What do you think about making money by writing shareware software?

Question

What do you think about creating shareware software to be sold online through a microsite and download sites (twocows, download.com, etc...)? Is it a viable and easy to approach way of making money (e.g. 10K a month)? I ask this, because everyone else seems to be betting on the Web 2.0 trend. Is there space for small nice little desktop utilities in 2006? (BTW, I'm an experienced developer)

Answer 1

10k a month? funny boy huh?

Answer 2

Shareware is a wretched way to make money. Most of use just download something and keep using it - Winzip is a prime example.

If you're really betting on Web 2.0 (I'm not) then you do some sort of ASP / Web / Java program, and charge a subscription rate. Be ready to charge a very small amount of money and hope for a huge volume, then to be bought out by M$ or Google.

I worked for a dot-com ASP, where you got a free 30 days then charged $10 a month (50+ good quality children's titles). The take rate was great for 29 days, then it dropped to zero. When they closed they were bringing in enough REVENUE (not profit, revenue) to pay for the Friday employee pizza lunch, which was used to explain why more people were fired that week.

I don't see any software company that is making good $$$. Even M$ has done a reorg and a layoff. Most companies are living off of older code (stuff they wrote for Win9x) that they update because investors want profits NOW, not in the future. Worse yet, you see the open source stuff getting good enough to satisfy most users.