If you have created a nifty little custom Flex component, or AIR app, and you want to share it then you need to decide if you want to try and make some money off of it or just give it away. There are pros and cons to each which I’ll talk about.
If you charge just $1 for your component/app then you will get a fraction of the users you could have gotten had you given it away. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want money or recognition.” If you already have an abundance of either then perhaps you should go for the other. Suppose you’re a rock star Flex developer living in San Francisco and working remotely for a company based in Denver – you know who you are. You have climbed to the top of the recognition latter so why not make a few bucks off your latest work?
On the other hand if know one knows who you are then releasing a kickass component or app free to the public can get you some recognition. That can turn into more friends on Facebook, more followers on Twitter and that can in turn lead to better job opportunities. So giving away your component/app can indirectly lead to more money as well.
Personally I had to make this decision a few years ago with a project of mine called videoMaru. I decided to give it away and it soon caught the eye of Collis at FlashDen.net. Even though FlashDen.net is about selling Flash components Collis featured videoMaru in many places on his site so that visitors would know all about it. About a year and a half later the recognition I had gained from videoMaru allowed me to quit my day job and become a fulltime freelance developer – something I’m very happy with. There is no doubt that it would have been much harder to make that transition had it not been for the recognition I received from videoMaru.
What are your thoughts and/or experiences on this topic?
I was just going through these thoughts with my release/launch of TweepJob. It really came down to the purpose of the application and that was to bring job seekers and employers together. Charging a fee to do so seemed counter-intuitive. I thought about the Monster model where I could charge a fee to employers to post jobs, but gaining acceptance took priority over monitizing in that way. Charging for job seekers was never an option. I talked with my wife about it and we identified the gratification factor that we, as developers/designers, experience when someone actually uses our work. This in and of itself is a form of compensation – at least to me. So the final decision was to give it away and accept donations. Try to build value, avoid ads on the site, if possible (contingent upon donations), maybe through recognition we'll find support through investment – who knows. Its an organic thing when approached this way, bending like a reed in the wind :-)
@Doug, never underestimate the gratification factor. videoMaru made it through two additional releases because users kept emailing me with, "videoMaru is the best thing since sliced bread, and oh by the way can you add this feature."
I hope you have lots of success with TweepJob.com. Projects such as that take a lot of dedication with no guaranteed return on investment of your time. When I start on something like that I ask myself, "Am I willing to put in all the work it's going to take to make this project work even if no one ever uses it and it never makes a dime?" If the answer is yes then I trudge on. Some projects are worth the effort just for the sake of the effort. For example I put in a great deal of work on RunPee.com and it hasn't returned much of anything. But it was worth doing because I learned so much from the effort. I'd do it again without hesitation.
In the Flex community, I don't think it's worth it to try and charge for a component.
1) the community of potential purchasees is rather small
2) once you start charging, you'll need to support it, beginning a vaccuum of support time.
3) people using open source products tend not to be in the mind-set of paying for much.
I have other thoughts, but no time at the moment.
@todd, I disagree on a few points. Take something as simple as a Flex button that can handle multiple lines of text. Fortunately the flexlib library has one – from Doug McCune. But if it didn't I would gladly pay a few bucks for that because it would save lots of time in developing my own.
Offering support doesn't come free. I've already seen a few components at FlexDen.net that offer to support their components for just $20. That's a bargan. If someone creates a much more complex component that the end user might need to tweak or skin in some way then that's just bonus money coming in.
I agree that there are a lot of people who are of the mindset that they don't want to pay for components and that there is a lot in the open source community to grab from. But think about all the people who paid for the Flex Data components from Adobe. That suite of components cost a few hundred dollars and I'll bet that many of the Flex devs out there had no problem paying that king of money for components of that nature.
I guess we'll find out soon. The market is a fair and impartial judge.
I pretty much at this stage at the mo with Efflex.
The current public build is broken, and I have a private build with all of the known bugs addressed, but no-one else has stepped forward to help out, so I wondering do I sell it, or give it away, or just keep it to myslef.
@Tink, Why don't you try and sell it? If it doesn't work out then you can always remove it from the site and give it away.
I know it's very frustrating to have a cool project that benifits the community and no one is willing to help out. Even something as amazing as PaperVision3D only has a handful of people actively working on it.
@Todd,
To address your 3 points:
1) The community is small right now (less than 200K developers last time I heard numbers) but, the Flex ecosystem it is still seeing growth despite the economy. I decided to create Flextras with the intent of growing with the community. I'm sure the market will be much larger in 5 years.
2) Support is something we considered from the start. Yes, we want to support our component. Yes, it is a time and cost, but something we are happy to offer to customers and prospects.
3) I believe that if I can provide value to a business, that business will be willing to pay for that value. And buying one of our Flex components–if you need that component–will be a lot cheaper than building it from scratch.
Adobe has stated that "more"–I thought the number was four–major component vendors will enter the market before the end of the year. iLog is already there, as is Drumbeat Insight and Teoti Graphix. I'm not the only one who thinks I can make money in Flex Components by providing value to Flex Developers.
So, to everyone reading this, how can I help you today?
"Why don't you try and sell it? If it doesn't work out then you can always remove it from the site and give it away."
Not sure how the people who bought it would feel if I suddenly gave it away. Is that cool to do?
@Tink, that is an excelent point. And probably a good candidate for a poll question here on polyGeek.com.