[Reprinted] the path to overseas development of shared software-release your software abroad!

Due to piracy in China, the development of the software industry has been greatly affected. Many colleagues often find that sharing software can make money, although we all know that the MP3 CD Maker of Zhou Yi's predecessors set a 40 thousand monthly entry, it is just a distant dream for most of us, like a moon in the water, not reachable. This was also my goal to invest in this industry. Although my current income has only reached 1/4 of his income, I have been fully satisfied. Looking back at my programming life for more than two years, I have summarized some experiences and hope to share them with you. The most important point is that I will use it as the topic of this article, that is, I have been working hard.
Confusions
Can shared software make money? How can I receive the money? Many of my friends asked this question when they first entered the database. In fact, many experts can prove that shared software can make money, which is unquestionable. In foreign countries, anything that has paid for labor is valuable. The same is true for software. In addition, due to strict foreign laws, everyone has copyright awareness, which is of great help to the sale of Shared Software abroad. As for how to receive the money, generally users are looking for an agent company to help you collect the money and send you a regular check every month. The proxy industry is already a mature industry in foreign countries. Don't worry that the proxy will not give you money.
Website
Generally, shared software requires an international domain name and a host space. For a friend at the beginning, it may be economically unable to reach this point. Then, you can find a free host space and use his second-level domain name, at the beginning, I used a free 10 m space provided by my ISP to store my webpage. I gradually accumulated some income and made it economically feasible. I immediately applied for a domain name and space. If your software is used by some professional users, apply for domain names and hosts from the very beginning. This money cannot be saved. If your software is for general computer users and these users do not know much about the domain name, you may wish to use my method. Of course, if you have money, you can directly enter the ranks of professional sharing.
How to design a webpage? Do you need help from a professional? I personally think: simple is beautiful. Web pages do not need to be very professional, but they must be practical. That is to say, users should know what your website is or what your software is. This is the most basic principle. Second, consider the download speed of Your webpage. You may use ADSL or CABLE to access the Internet, but there are still many users using MODEM. Do not load a lot of pictures on the first page. Add the ALT field to the image so that you can know what the image is, even if the image is not displayed.
Here, I think of an IDEA. When designing a website, I often use FTP to upload and download files. Over time, many files may not be available on the server, for example, some image files and some temporary files may cause a great deal of trouble for us to maintain the website, so we can easily Delete and possibly delete useful files. So I thought, could you have such a software, that is, FTP ***, and can help us check which files on the website are useless, it can also help us test the download speed of web pages (simulating different ways of surfing the Internet ). This kind of software can be called FTP for web developer. There are too many FTP items in the world, but there is basically no such thing. With this name alone, how many WEB developers will be interested. How about it? You can also try this. Well, don't look at it and give me a free version. This is my IDEA. Once again, it proves that idea comes from work.
Submit
After several months of hard work, the program is well written, the documentation is well done, and the website is even more interesting. The following is to let users know your software. The common practice is to submit the software to a download website. There are many types of such websites, and the quality is also uneven. to download a better site, you still need to pay for it. The following describes some download websites:
Http://www.download.com
The most famous software download site. $79 USD is submitted every time, and $79 is required for each UPDATE. But it's hot. No way. If you have money, you must submit the DOWNLOAD
The following are some popular download websites in foreign countries. Some websites still have the option of free submission, which is indeed a good place for friends who are not economically well-off. Put your software on the homepage for two days. During these two days, you can analyze the popularity of your software.
Http://www.soft32.com
Http://www.tucows.com
Http://www.softpicks.net
Http://www.1000files.com
Http://www.downloadant.com
Http://www.brothersoft.com
Http://www.versiontracker.com
When submitting your software, pay attention to the following points:
1. The vast majority of your revenue comes from large websites such as DOWNLOAD and TUCOWS.
2. Submitting too many small websites is a waste of bandwidth.
3. But the more small websites have links to your website, the higher your website ranks on GOOGLE. (This is really a hard choice)
4. when you write your software introduction, there is usually a short introduction, which will explain in one sentence what your software is doing. Do not be too vague in this place, users can understand it at a glance.
5. Be sure to enter the link to your website.
Wait
At this time, people tend to be nervous and always doubt whether their EMAIL box is broken, so they will receive an EMAIL every five minutes to check whether there is an ORDER. It is very likely that your software has no message since it was submitted, and it seems that the same is true if it was not submitted. At this time, I hope you can think about the topic of this article: I have been working hard! Once upon a time, this sentence was like an ancient Chinese lady who spent a long night using soy beans. This sentence made me spend countless cool waiting days. No tickets today, no tickets yesterday, no tickets the day before yesterday, no tickets this week, no tickets this month. In the second month, I received a ticket for $7.75. At that time, my first software was priced at $10, and the minimum service fee was $2.25. This is an epoch-making day for me. From then on, I have entered the long journey of "I have been working hard. For nearly two years of sharing, from $7.75 in the first month to more than $500 in the last month, to more than in the current month, from the first day of work for at least ten hours, from no holidays, it has been working for four hours every day for holidays. Only that sentence can bring me today.
