Adobe, Microsoft, and tons of other giant corporations have failed, what makes you think you’ll be different?

I’m not trying to sounds like an a**hole, just saying what’s on my mind

You have a video example of a part of the plugin’s functionality. That, coupled with the descriptions and comments on the forum posts, convinced me to purchase it, even though I could have gotten the current version for free.

My thinking is this: If somebody comes up with a tool that has an obvious benefit to it (in this case, a huge time saver) then purchasing it is the only way to encourage them to continue development. Getting it for free is extremely short-sighted, in my opinion.

The other side of piracy is that you get a pretty good idea whether or not your product is any good, as it will either be praised or slammed liberally by those who download/use it.

As mentioned above, a service where the software calls home to get data is likely the only way to combat the majority of the piracy (sort of like Keyword Elite, perhaps). There will always be somebody who will likely crack it, but support and updates are important to the people who use it.

I would also wager that a large percentage of the pirated copies floating around are not being used, but rather tried once and now collecting dust on someone’s hard drive. Getting access to something for free immediately devalues it to those who steal it, and as such it is not treated with the same attention as something they bought.

At any rate, keep up the good work! It is very much appreciated.

@Gregory: That’s my problem–time, or just not enough of it!

There will always be a bunch of evil geniuses with more time on their hands than money to buy the software.

Keep a balance Kansieo. And make sure ur well marketed

And for the record, I’m a delighted CC customer!

One other option you could think about which is quite radical would be to release it as open-source for free under the GPL, MIT, Creative Commons or some other “open” licence.

The script comes with zero support unless you people buy a support contract from you for a one-off/yearly $x amount.

That takes away the need to pirate, but still gives you a way to generate some income.

There are loads of companies out there using this business model (Linux distributions, MySQL etc.) so why not you?

I use this business model, so give me a shout if you want to talk more on this.

HTH

Cheers

Nick

BS: Currently, I do mash up the function names and SOME variables. And then run it through a simplistic little encoding routine. Realistically, it’s just keeping the honest people honest.

Johny: Believe me, I know–as long as your PHP code is in a third party’s hands, it is remarkably impossible to protect. Even the Zend and Ioncube encoders fail at this, though they do up the protection for a price ($$, customers have to have the decoder installed on server, something I’m not willing to put my customers through).

Adobe, Microsoft, and tons of other giant corporations have failed, what makes you think you’ll be different?

I’m not trying to sounds like an a**hole, just saying what’s on my mind.

Cheers,
Johny

The only way I can see to completely avoid piracy is to offer it for free yourself and somehow make that pay.

Offering a free “lite” version might help, or maybe support a free version with ads or links inserted every x posts?

A different approach would be to sell it as a hosted service rather than a plugin – seems to work for datapresser.

Take it easy,

Si