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> Why is it that some shareware developers seem to be hugely successful in financial terms Ignoring, of course, the huge part luck plays in such things. Luck
by dspillett 5y ago
> Why is it that some shareware developers seem to be hugely successful in financial terms
Ignoring, of course, the huge part luck plays in such things.
Luck does get a mention, though only as a whiney excuse that some use which is somewhat unfair I feel.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -- Jean-Luc Picard
- jonas21 5y agoLuck can simultaneously play a huge role and be relatively unimportant. On any given product, you can do most things wrong and maybe 1% of the time you'll get lucky and succeed -- or you can do most things right and succeed maybe 30% of the time (I'm just making these numbers up, but they seem in the right ballpark based on my experience). In a single instance, you're more likely than not to fail regardless of what you do, and both groups could chalk that up to "bad luck". But among the ones that have succeeded, you'll find that there are 30x more in the latter group than the former.
- majormajor 5y agoUsing your same numbers: if you're one of the ones that succeeded, it's important to remember that 70% of your success was still chance. If you compare yourself to someone else who isn't succeeding, they could still very well just be a victim of that more-than-two-thirds-chance they're going to fail. So if you just tell them "here's what I did differently, that's why you're failing" you're doing them a disservice. I think that makes it relatively important, since the world is full of successful people who want to tell other people that one little secret that'll turn their life around.
- pc86 5y agoI don't think your math is right.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 5y agoAs someone who was in the Association of Shareware Professions and had a nice little (but hardly hugely successful) side shareware business--which was probably more than the vast majority had--there were some big success stories. PC-Write, PKZIP (though that's a sad story), maybe LIST, probably some games, probably PC-Talk... But you probably get below day job engineering salaries even for the time fairly quickly.