One of the most effective thing you can do as a shareware author is to submit your programs to shareware download sites on a regular basis. 

Each time you submit your program, it puts it on the top of that site's "Most Recent" list, which makes it instantly visible to visitors to that site. Once your program has been submitted, be sure to go back and resubmit it each time you update your shareware program. 

Here's a list of the top 20 download sites - be sure your programs are at least listed on all of these sites (even though some of them require reqistration, these sites are so popular that it's worth your time to register with them - despite what I said in my previous rant).

Don't stop there though.  Here's a list of 684 download sites, with links to their submission pages.

And be sure you're using a PAD file, since almost all of these sites require a PAD file.  Once you've copied the url to your pad file to your clipboard, then it takes only a few seconds to paste it into the PAD file submission form on each download site.

Do you have shareware to sell, but haven't created a website of your own?

Want to start your own software download site, or create a blog or forum to help your users learn more about your software?

I normally keep advertisements on this web site in the sidebar, or displayed below individual articles. However, every once in a while a deal comes along that's worth risking a blatant plug - especially when it benefits you so much.

Dotster is offering 5 free domains with every Hosting Package! (Just enter Coupon Code "5FORFREE"during checkout). That means you can get the .com, .net, and .org domain names of your choice all in one shot for no extra cost. Not even HostMonster with its unlimited add-on domains can beat this - they normally charge $10 per domain for the registration.

If you're a shareware affiliate or run a software download site, PLEASE don't require authors to create an account in order to submit software to your site (well, unless you like the thought of us immediately sulking off to other more author-friendly sites).

It takes authors a lot of time to find software sites to submit their software, and we just don't have time to wade through an account registration form just to get our software listed on your site. 

We're doing you a favor after all - we're giving you free content for your site! You probably even make money from Google ads on your site, thanks again to the free content that our program descriptions provide you. The least you could do is make it easy for us to submit to your site!

Fortunately the PAD file format helps us put all of our program information in a single file, which makes submitting our program as easy as entering the url in your submission form, and maybe selecting an appropriate category from a drop down list (although categories are defined in the pad file too).  But we have literally hundreds of sites to submit to.

First quarter shareware sales for PC iMail and Flow Pro were very encouraging, with the most influential factor being three site license purchased in February and March at $299.99 each.

As you can see from the ups and downs of each product, it really helps to have two products to balance out the trends and keep profits rolling in.

Jan 2007:

I recently did an internal application deployment to about a dozen users in our IT department, and the application required .NET 2.0.  I found that only about 20% of the users had the framework installed on their Windows XP systems, and we had to go out and download .NET for the others.

That experience was a real eye opener, because I thought a much higher percentage would have it installed.  We decided to include a check for the framework in our installation package, and I built a script to automatically download it if it wasn't already installed.

Low user intervention was a key goal, and I suspect that will be the case for most shareware applications.  If the user has to jump through a lot of hoops/steps, they'll most likely give up.

I used InnoSetup for the installer, which is free yet very powerful and certainly a production-quality installer.  Here's the script I used that automates the download and installation of the .NET 2.0 Framework prior to installing the application. If .NET is not installed on the target computer, then it goes out and downloads it, showing a progress meter along the way. This script code would be inside a file with a .iss extension (e.g. installer.iss):

[_ISTool]
EnableISX=true

[Files]
Source: C:\Program Files\ISTool\isxdl.dll; Flags: dontcopy
Source: C:\Projects\YourProject\Setup\YourApplication.exe;

Wondering whether you should classify your program as shareware, trialware, or even "free to try"?

Results were recently published by the Software Industry Professionals, and the winner by a landslide is the familiar "Shareware" classification. 

Here's their article titled "What's More Popular: classifying software as 'free to try' vs. shareware", which evaluated 30,000 software titles, and validated them with a Google search test that indicated about 61 million shareware classifications vs only 4 million 'free to try'.

So if you're using the shareware classification, you're on the right track.  If not, you might want to consider switching over to something that most people recognize and are familiar with.

Currently I only display a nag screen in my trial versions each time the program starts.  I didn't want to be intrusive, and wanted to give the user plenty of freedom to use the program without being annoyed by a nag screen.

I think I've been missing out on sales with this approach, because I notice that numerous other major shareware programs - high converting ones - use nag screens frequently throughout their programs. 

How did I notice?  I started reviewing some of them for my software download site at http://www.prosoftapps.com and received a registration reminder on program start, after most major program operations, and again on program close. 

I actually wasn't annoyed either... in fact, I clicked on the order button on several of them, and found deals on the order page that almost made me want to make a purchase (the only reason I didn't is because the authors had already given me a registration key at my request, in return for doing a review).

Last week I placed a few Google ads on the product landing pages for both PC iMail and Flow Pro.  These pages each get between 20 - 100 visitors a day, and I was hoping to capitalize on that traffic beyond just shareware downloads/registrations.

Since then I've made money every day on the Google ads - anywhere from 25 cents to over $2.00 a day.  I haven't noticed any drop in shareware registrations either, and it only took a few minutes to place these ads.  I'd say it was a wise move so far.

