The Economics of PIMs

Posted by Neville Franks
Jun 7, 2009 at 01:32 PM

A few others issues to ponder. Over the years it has become easier and cheaper for most anyone to dabble in writing software. Many developers produce a product with little to no forethought about how they will market and sell it. They think that all they need do is write it, set up a web site and the money will come rolling in. Add to this free open source software and you have so many products available that the companies who are serious professional development companies have an ever increasingly difficult time selling their products and thus sustaining a viable business.

Further the free open source software movement devalues the work we do and creates an expectation that all software should be free or is overpriced. And because software is just some bits of a data on disk it doesn’t have a tangible value to many people, who are happy to pirate it. Most people have absolutely no idea long it takes to produce a “good” software product and the associated costs. To run a business these costs must be recovered.

It is very difficult to build a business selling $30 software unless it is mass market or you have a range of products to sell. One support request and their goes any profit.

An annual renewal or upgrade plan can be very effective. People will not renew unless new and useful versions are released, so it is clearly in the developers best interests to continue developing the product. But feature bloat and adding features just so new versions can be released does not server anyone well.

Our customers can assist us and help our businesses to prosper by acting us marketing agents for us. For example recommending products to friends, posting on blogs and forums and generally becoming our advocates,

PS. An earlier post here struck me re. the inability to edit posts. It is difficult to have any expectations of the site owner as he is providing a free service. And free has little value. If the forums users donated funds or payed an annual subscription then an off-the-shelf commercial forum package could be used.