XYplorer Beta Club

So you think the genius must be crazy? Maybe you don't know what crazy can do. Let me give you a fresh example of superior craziness:

http://www.xyplorer.com/free.php

This, my loyal beta club fellows, is right now the only link to this sinful home of outright madness. I intend to publish it tomorrow.

admin wrote:Let me give you a fresh example of superior craziness [...] This, my loyal beta club fellows, is right now the only link to this sinful home of outright madness.

Yeah, I like the idea. Not a sign of madness but of brilliance!

Wow!! great idea. I am sure that will bring more people to XY. I was actually going to suggest you something like this long back. all versions exactly one year back are free. i.e. at any point of time paid version of xyplorer will be one year ahead of free xyplorer. that way people keep getting old versions of xy free and paid customers are always 1 year ahead.
one thing for sure is there will be lots of more publicity for xy, in terms of blogging, reviews etc.
just a thought.

Yes a very good sales approach.

I must admit this is usually what draws me to new software. I review the free content and if I am convinced it will meet my every need plus having no worries over trial conditions I download. Inevitably, I seem to always buy the licensed version shortly afterwards because I want more of it (assuming it is of high quality).

Lets hope others buy like me because XY and your approach is almost unique and even casual users can gain so much from the free version and even more once they get comfortable with using it.

Maybe you think it's superior craziness, seems very sensible to me! Could even make XY notable once again!!

Crazy, of course...

But everybody seems to love it...
(I think it's a good idea, too.)

Maybe my saying wasn't completely wrong?

GREAT job on that page! Love it!

It's a technique that many large companies use, in that what was the old release becomes the free one...

Only comment is about the "No support" item... just how do you mean that? Would you, Don, not answer a post here from a user of the free? And how would we tell them apart? If you meant that you'd not reply to any email, then maybe clarify that specify that instead, as in "No email support", which is very typical...

And as the forum is pretty much open to anyone, and doesn't have a special key needed to access it, I think that we as users by default would generally provide a reasonable level of support that might convince a free user to become paid...but if Don would reply via forum, depending on topic (i.e. bug), it might be an extra incentive.

j_c_hallgren wrote:Only comment is about the "No support" item... just how do you mean that?

No support for that version: Obviously there will be no bugfixes or other enhancements. (I have enough to do with the current version.) No email support for the users of that version. (I get enough emails every day.)
I think "No support" sums it up alright. I want to keep it snappy. Not too many explanations and complications. Or is it so obvious that it should be dropped completely?

serendipity wrote:Wow!! great idea. I am sure that will bring more people to XY. I was actually going to suggest you something like this long back. all versions exactly one year back are free. i.e. at any point of time paid version of xyplorer will be one year ahead of free xyplorer. that way people keep getting old versions of xy free and paid customers are always 1 year ahead.
one thing for sure is there will be lots of more publicity for xy, in terms of blogging, reviews etc.
just a thought.

No, that's not my plan. That would be too crazy. It would not work psychologically. People would hesitate to pay for a product that they can get for free one year later.

admin wrote:No support for that version: Obviously there will be no bugfixes or other enhancements. (I have enough to do with the current version.) No email support for the users of that version. (I get enough emails every day.)
I think "No support" sums it up alright. I want to keep it snappy. Not too many explanations and complications. Or is it so obvious that it should be dropped completely?

I think the concept of no updates would be quite obvious, but given the number of other places I've seen "No email support or updates", I think those small tweaks would work just fine and still be 'snappy'...with other software that say that, user is thus implicitly directed to either a user forum or to get the current vers, or both as needed...

j_c_hallgren wrote:

admin wrote:No support for that version: Obviously there will be no bugfixes or other enhancements. (I have enough to do with the current version.) No email support for the users of that version. (I get enough emails every day.)
I think "No support" sums it up alright. I want to keep it snappy. Not too many explanations and complications. Or is it so obvious that it should be dropped completely?

I think the concept of no updates would be quite obvious, but given the number of other places I've seen "No email support or updates", I think those small tweaks would work just fine and still be 'snappy'...with other software that say that, user is thus implicitly directed to either a user forum or to get the current vers, or both as needed...

Googling for "No email support or updates" yields zero hits... are you sure?

admin wrote:Googling for "No email support or updates" yields zero hits... are you sure?

Ok, so "no email support" only gets 629 hits, but I suspect that's because of the various ways that it can be phrased, and I simply gave you the shortest possible combination...for example, it could say "support for the xxx vers is only available via email", which is much longer...or "email support is only available to registered users", etc..

j_c_hallgren wrote:

admin wrote:Googling for "No email support or updates" yields zero hits... are you sure?

Ok, so "no email support" only gets 629 hits, but I suspect that's because of the various ways that it can be phrased, and I simply gave you the shortest possible combination...for example, it could say "support for the xxx vers is only available via email", which is much longer...or "email support is only available to registered users", etc..

Actually I like your phrase and I'm very surprised that nobody uses it. For some reason???

I'll add it to the page. I only hope people do not ask me for postcard support...

admin wrote:No, that's not my plan. That would be too crazy. It would not work psychologically. People would hesitate to pay for a product that they can get for free one year later.

Yes, that would be too much. Users would have no reason to actually buy the product because XYplorer would have enough features for most of them in the freeware version. If the like the additional features in the paid version they have just to wait a short period of time and, voila, again all these features are included in the freeware version. As a result a lot of people could use the world's best file manager for free but Don wouldn't earn much apart from publicity and gratitude.

Sorry, a little bit late, as XY-Free is out already. But I wanted to play a bit around with this - and have a problem with non-distinguishable icons for the normal and the free version. And I think for persons using the free version it would be fine to show this on the icons in any way? Maybe another color, or something like that? Or, for big icons, a small "free" above XY, for small icons just a line?

Just be be sure, a question: could there be any problems opening XY and XY-Free at the same time? (I don't think so, but...)

And: I plan to use XY-Free at work - maybe one or the other could be interested on seeing this...

Eh...

It would be nice if it worked out that people downloaded the free version (because that's more attractive than a 30-day trial), fell in love and bought lifetime licenses for themselves, their friends, their families, their pets, their enemies, their pets' enemies, etc. But I think the reality is going to be that people will view them as two separate programs, instead of XY and the free leaner and younger XY.

No matter how many times you say there will be no support on the page, people are still going to expect updates to the free version. If not feature upgrades they'll expect bug upgrades.

In addition, people will be making requests for features and reporting bugs that exist in it, which have already been implemented or fixed.


My opinion is that you'd be better off implementing a way of activating features through registration and then you could offer a crippled, er rather, lite version that was free and use the feature enhancements to entice people to pay..