Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!shelby!unix!hplabs!motsj1!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane!sparks
From: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: No more Cinemaware stuff for Amiga !!!????
Message-ID: <951@corpane.UUCP>
Date: 12 Aug 89 13:50:01 GMT
References: <9180.AA9180@heimat> <1989Jul30.210112.10525@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Organization: Corpane Industries, Inc., Louisville Ky
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<925@corpane.UUCP> <4639@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM>
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In article <4639@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp)
writes:
>> [my inflated figures for software sales on Amy]

 >You must be the man that fell to earth!  If you really believe what you
 >are saying you should be selling your own program.  There are several
 >flaws in your above posting.
 >
 >   1) 1,000,000 Amigas sold doesn't mean 1,000,000 being used.
Well, maybe not. but a pretty big margin. Why else would you buy it?

  
 >   2) Selling to 10% of the market is almost unheard of, except
 >      for a very few programs like Deluxe Paint.  Most software
 >      companies are singing in the streets if they can sell to
 >      1% of the market.

Hmm. I guess I really over-inflated my estimates.


 >   3) A list price of $50 dollars means that the producer of 
 >      the software gets only $20 from software distributors, that
 >      is if you can still find one that is still in business.
 >   4) A nice box, manual, disk, and shipping runs an easy $8.
 
Yep I also forgot to include production costs. Ooops.

 >   5) Pirates kill a large amount of impulse buying, which can
 >      easily amount to 80% of your sells.  I know this because
 >      less than 20% of the sells every bother to send in registration
 >      cards. 

In other words "impulse buying" == "suckers who buy anything in a pretty
package", if only 20% ever bother registering, then that is a good sign that
the program is not worth the cost, and the maker better get on the ball and
come out with a good program or face the facts of lowered sales as word of
mouth travels about the crappy program.


 >
 >So the cash equation is more like:
 >
 >    900,000 * (.01) / 2 * $12 = $54,000
 >
 >Even that may require heavy advertising at about $5,000 a mouth for
 >say 6 months, costing $30,000 total.  Leaving about $24,000 to split
 >between everyone involved in producing the software. 
 >
 >Now the numbers can move some, but the essence is that your $3,500,000
 >is off by an order of magitude.  Sorry about the cold water, but is 
 >very hard to make a living writing Amiga software.
 >
 >                               Wayne Knapp 


Well sorry for the wrong figures above, But Karl's seemed way to low. He was
going on an installed based of 50,000 which I know there are more Amiga's out 
there than that. I didn't realize how unprofitable writing software could be.
It's a wonder we have any programs for the Amy at all.


-- 
John Sparks   |  {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps
|||||||||||||||          sparks@corpane.UUCP         | 502/968-5401 thru -5406 
Cheerio-Magnetics: The tendency of the last few cheerios in a bowl of milk
to cling together for survival.