inluminent

A friend of mine recently wrote me an email containing this snippet:

I’ve been considering writing some OS X software as a secondary source of revenue. Not sure what to expect from the OS X shareware market in terms of actual income. I’d like to give certain stuff away for free but also get something to help pay bills. A friend of mine was considering writing something with me. I’m going to be heading to WWDC so maybe that will provide some inspiration.

To which I offered this advice:

The Mac OS X Shareware market is a good one to be in, in my opinion, as long as you’re creating a product that has a demand, and are open about the development process and progress, and are creating a product that people are asking for.

I’d point you two two developers that I think are new shareware developers that are doing it right: Ranchero and Unsanity

Both are creating products that people want, and enjoy using, and are being very open about the whole process (by blogging consistently about their products and their trials and tribulations).

They’ve created a community around their products that feeds their innovation and supports those developers by giving feedback and asking for features constantly (as well as paying for the software I hope). That’s a huge part of building a company that’s sustainable (the community creation piece — that’s what’s kept Apple alive for so long).

I’d recommend you talk to Brent and Slava about their experiences and from those conversations, start looking for your inspiration for that great new OS X software application.

Now, please realize that I’m completely outside the Mac market after leaving it 2 years ago this past March. The Mac market however is still one of my passions. It’s always been a fun market to be in, because it’s the underdog market, and because the quality of applications and hardware was always so much better than the alternatives.

I’d encourage anyone looking at entering the shareware field to read this series of OS X Developer articles from O’Reilly, and that they talk to their potential peers before entering the shareware field full time. As a hobbyist, its easy to love doing something that you end up hating, for all the wrong reasons, if you try to make a business out of it. Trust me, been there, done that.