ObviousIdea and ads,offers and bundle – the truth about the ideal business model.
- At 2011/09/26
- In Light Image Resizer / ObviousIdea
About 2 or 3 times per week, I receive emails of angry people to tell they don’t like to see ads and offers provided as a bundle with some of ObviousIdea software such as Light Image Resizer, Easy Photo Uploader or PhotoOnWeb.
First of all, we thank the persons e,who takes the time to email us to notify about this, and I m grateful for this, it allows us to remind this is a bad practice. But the truth is we are fully aware about the problem it could cause to some users.
A little bit of history, ObviousIdea is a breakaway company from VSO Software, and I succeed to get the ownership of VSO Image Resizer , PhotoOnWeb, ATOM GPS and GPS Stone because they were not profitable compared to Convert X to DVD
Despite the high volume and popularity of software like VSO Image Resizer ( now Light Image Resizer ), sales doesn’t allow to pay developpers to build new attractive products. The historic business model was to get money for this product thru a “pro” license by displaying a nag screen at every start. But the software itself doesnt contain any limit, no expiration after a trial period, no limitation in the number of runs, no limit in output format, no watermark in output images, and no functions desactivated if you are not using the pro license.
What could be the alternative business models to get revenues ? Advertisement on web site pages could be an option, whatever it’s using Google Adsense program, it could be with premium sponsor like http://www.partypoker.com/ , adult web sites, selected options, but first you need a huge traffic and in the software market it doesn’t fit, as most users will download and use the software without more visits on the publisher’s web site.
I wanted to try the sponsoring with the download which is used by the biggest software company ( see Adobe Acrobat offers, Nero in the past, even Java runtimes used to suggest some different softwares ). the difference with ObviousIdea is still the traffic volume and the access to some premium partners.
If you are teased in this article, I will ask you to continue and share your opinion in our forum ( a good way to be connected with users )
Continue to read on the forum…
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Mark Smedley
I don’t like any bloatware being added to a product I have previously paid for. I would much prefer to pay for a full version or upgrade price and I have hundreds of items of software I have done/and continue to do that with. I get very nervous when software asks do you also want to install this and that, as my system needs to remain clean. There are also similar freeware image resizers for those that want a basic product free or you offer it with the extra ad revenue software for free or as a paid for full version. Hope that helps,
Mark SMEDLEY
Fabrice
hi Mark, just to be sure, you are saying you have already a license for Light Image Resizer ( or vso version in the past ) ? because yes, you got a point, people who pay for the license still can see the offers ( even if they can desactivate them )
it would require extra developments to deal with the stream of update from registered users and the others. but the truth is still 98% doesn’t pay for the license, and still prefer to have the free version with bundles they could remove.
trust me, I m the first one which would like to remove the ads but it is not like the VSO times, and I have no major products to make profit and pay for development for building new products.
If you see http://www.greencloudprinter.com it’s a completely clean package, and we have put a donation buttons, but so far it’s not used and won’t if you dont put a limitation in the software.
my question is : what is the limitation to define to make some home users happy but still have some premium license ?