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My PHP scripts don't sell, I end up giving them for free, what's the point anyway?

Discussion in 'General Business' started by nekowai, Nov 22, 2018.

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  1. #1
    Yeah, same old story.
    Your scripts don't sell, you end up giving them for free, which also doesn't generate any money because people don't care about giving donations.
    So is there a point in developing web scripts to start with?
     
    nekowai, Nov 22, 2018 IP
  2. Mehta

    Mehta Active Member

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    #2
    What kind of scripts are they? As in, what do they precisely do?

    Also, how have you tried to market and sell them so far?
     
    Mehta, Nov 22, 2018 IP
  3. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #3
    You can't earn from using them as proof of your skills
    or supporting and extending them?
     
    sarahk, Nov 22, 2018 IP
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  4. c4cyber

    c4cyber Well-Known Member

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    #4
    Market is saturated with web developers right now. I guess you should observe what is selling in the market right now and how others are selling their scripts. Creating a piece of software is one thing and selling it another. You can try affiliate as well. They are expert and know how to market and sell stuff.
     
    c4cyber, Nov 23, 2018 IP
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  5. Mehta

    Mehta Active Member

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    #5
    If you are sure that you are ending up giving away your hard work for free, consider making it open source. There are different ways to make money from open source projects. (Such as providing support and extending them, as Sarahk mentioned)

    Indeed. The tougher part is not the market being saturated by web developers themselves but by scripts who might be doing similar things as your scripts do, in a better way. As far as selling is concerned, don't forget that Bill Gates bought the code for DOS for a very tiny amount compared to what he earned by licensing it to others. The rest is history.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 24, 2018
    Mehta, Nov 23, 2018 IP
  6. nekowai

    nekowai Well-Known Member

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    #6
    I did plenty of open source, nobody ever asked for any support :p
     
    nekowai, Nov 23, 2018 IP
  7. NetStar

    NetStar Notable Member

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    #7
    That is not true. Software absolutely sells. But if your software is poorly written, not needed, or available in many forms in many places then you will struggle to sell.

    If you look at forum software like vbulletin, Xenforo, and UBB they sell. Heck..they are companies. The reason they do well is they because they are well designed and offer all of the features a web site would need to start an interactive forum. However, there are tons of forum scripts that are poorly designed and barely have 10% of the features that those systems have... I don't even need to tell you why they don't do well.

    I remember back in the Perl days I use to have over 10 CGI scripts I would sell online. I was for the most part unsuccessful with receiving a return on my time... the reason for this was because noone needed or wanted to pay for a counter, basic forum, mail script, etc. I had one script that sold pretty well. It was an e-card service and it was dead easy to install and had a ton of features. I launched it around the time eCards were popular. This was also the script that I devoted most of my time to. If I were to ever write scripts to sell I probably would come up with an idea that solves a problem and is in demand. I would then spend the time to make it better than the competition then sell it for less. I wouldn't bother writing a dozen stupid scripts...
     
    NetStar, Nov 23, 2018 IP
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  8. nekowai

    nekowai Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
    nekowai, Nov 24, 2018 IP
  9. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #9
    I haven't looked at the quality of your work, just taking those 3 projects at face value:
    1. Do people still want chat rooms on their websites rather than social media? I can't think of a single site I've visited recently that has had one. Chat with a site rep, yes, but not as a community thing.
    2. Competing with Google Analytics? that's a mighty big ask. Your github page needs to sell the benefits of your stats over GA. I contributed to an open source stats tool but we threw in the towel 10 or 15 years ago.
    3. If I'm coding my site from scratch and not using WP/Joomla/Drupal/etc then I can probably code up my own contact form more quickly than I can download yours and set it up.
    As with any of the business ideas discussed here there are some key rules when deciding how to spend your time:
    • what do people need?
    • how do I reach them?
    • how do I show them that my solution is "better"?
    I'd be looking at the "hot" players and coding something for them. Right now that would be:
    • WP/Joomla/Drupal plugins and themes
    • JQuery plugins
    • cocoapods
    • integration tools to let Site A talk to Site B
    Back in the early days of the web you could write an RSS parser, or stats tool, etc and have something different and noteworthy. Nowadays it's really hard to stand apart from the big open source projects and code something single-handedly. You really need to think critically about how you spend your time and what people are actually downloading (maybe start with https://github.com/trending/php?since=daily). It's a bit of a shame, really, that the days of one person making a significant difference are over but it doesn't mean you can't still have a wee slice of the action.
     
    sarahk, Nov 24, 2018 IP
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