Is it worth paying for an ASP.NET app these days?

I've spent some reasonable time on POP Forums v8 lately, after, what, talking about it for two years? I have a big old feature list that I'd like to tackle, but I've got it pretty close to feature equivalent at least. I've got a build here with lots-o-data to mess around with. It's nothing ground breaking in terms of features, though I've added quite a bit of stuff on the back end in terms of logging and security features. The interim goal was to get it to a place I could manage it, given a couple of years of experience in the world.

So as I get closer to a point where I may release it, I wonder again, is it worth trying to sell? I pondered this about two years ago but never made any solid conclusions. I tend to lean toward the, "give the source away, but license it for actual use on the honor system." A friend of mine even suggested writing up documentation or a companion book to sell, kind of as a case study.

I've thought about changing the name too, to use the CliqueSite® since I have a real trademark there. Still on the fence about that one (and it really doesn't matter if I don't give sell or give it away).

This begs the bigger question though... Is this kind of stuff even worth trying to sell? I know from trying to use stuff that other developers have built that it's almost never a good value. And I'm talking from enterprise CRM packages to special use class libraries. The documentation almost always sucks, the support is worse and it never really suits your real project goals. I don't wanna be that guy. :)

Has anyone put stuff out there and asked for money and had a good experience with it? 

5 Comments

  • Giving it away, yet licensing it would be sort of like Community Server, right?

    It always seemed to me that the money on web apps is to be made hosting the site, not selling the software. Generally it's pretty difficult for the layman to setup a website from a pile of files, and a SQL connection string.

    That's an interesting question. I'm working on something of my own, which basically evolved from a... "I'm not happy with the way others are doing this." I haven't gotten very far, but I had debated giving the code away. I really just want to do this to setup a website idea of mine. But I was debating if I should start hosting at codeplex for the experience.


  • That's totally the world that I came from. People ask me all the time why I didn't use an existing forum app, and it was always because they didn't do what I needed. The logic would be that others would feel similar about mine, which is why I stopped charging for it.

    Although, I'm still blown away by the success of vBulletin. Granted, it seems mostly used by people who have little more than a forum.

  • In my projects I prefer to make very few dependecies on third party components if any. And if we use anything, it should be from big and long living vendors.

    Many people will buy what you sell, however.

  • Creating a product takes twice the time it took to create the stuff to sell. This means: your forum package for example took 1 year, then you have 1 year to polish everything, write docs, write a website to sell it, setup a store, setup support stuff etc. etc. Do not underestimate the amount of work you have to do to get from a piece of software that works to a piece of software that's polished to be a product.

    I've done it a couple of times, it just takes twice the time of writing the software.

    That said, the question then is: should you ask money for the work you've done? As it's a forum system: I wouldn't bother. The market is simply already divided up. People buying a forum system don't care what framework/platform it runs on, they want a forum. You can't compete with marketshare and features and maturity of forums like phpBB and vBulletin.

    I released our forum system / support system as GPL last year ('HnD', which is asp.net based) as a case study/example. So it's free, and even then the # of people downloading it each day is below 100. Ok, we didn't market it but then again, if marketing requires you to get a marketshare, it will cost you alot of money in this already crowded market, so I'm not so sure if this will be a successful product. (sorry, but I'm trying to be realistic here. It's your money, so if I give you advice like "Sure! do it, man!", and you lose money because it was obvious it would get tough, I'd do the wrong thing in this case IMHO).

  • I for one would at the very least be interested to see what you can offer :)

    We're currently working on setting up a community site, based on The BeerHouse. It offers forums, but they suck.

    I pondered on coding more fucntionality myself, or with the help of several peers from the userbase of the TBH book, but since I want somethign out quickly, and the userbase is used to vBulletin, I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place.

    I just downloaded HnD (thanks Frans), and will also see if I can combine vBulleting and integrate it into the existing C# website (the point of the site is mostly to offer a single signin for loads of functionality that is now spread over numerous websites). An extra option would not hurt :)

    Peter

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