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I'm nearing feature completion of a command-line tool that I hope will enable me to pay my rent myself. There are many services that provide online stores; which would be the best for me?
I expect to provide installers for .deb and .rpm Linuxes (Linuces?), *BSD, Mac OS X and Windows. The user will select the platform, pay then download the installer.
I expect I'll provide a time-limited demo.
It won't have DRM as I'm convinced someone would just crack it. And really DRM sounds like a PITA from my perspective. The product will be inexpensive; I have the hope that most people would rather pay than have to figure out how to download a "liberated" product.
The eCommerce services I've checked out so far enable the sale of physical products as well as Software as a Service.
I am less concerned with the cost of my store provided I can still make a profit.
I'm not going to sell it through Apple's App Store because I don't want to deal with the sandbox. I expect most of my users will be comfortable with command-lines; I don't forsee them wanting to shop at the App Store.
I hope to go Alpha in a week.
[In consideration of other Soylentils who may have a product with a GUI, or even this submitter should they decide to add one, what other store(s) would you recommend? -Ed.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @12:44PM
If your tool doesn't fit any particular category, gumroad's flexibility may be ok. You have to externally promote it yourself though. I'm selling engineered audio samples there myself. Cheers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @12:53PM
https://gumroad.com/ [gumroad.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumroad [wikipedia.org]
https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/05/layoffs-hit-gumroad-as-the-payments-startup-restructures/ [techcrunch.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:09PM
What does your tool actually do?
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Tuesday September 13 2016, @04:21PM
It provides shopping cart functionality to the command line, enabling the selling of physical goods and services only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:37PM
Sounds... erm..?
Many years ago I wrote my own cli invoicing app, ended up typing the invoices and doing manual double entry. That worked better for ~20 sales invoices and 5-6 purchases invoices a month. Then I wrote a cli stock control system for electronic components and ended up not bothering - the admin overhead of updating it whenever I grabbed a couple of caps or resistors wasn't worth the hassle. It was more cost and time effective for me to massively over order stock than to track it using a database.
I have learned to be realistic about the real-world utility of such tools. The one tool I do still use is a web app that I use to upload scanned images of purchase receipts, although it's cumbersome (could do with a rewrite TBH) the value is simply that it saves me storing paper till receipts.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:12PM
Nobody pays for software these days.
Yeah, that's hyperbole, but I only see two cases where significant numbers of people pay for off-the-shelf software: Individuals pay for games, and businesses pay for software essential to their business (e.g. CAD tools for engineering firms, accounting software for everyone, etc.).
Otherwise, people pay for a computer which comes with an OS (actually buying an OS separately was getting quite rare even before MS finally made Windows so bad they couldn't give it away, and had to start sneaking it into auto-updates), then load it up with freeware, shareware that they'll never register, and/or pirated software.
And if Linux users need something that's not already open-source, it's either gratis (nvidia drivers, chrome, skype, etc.) or games.
As a result of this reality, there are no app stores for non-game desktop apps -- although there's a few people who'd use them, there just isn't the volume of business to support them. So everyone who thinks they're going to make money off a desktop app makes their own website to sell it directly, and it goes about as well as you'd expect.
Also, if this is actually useful, a few people will clone it under one or more open-source licenses, so they can include it in Ubuntu, and suddenly you'll lose most of the CLI-using market. Or if it's both actually useful and really hard to duplicate (perhaps you've serendipitously developed strong AI), a lot of people will use a magic script to bypass the trial's time limit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:46PM
businesses pay for software essential to their business
Interesting concept. Assume for the sake of argument MDC has some printer utility. The headache of selling to home users exceeds the revenue generated, so license "free for non-commercial users, contact MDC for a cheap support contract for business users or embedded licensing" Now no headache from home users and recurring revenue from a couple businesses.
Hint: Market a subscription AND a support contract for businesses that do the same thing under different names. At "big companies" support contracts have to be negotiated by purchasing and need to flow thru the complete management pipeline no matter if its $50M/yr for Oracle (or whatever it is now) or $50.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:00PM
I have a subtly different point of view than you. I agree that most apps outside of games and B2B software don't sell. Having tried direct sales from binpress, I can honestly say that software does not sell, however plugins and APIs might work. For instance, it seems that if you want an embedded PDF viewer, $999 is a steal that someone is buying: http://www.binpress.com/app/pdftouch-sdk/859 [binpress.com] . If you look around in binpress, you will find the "software" section is sitting nearly devoid of reviews but the "code" section appears to have lots of usage.
I realize it is a bit late to change your product now, but realistically if possible convert your tool into a API that someone else can leverage in their app.
