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Comment by tonyjstark | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes get mails from (not really) customers like: 'can you add feature x of the paid version to the free version?'. The paid version is $4.99 by the way.

If you have decent app that solves problems well and you have enough energy left to do some marketing then probably you can make a decent living. Or you have a lot of luck, then no problems at all. But if you hope that customers find you by themselfes, maybe you shouldn't bet on the business.

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This very very sad ... I really don't understand how someone can Live from 0.9 - 4.9 $ apps

There are tons of companies and even microISVs that make a good living or more, from desktop apps, in both the developed and less developed worlds. (But they are not 5$ apps.) Hell, there are many small and medium software companies in India (for example) that were doing good business (and probably still are) with Clipper / XBase apps for small businesses, on (gasp!) DOS, to take just one area (of both tech and domain). VB and VB.NET too. Delphi too, probably. C++/Qt too. C++/wxWidgets. ... I see the (XBase or other) apps myself in many shops, malls, doing the accounts, sales, POS, etc. Seen such apps in many factories too (I was on the field for a while, earlier). Its just that they are not mentioned much here on HN. (See the recent thread about the Rails jobs). And I'm sure it must be so in many other less developed countries too, not just in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. (which are highly computerized). HN is not the whole universe, only a quite small part of it, though we techies sometimes tend to think otherwise.

Hell yeah! rails jobs... i automatically ignore all javascript/ruby/and all those script kiddy threads here . the thing is that HN is one of the largest HUB for developers to hear opinion about development subjects . where else i can post questions like that on the net ...?

My cousin in fact makes his application looks like a desktop application to sell to his customer base. He makes pos/accounting software with a windows application(skin) that talk to his php backend over http. He sells these apps mainly to his customers in middle east.

Pretty interesting, thanks.

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