Maybe you're right, but I feel like I'd only make people resent me. I do know some IT people use my shit on school computers and whatnot and they wouldn't be able to justify the costs to their bosses. Plus, I know what it's like to be broke and I think anyone should be able to use it.
Julian Wright
Most people would not care about a pro/free version. It's like that 90-10 rule. 90% of the user base probably only uses 10% of the tool you made, so the pro version is really only necessary for the 10% who use the full potential. I'm basing this off of IDA pro/free and FL studio fruity/full
Charles Wood
It's nice that you want to give something away for free but you gotta think about how you put food in the fridge
Jackson Young
if it's not open source then it's not free so I don't care
Justin Foster
It's the only thing I've ever made that anyone gives a shit about so I don't wanna just drop it. Does anyone in FOSS actually get money by doing this and if so, how? It's my first public project, I didn't really know what I was getting into when I started.
Blake Lopez
You sound like a good nature person user. I've been in business over 10 years. That was the hardest lesson I had to learn. Charging for my services.
You could charge the users. Or if its as good of software as you say, you could charge advertisers and put ads in the software. If people don't want ads, they can upgrade for a small fee. I could see it going both ways.
Is this a subscription type service or a program you buy once and you're done like AutoCAD?
John Sanders
Extort the people who rely on it.
Ian Price
No one said you can't get the source code.
Dylan Moore
You could charge to get the newest updates right away, and then release updates for free but on a week/month delay. That way it's still "free" but to get the newest updates immediately, people gotta pay.
Juan Rivera
Thanks, I'm not exactly saving lives but I do what I can. It started as a way for me to learn more, never expected to have much of a user base. It's kinda difficult to say, but if I was gonna charge for it it would probably be best to go with the subscription model, like 20$ a year to keep getting updates, I'm not greedy.
Josiah Johnson
>Does anyone in FOSS actually get money by doing this yes, but it's a lot harder >how? sell support for it if it's enterprise shit, look at Nextcloud, RedHat donations if it's a mobile app sell it for money to retards on Play store/istore and give it for free (opensource) on f-droid to people that care about that stuff, look at this: github.com/SimpleMobileTools
Ian Wilson
Simple thing to do is look up some similar services. See what the market is going for. If you're a smaller start-up, then charge just a little less and produce a quality product. As you grow and your overhead increases, adjust your prices accordingly.
If you're going to chase this, I would suggest "Entreleadership" by Dave Ramsey, Jocko Willink books, and maybe a few others. Will help you with structural building.
Gotta run. Good luck user.
Aaron Adams
Lol, I somehow get the feeling this guy has slain mass amounts of pussy.
I like this one. Never crossed my mind.
Landon Butler
Accidentally replied to my own post. >I like this one. Never crossed my mind. Was meant for you.
Andrew Cooper
It's exclusively a Windows app. I don't think many businesses use it, I know some do but it's a stretch to go full "enterprise" I think.
Will look into it, thanks bro.
Ian Young
you should post this on Cred Forums as well
Charles Lee
>It's exclusively a Windows app put a price on it and don't release the source then, nobody cares about windows software as in freedom
Samuel James
Will do. I like the unfiltered replies of Cred Forums though, that's why I thought of coming here first.
You'd be surprised. The tool is in a relatively strange category though, I get a lot of linux-minded folks who have to use Windows for some reason or another.
Jacob Ramirez
OrCAD Cadence for PCB design is Windows only OrCAD Virtuoso for IC design is Linux only It's pretty dumb and have two school computers for that...
Justin Thomas
That is pretty dumb. It makes me wonder why they'd make it that way. But my software would have no purpose on Linux, otherwise I'm all for multi-platform development.