- JCD
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:13PM
Sorry to be negative, but unless your tool does something truly spectacular, then I doubt that it will be worth the bother for most people. People who live in the command line want to install a program once, from their standard repos, and have it automatically updated. If I can't install it from homebrew on OS X and from the standard package repo on FreeBSD, I doubt that I'd bother. If you want me to pay you money for something that's less convenient than the things that I get for free, then I will just look perplexed.
The advice that I would give you is to treat the tool as advertising. From your previous posts, you do contract programming. There's nothing I've found that makes it easier to land this kind of gig than the person looking to hire you realising that they're already using and happy with your code. You might be surprised at how many people I've seen hired recently via GitHub issue trackers - if you're using someone's program, find a bug, and see them fix it quickly and professionally, that's a huge endorsement and if you see that they're available for hire then they're going to be top of your list for anything related.
I do find this to be a bit of a red flag though:
I'm not going to sell it through Apple's App Store because I don't want to deal with the sandbox.
If I'm using UNIX tools from the '80s, that kind of attitude is fine, but I'd expect anything developed recently to have the principle of least privilege in mind in development and to be able to run with the minimal set of privileges. Without knowing what your tool does, this would be a red flag when considering hiring you (it may be that it does something for which sandboxing would be problematic, in which case this attitude might be fine, but you haven't given us enough information to tell).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 13 2016, @02:12PM
Specifically, MDC might need to familiarize himself with the concept of a "loss leader": The idea is that you underprice something in order to get a customer comfortable with you and talking to you, so that you can then sell more of the normally-priced stuff. A handy-dandy tool that you've released under permissive licensing is a relatively low-cost loss leader, since all it costs you is bandwidth.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday September 13 2016, @04:03PM
My thought was that most, if not all, OSes have a method for automation. PowerShell or just shell scripting being the most common.
I'm curious about what he could be doing that's sufficiently better than the free tools available to justify paying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @12:06PM
People who live in the command line want to install a program once, from their standard repos, and have it automatically updated.
I'm pretty sure what you're describing is a person who lives in GUI, convenience or death land. Many people who do a lot of command line work prefer operating systems such as slackware that don't automatically update anything (AKA stable) and would turn off automatic updates if forced to use one of those compromised operating systems that engage in the highly insecure practice of unsupervised updates and dependency resolution.
Also most people I know who use the command line a lot are very particular about their environment and download peculiar pieces of software and extension scripts from all sorts of places and engage in all sorts of software wizardry to get everything set up just right.
If MDC's software is niche and meets a need that is not already met, I don't see why it should not sell. Not sure about paying the rent from one command line app, but that depends very much on the market, without knowing what the software is.
Anyway best of luck MDC, we are curious about what your program does.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:20PM
What command line tool could be created in 2016 that has any value? It must be some highly specialized niche product. I would suggest looking where products in that niche are distributed. If your niche is comfortable with command-line tools (software developers, scientists, etc) do they buy command-line programs at app stores? I guess you've done market research, but outside of Linux users (who don't buy things at app stores), the main command-line users are Apple users, so excluding yourself from their store is probably going to limit the viability of your product. As Windows expands its command-line tools, it will be more viable, but it's hard to not go to major platforms.
If this is a niche tool that fills a real need, you might be better off doing a patronage-style campaign through Kickstarter or one of its many imitators - ask people in the niche to pay up front to have the tool developed, and if they need it they'll pay. Once it's developed, upload it to github or source forge and move on to the next tool. Up-front revenues for a real need are more realistic than trying to protect software to have a trickle of residuals. You haven't released this yet, so release some mockups and say it's 80% done and you'll have it done as soon as you get funding for the last 20%.
Also look at spinoffs like teaching people how to use this tool to kick off revenues from, say, YouTube hits. That would probably be more viable if you have a thriving niche community than selling command-line software. Write a book - PACKT will apparently publish anything, and even O'Reilly isn't picky these days. This won't sell much, but technologies get bona fides if they have a book with an animal on the cover.
And I hope your rent is low!
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:26PM
One that automates the creation of pizza rolls?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday September 13 2016, @02:58PM
No, that's not useful. Unless you mean Hot Pockets?
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:05PM
GCC is a command line tool and it has great value, but it's value has already been recouped many times over in decades past in previous implementations of compilers, when compilers were new and mysterious. Now compilers are free as in speech and beer. They are no longer novel and mysterious. Do not discount MDC's tool just because it has a CLI.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:33PM
Though I haven't use it myself, I hear great things about Shopify.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:38AM
Also, sendowl [sendowl.com] and fetchapp [fetchapp.com], the latter of which has a free tier for stuff under 5 megs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:37PM
There are many services that provide online stores; which would be the best for me?
I expect to provide installers for .deb and .rpm Linuxes (Linuces?), *BSD, Mac OS X and Windows.