So what should we do when we wait for a long wait? Negative waiting is not advisable unless you think this job is dispensable, and there is an iron rice bowl in your hand. At this time, we should spend a little more time improving our software. Do you need to know how many copies of any software are sold when it comes out of an ugly duckling? Compared with windows xp and WINDOWS 3.1, windows xp is a world of difference. If you give up at this time, it is very likely that you will lose an IDEA that can be famous and a software that can be famous all over the world. It's like a young girl who has been in the group for 20 years. When she was in her fifties, she came out to give her a second time. She was not guaranteed for the evening. Do you mean she could have been happy for a few years? When we constantly improve our software, we may derive new things from the initial idea, which is very valuable, this new idea may be derived from our experiment experience and is very practical.
Generate Income
Now I may have a few orders every month, and I am in a good mood, but my pocket is tight. What should I do? The term "PROMOTION" exists in English. I do not know how to translate it into Chinese, which means I want to find some ways to improve the popularity of your software. To put it bluntly, it means spending money to advertise on some big websites. Nowadays, there are too many types of advertising companies. We all want to spend money on cutting edge websites. We also need to be careful when there are many fraudulent websites. The following describes the types of these advertising companies.
1. Traffic Type: such companies claim to bring huge traffic to your website in a short period of time, and will bring traffic of varying sizes based on the amount of payment. Never ignore this type of company! On the surface, your website does increase the access volume, but I can tell them the practice is: add your website to a list of their client software, this client software will continuously connect to the site in the list in the form of reincarnation, everything is running in the background, people sitting in front of that machine may be watching the yellow website. He is not interested in your site.
2. Click to pay
It is best known for GOOGLE's ADWORDS and OVERTURE companies. The lowest cost per click on GOOGLE is $0.05, and OVERTURE is $0.1. The effect of the two companies is comparable, but the OVERTURE cost is higher. I personally think that using the cable collecting engine marketing is a very low cost method and easy to control. You will never say: I cannot control you. Based on the current conversion rate of my ads:
Click every day: around 300
Conversion Rate: 4%
Cost: About $20 USD
Revenue: $500 USD
This benefit is much lower than the cost of submitting DOWNLOAD and other DOWNLOAD websites, and the revenue is much higher. As a result, GOOGLE and OVERTURE are my main sources of revenue.
Now DOWNLOAD also provides an ad type similar to pay-as-you-go. It is used only when a user downloads your software completely. The minimum fee is $0.15 USD/DOWNLOAD. Really fucking black-hearted. I have never done this kind of advertisement, but I don't know how it works.
Here is the data of a friend I know. This is more realistic:
Downloads per week: 5500
Cost: 5500X$0.20 = $1100
Purchase rate (1%) 5500X0.01 = 55
Unit Price: $28
Total revenue: 55X$28 = $1540
Net income: $1540-$1100 = $440
This friend earned more than $1000 a month by using this software.
3. Weekly/monthly payment:
These companies are represented by TUCOWS. They reserve a certain position on their own websites to display your ads. They have different prices based on their locations, and of course the effect will be different, generally, advertisements on the home page have obvious effect. I once invested in TUCOWS for a week's column advertisement, with a small profit. I have made a one-month homepage advertisement on SOFT32, with countless clicks, but there are few deals. Basically, there is no warranty.
You will be waiting to receive the ticket later. Here, I thought of my first software. I didn't know which Dutch magazine introduced my software at the time, and they didn't tell me that it hurt me a year later, someone wrote a letter asking me: he saw my software introduction in a magazine and asked me how I could buy it? At that time, I deleted all the software and lost even the purchase link. I had to create a purchase link for him and made $7.75, as a result, I was so happy that I gave me more than 10 tips at dinner that day.
Here, I almost introduced the entire sharing process, hoping to help the new entrants. Sharing is not difficult. The most difficult thing is that you cannot stick to it in case of difficulties. Remember: I have been working hard. I wanted to put aside my mind and think of some of the issues that people often argue about. I want to express my own opinions. The following views are purely personal opinions. If you are in conflict with some people's views, please forgive me.
1. Has my software been cracked?
I personally think: cracking has no harm to your software.
2. Is the registration algorithm more complex, the better?
I personally think: There is no shield in the world. It is best not to spend *** on algorithm registration unless your software is used to help others register algorithms. All keys can only be used to protect against gentlemen, but not villains. Therefore, I think it is also my experience. The registration algorithm is simple. All my software uses a hard-coded registration code, when cracking is discovered (generally, only the first-entry scammers will dazzle themselves with things that are so easy to crack, on the contrary, those experts will feel an insult to such a simple registration method ). Basically, when my software came out, I could find the crack. At the beginning, I only changed the registration code to a letter, and the hacker did it. Later, I found that even if the version was cracked everywhere, my income did not drop but Rose, so I was too lazy to change the registration code. Once I wrote a letter to a RUSSIAN cracking website asking them to point my cracked version to my DOWNLOAD link, so that I can increase the DOWNLOAD count by breaking the version, and I promise to provide them all the registration codes for free. No message is returned.