You are familiar with shareware, who isn’t? But, did you know that shareware titles may be downloaded over a million times a week? For example, last time I checked on www.tucows.com a title called Spyware Doctor 3.2 was downloaded around half a million times every week. A free shareware antivirus program called AVG AntiVirus Free Edition was being downloaded well over a million times a week from www.Download.com alone!
Now, think about this for a moment. If you had 500,000+ people looking at your product every week do you believe you could think of a way to make some money?
What do shareware developers know that most people don’t? Here are some ideas: 1. To achieve big download numbers try to develop an application that has mass market appeal. However, even niche market applications can do very well.
2. Research your market to see what the competition is doing. If the market is big enough you may decide to spend the time and money to improve on the most popular title out there. Get lots of free publicity with word of mouth advertising by developing a five star shareware program.