How do you sell a program to a company??? Is it possible???

[JohnDoe13579]

How could I sell a program and its rights of sale to a corporation? Is this possible? How good does my program have to be? What corporations would buy these rights?

[Wokawidget]

This is extremely difficult.
Your program has to be really good as otherwise the company would buy a MS product, or something similar, for about £50.

I feel you would have to be very advanced at VB to start marketting your own software. How the hell do you cold call a company and try and sell them software? If someone called me at work I would just hang up.

How long have you been doing VB?

Remember there are hundreds of free programs on the web that people can download...

Woka

[BodwadUK]

is it an application that you could distribute as shareware????

[TomGibbons]

This is also the General VB Coding Questions forum. Your question would more more suited to the General Developer Forum.

[wossname]

Originally posted by TomGibbons
This is also the General VB Coding Questions forum. Your question would more more suited to the General Developer Forum.

Lighten up dude, its Christmas.



Hypothetically...
What about if you sold the source code to them so they could compile it themselves? They'd probably pay a lot more because they'd be able to adapt it if needed.

[Wokawidget]

In that case you would have to be a **** hot developer...
As if they saw ya source and realised it was crap, which most is, then they will not buy it

Some pro apps, that get sold for a couple of thousands of pounds, are n-teir apps.
For an extra £500 you get the source code for the user interface, so you can make it look how you want. You do not get source code for the server objects...which is a good way to do it.

Woka

[Madboy]

I know my programs cant be made profitable "yet", but for now they will all remain Freeware, at most registration which is free. I intend to sell products at a later date, when im advanced/guru. Which after i might learn C++

[VBGuy]

Actually, its not as hard as you guys think (at least in my experience). I have worked on several products over the years that were done 99% in VB and sold comercially. Keep in mind that they were not the kind of apps that you see shrink wraped at Best Buy but rather software for specific industries that did very specific things.

Im not talking about phone/address books, personal organizer types of apps but 100,000-200,000 line data analysis tools. The last product for example managed the work flow process for small semi-conductor fabs.

My brother-in-law works for a Fortune 50 company. His division develops several VB components that cost tens of thousands of dollars to the end users.

So, it can be done... BUT it isn't easy. Designing and coding the project aren't that hard. The hard part is usually the support.

[Madboy]

The hardest part for me is to try and not give up on my work, i usually give up. But hopefully thats about to change

[IGBP]

JohnDoe ...
Yes, it is possible, but it does require perseverence on your part.
I think that VBGuy really said it right in his post by saying

Keep in mind that they were not the kind of apps that you see shrink wraped at Best Buy but rather software for specific industries that did very specific things.

It is easiest and in my opinion best, if you stay within the industry that you know best and have experience in. You can talk their lanuage and have personal insights into the challenges they face daily. Identify a very specific need and develop a program that will fill that need and eliminate another business challenge for the owner. Since you are basically an unknown person to them, consider giving the product to them for free on a trial basis. Gather their input and refine your product. Get their endorsement and use their name(with their permission). If it does as you say it will, then perhaps you can barter with them, your product for their product. So if they make furniture, you get a new dining room table, they get your software.
While we would all love to walk into a business, meet with the owner, sell them our software(that is alreay done) and walk out with a $100k check in our hands, and call it a year, the reality is that is very unlikely to happen.

[MartinLiss]

I also agree with VBGuy. It's not very likely that you will develop the next "killer app" but rather if you are lucky and/or you have a contact you might be able to sell to a niche market like I did when I sold an application for a small amount of money to my wife's school district.

[VBGuy]

I was just looking over the posts and found these comments that I certainly wouldn't take as negative

MartinLiss: "might be able to sell to a niche market "
IGBP: "Yes, it is possible, but it does require perseverence"
VBGuy: "Actually, its not as hard as you guys think"

There are neutral

BodwadUK: "is it an application that you could distribute as shareware?"
Wokawidget: "This is extremely difficult."

I don't think anyone has really been negative. Perhaps we tend to be a bit less than optimistic because of our personal experience but certainly not negative. Sometimes a small serving of reality can seem like negativity...

[MartinLiss]

My wife is a school psychologist in a high-school and she often deals with under- or non-achieving students. When she asks them what they plan on doing after high school they often say things like "I'm going to be in a band" or "I'm going to play pro football" or "I'm going to me a model" and while it's certainly possible, the likelihood is small. What my comment was trying to say was that while it's possible for one of us to make a lot of money from a program, the likelihood is small. So don't give up just be realistic.

[Wokawidget]

I think I would have to disagree with you there.
If you want a direct answer the the original question, "Is this possible?", I would have to say no.

Is it possible to send people into space, yes, is it possible for me to be sent into space...errr...no. Although I suppose if I learnt how to fly, joined the air force for 10-20 years, then did another 10 years training at NASA then, yes, it will be possible, but that still doesn't remove the fact that it's not possible now.

We say things are difficult because what happens is a new VB developer asks how to do something that requires VERY complex API and subclassing. This new developer can't even change the caption for a label, let alone subclass something.

What you then find is a trillion other posts on why the code won't work. So, to save the newbie time, and myself loads of time trying to debug their app, I just say it's extremely difficult and I wouldn't bother, but you cud do it this way instead. This may not give them a direct answer to what they are loooking for, but it is a better answer than if I posted the subclassing code etc.

Woka

[johnweidauer]

Ok, is it possible to be sent to space now? Impossible? what...ok, you have proven me wrong, I don't recall space travel being mentioned. I feel that I have offended you, however, you have only backed up the point I was trying to make.

If someone asks a question, and given the fact that you do not know the individual, it may very well be that they are capable of fullfilling their request, they may just need a hand with one thing, or many, but it does not mean that the person is inexperienced and incapable of the work they wish to perform.

Is it possible to sell your app commercially right now? yes, it is possible.

Sorry to turn your question into a large discussion, I will delete all of my previous posts from this discussion.

-John