[Wolves] Value of software package - php/mysql

[Peter Cannon]

On 19/07/12 20:41, Andy Jewell wrote:


> Maybe it would be worth providing it as a service with a menu of prices for extras?
> 
> Perhaps £x per month + £y per hour for mods/changes. That's the way my boss sells our helpdesk - bods plus request-tracker hosting - if they ask for extra config or scrips, they pay by the hour. Quarterly review allows them to re-evaluate the cost effectiveness and tweak their commitment going forward...

You definitely want to be charging for updates, this is your recurring revenue stream. It depends of your moralistic attitude, you may want to charge a support fee which not only includes those updates but also your skills in modifying or improving the product. This is probably the best solution for you, the downside to support contracts is the customer in 90% of cases will (May) run you ragged so you may need to build in a limit to the amount of times they can log a problem as I guarantee 70% of the fault calls will have nothing to do with your product.

If it was me (Because I'm a capitalist pig) I would charge for the updates and offer development work (Support is an extremely dangerous word) as an extra chargeable service ideally on an hourly basis. As for the actual product, again if it was me I would try and charge a one off fee for it. I'm a salesman bite me. :-)

As you all know there is nothing stopping you selling GPL software there's nothing stopping you selling GPL updates it's how you charge that is important, if the updates are GPL then you need to make the source available and a customer could rightly ask for that and *not* have to pay you so may need to think carefully about the license before you start thinking about payment structures if you're thinking in terms of protecting your product.

Bundling your updates in with a [support] package will be attractive to your customers so maybe that's your answer. :-)