Go to http://www.tucows.com/ and look up free software called Spyware Doctor 3.2 for Windows. You can download it free, you along with the 500,000 other consumers who download it every week! OK, now go to http://www.download.com and check on the number of downloads for the AVG AntiVirus Free Edition. This title was downloaded 1,126,408 times last week and similar astounding quantities every week!

Now, reckon about this for a moment. If you had 500,000+ people looking at your product every week do you believe you could reckon of a way to make some money?

Here are a few thoughts how you can make money with shareware: First, you need the rights to a universally needed software program. Look for an application that most everyone on the Internet has a need for. But, there are plenty of niche markets with extremely high demand as well. Research the categories that are in high demand.

2. Research your market to see what the competition is doing. If the market is huge enough you may choose to spend the time and money to improve on the most well loved title out there. Get lots of free publicity with word of mouth advertising by developing a five star shareware program.

The excellent news is that shareware is a digital product. There are no delivery or manufacturing costs once bandwidth issues are handled. It costs you small or nothing to get your title into the hands of millions of users. Consider this an enormous source of free advertising.

With over ten million people having downloaded Spyware Doctor so far you can see that the traffic to a site like www.Download.com is enormous putting their Alexa traffic ranking around 89. Post your shareware to similar shareware sites to have a chance of having your title downloaded a lot.

My research showed tens of thousands of such sites but there are probably more. Just type in free downloads or free software as a search term in Google, Alexa or Yahoo.com . You could not spend enough money to get anywhere close to that level of traffic. So, why bother? Why even have a web site?

Show Me The Money! When I was a bit less informed I questioned my personal computer/Internet guru, Thomas Deedy, how these software developers made any money. His answer opened my eyes.

One of Tom’s favorite ways to monetize shareware is to offer support services. This is the “real” business and the shareware is just the means to feed it. Your technical person collects every possible support issue and puts them into a support database “solution tree”. Then, this tree is the way support staff troubleshoot problems.

Then, they sell support packages at $50 to $150 an hour. The developer installs the distress-shooting menu tree software on the computers of a support staff. He hires a programmer who may be constantly working to refine and improve the software to manage the support room. He provides the support when the distress shooting menu doesn’t have all the answers.

Of course, every time that happens the programmer adds that problem or glitch to the distress shooting menu until it is a rare day indeed when someone questions a question that has never come up before. When a customer encounters a problem he clicks on “help” (from within the software) and finds out that support is happily available for a modest fee by “clicking here”. He pays for support by the minute or by the hour.

Some support services even use 900 numbers and charge per call. Or, they precharge for X number of hours of support. It is like a reserve account and users use it if needed.

An alternative would be to make a detailed installation and use video that shows actual screen shots of how to use the software and has a built-in distress-shooting program. For a complicated and valuable program you could price the video/software combination at $250.00 and bundle it with two free hours of support services.

Companies are more than pleased to pay $250 for a support package like this. The numbers could get very exciting if your shareware was downloaded 250,000 times and only 2% bought support.

Do the math: 5000 orders @ $250 each is $1,250,000 in yucky sales!

The video/support software concept makes it possible to automate your support business. This work can be outsourced to save you time and aggravation.

Then, go to http://www.elance.com or http://www.scriptlance.com or www.Vworker.com and enter your Project Proposal (no charge) to get a pile of bids from experienced programmers who want to work for you. You will be shocked at how reasonably you can get powerful software programs designed and built.

Best of all you own the copyrights and need pay no royalties yet you can turn around and license the use of your software to distribution companies to market under a private mark.

I believe shareware development may be one of the best ways to build a million dollar revenue but you need few technical skills to succeed.

Support is where the huge money is but some simpler software programs don’t really have any support issues; they are that excellent! Developers of simpler software can make money in other ways.

Try it before you buy it shareware puts the software into the hands of the user risk-free. If they like it they can donate or pay an upgrade fee to get a full-functioning version of the shareware. Many such programs install a donate or upgrade button right in the software.

————————————————————————————————————————– ” Please support my efforts to provide users with support and improve this software with a small donation. In return, you’ll receive a link to an extensive tutorial, help files and you’ll be advised when you can download the latest updated version of XYZ software. You’ll receive lifetime updates all for your small contribution of $10 or more.” ————————————————————————————————————————–

You can leave the amount of the donation up to the user but I recommend putting in three contribution levels: A $5 donate button, a $10 donate button and a $25 button that offers bonus software valued at hundreds of dollars at that level.

Every time a user donates or buys the upgrade option you collect his name and email address. Ultimately, building a huge opt-in list has the most value!

When you are ready to get started with your own shareware project look for a broad niche that has a real need. Research the competition and make your shareware better with more power and features.

Other ways to make money with shareware:

1. You’ll want to make a full version and a basic version from the start. Deliver the full version but make it function with an unlock code. Then, when users pay for the upgrade just send them the unlock code.

2. Build an email list by offering something to your customers like an e-zine with insider user tips. Or, simply bribe them by offering them another of your software programs free when they register their copy of XYZ software that they just downloaded. As I said, above, owning a massive opt-in email list can be worth a fortune.

3. I made lesson authoring software to make free lessons. You could download it free. But, I also made an upgrade version that permitted the teacher to make Super Lessons that could be sold on my site. So, I make money from people purchasing the Professional Lesson Authoring Software for $1995 and from sale of the Super Lessons. Of course I split the revenue for the Super Lessons with the authors of these lessons. See www.Tutorbug.com

Don’t hesitate to tackle your first shareware project. Use professional coders and be innovative and you’ll soon see that there are many ways to make a small fortune with shareware.

Before you spend your hard eanred money making killer software titles consider becoming a shareware posting agent to earn a fee on every paid upgrade. Click on shareware posting agent for complete details. This article, How To Make A Small Fortune Giving Away Software! is available for free reprint.

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