Here’s a funny piece of trivia for you MacUser readers: way, way back when (1993, I believe), I was ever-so-briefly a Mac shareware author. Ever so briefly. I wrote a little program in BASIC to—you know, I don’t want to talk about it. It was useless. We’ll let it go at that.
Anyways, the most surprising thing about my abortive career in Mac programming was that I actually made some money. Not much, but probably close to $20, sent in envelopes to my house (in bills…and coins). Enough that I was surprised, gratified, and, most importantly, could afford some comic books. But being a Mac shareware author isn’t all fun and games, as I soon learned. And so I left the arena, never to return.
Still, I was interested to see that Rogue Amoeba (a shareware vendor whose products, unlike mine, are decidedly useful) had posted its conversion rates, i.e. what percentage of people who downloaded their software went on to buy it. As an isolated set of data it was worth a “hm,” but they extended the challenge to the rest of the Mac community, many of whom responded in kind. You can also check out numbers for Unsanity, The Little App Factory, Gaucho Software, Zengobi, Flying Meat, and Delicious Monster. It seems like 5% or so is a pretty solid conversion rate. While they’re not buying any yachts, at least they’re not going out of business left and right. Which is good, because the Mac shareware community is full of cool people.
That’s robably why, in the end, I would never have survived in it. Alas, it seems I was destined to man the lonely watchtower of Mac blogging until the very end of my days.
[via Infinite Loop]