"many" ... Care to list them? The difficulty is the requirement for multiple OS.
I mean, at one side of the scale there's pay money for an unlock code and its all handled in the application code which is how Cepstral does its licenses for voices and it works for me. Anyone can download and run a closed source binary but only people with a valid unlock code get a useful result. Cepstral "Diane" is my voice for my misterhouse install that must be 20 yrs old now (updated occasionally of course). She's not quite Rommie (oh bad 90s SF reference) but she's hot enough to wake me up in the morning and stuff.
On the other end of the scale, just to supply packages for most freebsd users on different versions and different architectures, you're gonna have all kinds of fun setting up a public accessible Poudriere recompiler for common versions and architectures and then your installer will mess with /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/MDC.conf which is kinda the logical equivalent of a debian-style /etc/apt/sources.list.d/something.list file. Then pkg install wtf-mdc and it'll work. Now do that level of BS for five different OS you list, its no laughing matter. Also I'm not even sure the Poudriere / pkg solution under freebsd even supports user logins so you might be in for some weirdness.
Some years ago I daydreamed kinda of starting a company that would basically be jenkins/gentoo for the masses... now why burn laptop battery (and thermally burn lap) by compiling locally when you could SaaS send VLM a bit of monthly cash and I'd compile software for you with crazy options in a nice cool data center on a giant fast server for you to download. Some marketing estimates of likely sales volume came back "WTF" so that went no where. Anyone intelligent enough to come up with useful non-default options is smart enough to cut me out of the loop, there's no killer options, the ratio of CPU and disk I'd require per user varies over maybe 6 orders of magnitude but what people are willing to pay doesn't vary much, etc.. Well anyway that's what led me to research how many OS can handle 3rd party repos a couple years ago, which was a fun intellectual exercise although not terribly useful.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Tuesday September 13 2016, @05:22PM
Andromeda was on from 2000-2005. So, bad "noughties" SF reference. The first three seasons weren't that bad though.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday September 13 2016, @02:25PM
Games usually go in Steam \ GOG? Desura's site doesn't work for me right now.
It's a non-commercial license and an email \ contact info for RARLAB. All the other proprietary software vendors are pretty much doing it the same way: You click buy on their web-site and they leave a CGI email form field for you to fill in. Payment wise I'm sure it's all mostly bitcoin wallets and paypal accounts.
Packaging wise, AppImage & Docker seem fairly popular in the desktop \ server room respectively.
Other than that, Good Luck!
compiling...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday September 13 2016, @02:27PM
You are likely to find a larger audience if you can arrange for the task to be accomplished through a Web browser (perhaps with an agent that runs on the user's computer). You could sell subscriptions to your Web site.
If your software could be used on a smartphone or tablet, you are likely to find a larger audience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:55PM
If the tool is sufficiently useful, it might be an option to go Patreon and open source instead.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:58PM
I look forward to seeing what MDC produces - I may not use it, need it, but I applaud the creativity.
And as far as command line tools go, I proposed one a day or so go, to reuse binary code paths . I feel sure someone would slap a gui on it, but I would make it for the command line.
Same for protein tools , gene tools, DNA tools, MD tools (gromacs, namd, amber, lammps ) etc...
So compelling command line, sure no limit. Paying for one...?
I wrote a spotify add blocker in perl if anyone cares and is too cheap to pay...;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:13AM
Not only am I too cheap to pay for Spotify, I'm too cheap to even pay for your ad blocker.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @04:48PM
rent.
Dteronomy 22 28-29, hebrew allows men to rape girl children and keep them.
If you opposed Dteronomy (22, 28-29, hebrew) and you entice others to follow instead woman's democratic law. You MUST be killed on the spot according to Dteronomy.
Not get paied.
>In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10-12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895).[8] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign[9] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16-18 years by 1920.
Here's a project you should try that doesn't beg for money while opposing the liberties given to men by the God.
Info: http://lgdb.org/game/chaosesque-anthology [lgdb.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @12:10PM
MDC, you already have a web host. If your host allows PHP and mysql, you could host your own OpenCart instance. It does pretty much everything you need out of the box, just needs to be configured.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 14 2016, @12:24PM
Please either update or remove the tips, add some concrete examples of things that you've done and some of your prior customers and remove the dead links. Your site will seem a lot more professional as a result.
(I'm not going to complain about the soggy wizards domain. Good programmers are often eccentric, and as long as those eccentricities don't outweigh their competence, no one minds too much)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:43AM
Sorry about that, it's supposed to go to a link list full of companies that are hiring.
I moved the domain to a new registrar then totally spaced setting up the new DNS for the subdomains. Also missing is mike.soggywizards.com.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]