Crippleware vs. Guiltware

Dear LWN folk,

I have a friend who runs a payment processing service for shareware 
authors (plug: www.kagi.com). Just as free software is often categorized 
by the license, shareware is generally categorized by the payment scheme 
and/or business model. Two popular types are "guilt-ware", in which the 
author of the program makes a humanitarian plea for payment, and 
"cripple-ware", in which certain advanced features of the program are 
disabled unless a payment is made.

According to my friend, crippleware programs bring about 5 times as much 
revenue for their authors on average as guiltware programs do. The 
lesson here is clear: All of the appeals to the good side of human 
nature will only get you so far. About 20 cents on the dollar, as a 
matter of fact. (You might think this view is cynical, but that's only 
true if you place a negative moral judgement on people who use things 
and don't pay for them. I don't.)

What makes a good crippleware program? Well, for one thing, the crippled 
version needs to be useful and addictive in its own right - it needs to 
leave you "hungry for more". It must not be time-limited - that's called 
"demo-ware", and is a different (and IMHO less effective) category of 
shareware. It should be useful enough that it is readily incporporated 
into the user's habitual work pattern. Yet the extra features should be 
beneficial enough that once you discover how useful it is, you'll 
realize how much more you could get for a small fee.

A lot of websites have moved to this model as well. A lot of good 
examples can be found in the many fan-maintained web sites for online 
games. For example, the site http://everquest.allakhazam.com is 
essentially a huge database of EverQuest game items and player tips. If 
you pay nothing, you get full access to the entire database, forums, 
user accounts, etc. However, if you pay their low fee ($20 a year or 
so), you get: 1) elimination of all ads, 2) an advanced query tool, 3) 
automatic character wishlist creation, and a bunch more really neat 
features.

I am even beginning to see the development of aggregated subscriptions - 
you pay one fee and you get access to "enhanced features" for a bunch of 
thematically related websites, maintained by different authors and editors.

Finally, I'd like to respond to the gentleman who wrote in last week 
complaining about the reported costs of maintaining the site. I believe 
he misses a number of important points:

    1) In a sea of near-infinite information, the role of editor adds a 
huge amount of value.
    2) In a sea of near-infinite information, being a good editor is 
really, really hard.

For example, I used to read Kernel Traffic on a weekly basis, but I gave 
it up because I just don't have the time to pick through all the content 
and decide which items are relevant to me and which are not. Your few 
paragraphs of highly-distilled explanation of kernel activity 
highlights, with the background context filled in (so I don't have to 
remember last week's edition) as well as your filling in of the human 
story behind the kernel design process, all this is just exactly the 
right information I want, in the right amount. Simply giving me a raw 
data feed is exactly what I don't want. I don't imagine that creating 
this is a particularly easy task.

-- Talin
(please withold my email, if they want to contact me they can search for 
me on Google. I get too much spam as it is)