http://chrismoyer.ulitzer.com/ Latest News from Chris Moyer en Copyright 2012 Ulitzer.com Ulitzer.com Thu, 17 May 2012 18:28:28 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss 360 http://chrismoyer.ulitzer.com/node/1913827 Developing your Software as a Service (SaaS) takes you away from the dark ages of programming and into the new age in which copyright protection, DMA, and pirating don’t exist. In the current age of computing, people don’t expect to pay for software but instead prefer to pay for the support and other services that come with it. When was the last time anyone paid for a web browser? With the advent of Open Source applications, the majority of paid software is moving to hosted systems which rely less on the users’ physical machines. This means you don’t need to support more hardware and other software that may conflict with your software, for example, permissions, firewalls, and antivirus software. Instead of developing a simple desktop application that you need to defend and protect against pirating and cloning, you can develop your software as a service; releasing updates and new content seamlessly while charging your users on a monthly basis. With this method, you can charge your customers a small monthly fee instead of making them pay a large amount for the program upfront, and you can make more money in the long run. For example, many people pirate Microsoft Office instead of shelling out $300 upfront for a legal copy, whereas if it were offered software online in a format such as Google Docs, those same people might gladly pay $12.50 a month for the service. Not only do they get a web-based version that they can use on any computer, but everything they save is stored online and backed up. After two years of that user paying for your service, you’ve made as much money from that client as the desktop version, plus you’re ensuring that they’ll stay with you as long as they want to have access to those documents. However, if your users use the software for a month and decide they don’t like it, they don’t need to continue the subscription, and they have lost only a small amount of money. If you offer a trial-based subscription, users can test your software at no cost, which means they’re more likely to sign up.<p><a href="http://chrismoyer.ulitzer.com/node/1913827" target="_blank">read more</a></p> Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EDT http://chrismoyer.ulitzer.com/node/1913827 http://chrismoyer.ulitzer.com/node/1913827#feedback