There's no "shareware" per se, but there's plenty of "indie trialware" if you will and it's doing really well. I have long-time friends who live very comfortab

There's no "shareware" per se, but there's plenty of "indie trialware" if you will and it's doing really well. I have long-time friends who live very comfortably from a small herd of shareware products. I also know others who decided to grow at some point and now operate moderately-sized software shops that too are doing well. All of these are on Windows, and nearly all of them are desktop software. One thing to keep in mind that smaller companies tend to put up a larger corporate facades, so the chances are that you've seen plenty of single-man shareware shops without realizing it.