It's very easy to sign up with Google Adsense and they give you all the HTML you'll need for adding their ads to your web pages. 

Over the past few months I've started to see a pattern in the support emails I'm receiving.  A similar set of configuration-related issues are popping up and I've created a template that I can use to save time replying to these users.

The issues have been purely configuration related (setting up an email account, configuring it to use Secure Password Authentication, etc), but I suspect that the majority of users who are evaluating PC iMail will not take time to send in an email when they get an error.  This is probably the case for your program as well, and we're losing potential customers right and left.

So I'm going to add in some artificial intelligence into my error handling routines.  When the program encounters a configuration-related error, I'm going to ask the user if they'd like to configure their email account for Secure Password Authentication, or with a particular mail port, or with whatever the solution needs to be.

If you're at the point where your software sales have leveled out despite a rich set of features and upgrades, it's time to start looking at your promotional efforts.

Better yet, start working on your promotional campaign now, and replace some of your development efforts with a strong focus on marketing.

You can certainly promote your program using PPC advertising (and I recommend that you do this), but don't forget the value of growing organic traffic to your product web site... which will also improve sales.

One effective and popular way to build organic traffic is to post to forums with a link in your signature. Every time your post is viewed or replied to, your link is visible for the reader to click.

The first step to getting more search engine traffic is getting your site listed in search engines. The big three search engines – Google, Yahoo! and MSN – attract the most search traffic, but listings in a wide range of search engines help you tap into search niches and ensure comprehensive search engine visibility.

I recently found a free search engine submission service called iNeedHits. I decided to give them a try to see if they really were "free".

I was very pleased. There was no "catch" and they provided a convenient single form submit process that allowed me to enter information about this site in one place.

True to their word, iNeedHits provided me with links to 20 search engines, and each link submitted the information I had provided in the first step free of charge.

One way to significantly boost your revenue is to offer a site license for your shareware program. A site license gives an unlimited number of users at a particular company the right to use your program without any additional cost.

I offer site licenses for both of my shareware applications, and I just received an order yesterday for a PC iMail site license. In one fell swoop, I earned 75% of my regular monthly income – and it’s only the first day of the month!

Here's the site license sales message I used, and here's a link to the PC iMail order form where you can see it in action. Feel free to use this on your order form or tweak it to meet your needs.

Looking to lower your per-person licensing cost? Maximize your savings with the site license option below, and pay a fixed rate for an unlimited number of users at your location.

If you're just starting out with shareware and are wondering if it's worth taking out a business loan for start up expenses, hold on to your money. There are numerous resource available to you as a shareware developer, and you can get started with very little investment aside from your personal time.

Let's say you'd like to build a shareware application in C#.NET or VB.NET, set up a website, and advertise your completed application online.

You can get Visual Studio Express for free (I built PC iMail with it, and it's just as good as Visual Studio Professional but doesn't have the setup wizard and some other templates that you really don't need). You can also use the free InnoSetup for your setup program, which is also free.

Web hosting space is less than a hundred bucks for a year's worth of hosting (that's a Visa purchase not a business loan), and advertising can be handled initially by posting to software upload sites instead of spending money on Google Adwords or the like.

Finished your new shareware application and uploaded it to your dazzling new website, but not getting much traffic yet? Already submitted your site to numerous search engines and download sites, but still not getting results?

It can take weeks or months for search engines to pick up your web pages, and even then you'll be competing for page ranking with thousands of other web pages. Fortunately there's a way to almost immediately start generating traffic to your website using Pay Per Click advertising.

Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is where you pay Google, MSN, or Yahoo for prominent inclusion in their search engines. People click on your text ads and are taken directly to your website. You only pay when they click on your ads, and you determine exactly how much money you're willing to pay per click.

PPC advertising helps ensure that people will see your site in the top right-hand section of the search results when they search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.

You also end up getting double the traffic generated by clicks on your ads (sometimes even more), because many people simply enter your web page url directly into the browser. Since they didn't click your ad, you aren't charged for the visit.

The three major PPC players are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft Adcenter. I recommend starting out with Yahoo because you can get a $25 credit applied to your account, which gives you some money to start advertising with right away.

Shareware applications will sell better with a professional looking web site and a domain name that represents your company or product. You'll only need to spend about $5 a month for professional web hosting, and your web hosting fees will be tax-deductible as a marketing expense.

You'll first need to sign up with an Web Hosting Service to host your web pages. Here are a few top-rated web hosts that I recommend you take a look at, and a comparison of their features:

ISP	Free Domain Forever	Monthly Bandwidth	Storage	Databases	cPanel	Free Add-on Domains	Monthly Price
Dotster	No	250 GB	5 GB	1 MySQL	Yes	No	$5.25
HostMonster	Yes	999 GB	50 GB	100 MySQL, 100 PostgreSQL	Yes	UNLIMITED	$5.95
Lunarpages	Yes	800 GB	35 GB	UNLIMITED MySQL	Yes	10	$6.95
Blue Host	Yes	750 GB	30 GB	50 MySQL, 50 PostgreSQL	Yes	5	$6.95
Hostgator	Yes	50 GB	3.5 GB	Unlimited MySQL	Yes	20	$6.95