Briant Member Posts: 742 From: Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada Registered: 01-20-2001 |
Hi, I'm developing a shareware registration tool for myself to keep track of registered users, and generate registration codes for my products. Is any other developers interested in a tool like this? I'm trying to gauge interest so I know if I should develop it as a personal tool or as a marketable tool. Current features: Thanks, ------------------ [This message has been edited by Briant (edited February 25, 2002).] |
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Ascent Member Posts: 64 From: Registered: 01-20-2001 |
That sounds pretty interesting. I'm starting to get into shareware and I might buy something like that -- it would have to be reasonably priced and full of features, otherwise I'd just write something myself. :-) But if I saw it had a lot of neat stuff and thought the $10 or $20 or whatever was worth less than the time it would take for me to write it, I may buy it. Couple of suggestions: If you're concerned about pirates (and not just keeping the honest people honest, as the saying goes) then putting your protection scheme into a DLL is absolutely the worst thing you can possibly do. If you ever read any literature from crackers about how developers can better protect their software, that's the first rule that typically bears the most emphasis. Sounds like you're working on something pretty promising, though. And I think even if you don't get much response, if you create something for yourself and show it to some people, you may get some interest later and it may become a product. I think a lot of software/shareware happens that way -- someone has a need, and because they're a programmer they can create something to fill that need, and as they tell their friends about it, other people find they have the same need and would like it filled. Hmmm... hey Krylar, how about a Shareware forum if there are enough people here doing Shareware to participate in it?? -Ascent |
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Briant Member Posts: 742 From: Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada Registered: 01-20-2001 |
Hey Ascent, > I'd recommend including some ways that people can keep up with their marketing of the software. I'm interested in this too, but I don't know how to incorporate this into the tool. Any suggestions? I do this a little already with my shareware screen saver: on the page a purchaser goes to, to order registration, there is a field they can fill in to tell me where they heard of the saver, and this info get's emailed to me when they make a payment. Not may people fill in that field though. > putting your protection scheme into a DLL is absolutely the worst thing you can possibly do. For the actual product, I totally agree. I need a way for the tool to handle custom registration-code generators, so I thought the author could just whip up a quick .dll for each product *for use with the tool only* - not to distribute. I think this should be OK. I think the only other option would be to provide some source (or .libs) for the tool and have the author link in their own registation source or libs: more complicated and unnecessary I think. I'll think about it some more, and any ideas you have would be great. Another feature I'm thinking of adding, but is going to be quite a bit more work, is an email parser to populate the user database. Most online registation services send the author a pre-defined email when a purchase is made. It would be cool if the tool could just eat these emails and keep the user database up-to-date automatically instead of the author manually copy/pasting all the info. I like the idea of a shareware forum. Marketing, registration schemes, copy protection, limited versions, etc. are all great topics that those who are interested could discuss. Brian ------------------ |
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Ascent Member Posts: 64 From: Registered: 01-20-2001 |
quote: To give you an idea of what I've got in mind is there's an affiliate program I'm signed up with, and it gives you a few options. You can bring a user to a text page, or show them a banner. If you show them a banner, it keeps up with how many banner shows there are and how many banner clicks there are. I would take this a step further and make several banners (or intro pages) and find out how many people actually clicked on the banner or on the "More Info" button beyond that one page and that would give me an idea of how well each one was doing, and if I gave banners and such different codes (A1 = banner A on Google, A2 = banner A on CCN, etc) I would see where my best results are coming from rather than relying on the user, because they've probably been to your site a bunch and by the time they buy, they don't really remember.
quote: Gotcha -- yeah, a DLL would work fine. I've actually had a lot of success using the wizardry of Excel to come up with an infinite number of reg codes, and you could use one spreadsheet to keep up with them all. If you wanted to include that you could both password-protect your code, and give them some options and Option A would produce different kinds of codes than Option B, etc, so it wouldn't just be a keygen for someone else.
quote: You'd be surprised how easy it is, really. I use Access or VB to scan my outlook inbox and pick out certain Subjects, and then I process the email (meaning, I read all that data into a database) and then change the email subject (from "Internet Form Reply" to "Processed Internet Form Reply") and then I'm done. The two implementations I've got now are both parts of commercial projects so I can't really release the code, but I could probably whip up a tutorial on the subject. Of course, all this assumes you're using Outlook as your email client (I think Outlook Express would work) and some form of Microsoft language. I've done some similar code with Visual C++ and while I'm no Visual C++ guru by any stretch of the imagination, it's significantly more difficult than doing the same thing in VB or Access. (But, from my experience, everything is
quote: How about it admins?? Course, if no one but the two of us are doing/interested in shareware, I guess we can just stick on this thread or take it to email. -Ascent |
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Briant Member Posts: 742 From: Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada Registered: 01-20-2001 |
Hi Ascent, I'm really interested in what you're saying about the email reader/parser. I'm a straight C/C++ kind-o-guy, and my app right now is just a simple Windows app written with MFC, but I think I could fudge my way through VB if required. More details (tutorial!) would be great. I was also thinking of dragging-and-dropping or importing-from-file email messages into the tool for parsing, so then almost any email client could be used. Another possibility is to work together on this... Brian ------------------ |
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Briant Member Posts: 742 From: Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada Registered: 01-20-2001 |
Eek, I just found a tool that does everything I was planning, and much more. It looks pretty awesoe. A bit pricey though, so I might still develop mine and catch the buyers who aren't willing to spend that much: http://www.lobstersoft.com/sak/index.html ------------------ |
Krylar Administrator Posts: 502 From: MD, USA Registered: 03-05-2001 |
I'm interested! I looked at the other package that you linked to. Looks nice, but I don't see myself spending $129 on it -Krylar ------------------ |
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Ascent Member Posts: 64 From: Registered: 01-20-2001 |
I'm starting to believe more and more that even though there might be other programs that do the same thing as what you had in mind, you should still seriously consider creating it. I think a lot of times people don't know about something that's out there, or don't need all the features or complexity or want to pay that much. How do you get around that? Well, take your product to those people, make it simple and easier to use and only include half the features for half the price. That looks like an all-encompassing program, and I think it'd be worth the $129 because I know how long it would take me to create all that stuff. I say, go for it. -Ascent [This message has been edited by ascent (edited February 27, 2002).] |
Something like this would be fairly easy to implement in PHP, I think.
