How badly does getting cracked hurt revenue?
Ruffin Bailey
there are three kinds of potential users out there for trailware.
1.) People that are honest (or at least not up on crack site URLs)
that will pay to use your app if they like it.
2.) People that aren't going to pay for your app no matter what
happens, but might use it if they can get hold of a license code or
cracked version.
3.) People that would pay to use your application if they can't find
a cracked version or license number generator, but would use the
cracked version if they find it.
People from the first two groups don't matter to your bottom line a
bit when it comes to getting cracked. The only thing making your app
uncrackable does (again, with resepect to these first two groups) is
keep group 2 from using your application. I'm not sure if I care if
people who weren't going to pay for my app anyhow use it or not.
Naturally I'd rather everyone using the app pays -- and the people
that use cracked versions should feel HORRIBLY GUILTY (c) 2003 -- but
if they were never a source a revenue, it really doesn't matter from a
business (if not a moral) standpoint if they used the cracked version
or not.
So if you're app is cracked, the people in group 3.) stop paying and
start cracking. This, of course, would drive me crazy, but I was
wondering how badly this has affected everyone. What percentage of
the people that were paying before aren't after the crack is
available?
Anybody have any ballpark numbers on how badly getting listed on the
cracked sites have hurt their registrations/revenue? Can anyone
document a drop-off in registrations until their app's license code
generator was changed where the registrations pick right back up? Are
certain types of applications more likely to be listed than others?
Thanks,
Ruffin Bailey
FileKicker Support
> 3.) People that would pay to use your application if they can't find
> a cracked version or license number generator, but would use the
> cracked version if they find it.
>
> So if you're app is cracked, the people in group 3.) stop paying and
> start cracking. This, of course, would drive me crazy, but I was
> wondering how badly this has affected everyone. What percentage of
> the people that were paying before aren't after the crack is
> available?
We had a developer that set up a system to track this sort of thing.
If a user attempted to register the program with an invalid key it
would pass a tracking parameter to his reg service (Emetrix) when they
attempted to buy the product. The idea was to use this as a fraud
screening system to screen out people who were likely to buy the
product and then post the code.
What he found was about 30% of his order started comming in with the
tracking parameter. For a couple of weeks he had Emetrix calling on
every single one of those orders. After a while he gave up and
figured out that there are a *lot* of people in that third group. And
his cracks were *hard* to find on the net.
Michael
FileKicker Support
sup...@filekicker.com
http://www.filekicker.com/
Alun Jones
>1.) People that are honest (or at least not up on crack site URLs)
>that will pay to use your app if they like it.
>2.) People that aren't going to pay for your app no matter what
>happens, but might use it if they can get hold of a license code or
>cracked version.
>a cracked version or license number generator, but would use the
>cracked version if they find it.
>
>bit when it comes to getting cracked. The only thing making your app
>uncrackable does (again, with resepect to these first two groups) is
>keep group 2 from using your application. I'm not sure if I care if
>people who weren't going to pay for my app anyhow use it or not.
However, consider also that making your program "uncrackable" may also make it
slightly harder to install, test, or use, in which case you _do_ affect the
numbers of group 1 that use your software.
>So if you're app is cracked, the people in group 3.) stop paying and
>start cracking. This, of course, would drive me crazy, but I was
>wondering how badly this has affected everyone. What percentage of
>the people that were paying before aren't after the crack is
>available?
How could you tell? You can't release a 'crack-proof' program and a 'control'
program to compare sales - because that will skew your figures. The two are
inter-related.
Alun.
~~~~
[Please don't email posters, if a Usenet response is appropriate.]
--
Texas Imperial Software | Try WFTPD, the Windows FTP Server. Find us at
1602 Harvest Moon Place | http://www.wftpd.com or email al...@texis.com
Cedar Park TX 78613-1419 | VISA/MC accepted. NT-based sites, be sure to
Fax/Voice +1(512)258-9858 | read details of WFTPD Pro for XP/2000/NT.
qed...@ev1.net
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to create a *crack-proof*
software. If it is then please let me know how!
I got involved with a thread earlier regarding such issues. I have a
couple of products which now have a function built in to check against
a database on the web server as to whether a license number is valid
or not when the product is showing as being registered. (Obviously
this only works if the user has a live internet connection but in the
case of my products this is required anyway).
Interestingly, in the past 2 months I have only caught two people. One
of whom has resorted to using the older version of the software (the
remaining person I believe has simply stopped using it when it
automatically de-registered itself!!
It's hard to say to what extent these things affect sales. Obviously
it does affect revenue but it's very hard to say whether this is big
or small.
Ruffin Bailey
> >a cracked version or license number generator, but would use the
> >cracked version if they find it.
> >
> >start cracking. This, of course, would drive me crazy, but I was
> >wondering how badly this has affected everyone. What percentage of
> >the people that were paying before aren't after the crack is
> >available?
>
> How could you tell? You can't release a 'crack-proof' program and a 'control'
> program to compare sales - because that will skew your figures. The two are
> inter-related.
I was wondering if someone had perhaps released a fairly successful
program, seen a dip in registrations, and with that information
figured out they've been cracked. Granted this wouldn't necessarily
happen twice, like when a new version is released, as I've read here
and elsewhere crackers are usually content using an older version of
software and waiting, even *expecting*, the next version's crack. But
you should see the dip happen the first time your app's been cracked.
There are a few applications that search a database of
currently-popular crack sites to see your app is there, so I'd hope
it'd be relatively easy to track down that [at least initial] dip due
to being cracked.
I'd very nearly venture that if nobody's seen a dip in registrations
that made them figure out they'd been cracked that the number of
people in group 2.) -- people that weren't going to register your
program whether it's crackable or not -- is much larger than the
number of people you'd stand to gain by concentrating on 3.).
I haven't, in my short time googlin', seen any shareware authors
complain that revenues went down; rather simply that they'd like to
gain the revenue of the people who are using their cracked
application. I'm not the first to propose that a large percentage of
them might not have ever been potential paying customers, crack or no
crack. I'm just wondering if anyone could share about how big of an
impact they felt a crack has had on their proverbial revenue stream.
Of course, I'm also trying to convince myself that it's not worth the
time worrying about making a perfectly uncrackable app. :^)
> However, consider also that making your program "uncrackable" may also make it
> slightly harder to install, test, or use, in which case you _do_ affect the
> numbers of group 1 that use your software.
Good point. Course when you're using an interpreted lang like I am,
you're in trouble with crackers any way you look at it and stuck
hoping that there are enough honest people out there to make it all
worthwhile.
Thanks for the reply,
Ruffin Bailey
--
If you read email lists in digest format, you need
The Digest Handler. Coming soon!!
FileKicker Support
> I'd very nearly venture that if nobody's seen a dip in registrations
> that made them figure out they'd been cracked that the number of
> people in group 2.) -- people that weren't going to register your
> program whether it's crackable or not -- is much larger than the
> number of people you'd stand to gain by concentrating on 3.).
I believe that I have seen a dip in registrations due to cracks. But
it isn't possible to survey people who didn't buy and ask them if they
cracked the program :)