you know what, i am starting to get paid registrations. not a huge number.
they might be characterized as "s****adic" at this point. but it wouldn't
take
a whole lot more for me to describe them as "steady." and i would bet
that,
for every paid registration, there are another ten people who are either
using
the program unregistered (since it never expires), or else they're using a
pirated key or some other kind of hack. my suspicion is because i've made
a
real attempt to target china, a country known for rampant piracy. sorry
if
i've offended any law-abiding software-buying chinese people who are
reading
this, but you know it's true.
i know everybody is entitled to their own habits, but i find it maddening
that
so many people just want to buy a registration key and be left alone.
i've
e-mailed a few people who bought keys with short personal notes, like
"sorry
it took so long for me to notice you have registered" and stuff. (i
wasn't
getting notification e-mails from kagi. this has since been fixed.) one
time, my kagi info page told me someone had her credit card rejected, and
i
wrote to her anyway, just to encourage her to either try again when she
can
swing the money or else continue to use the program unregistered. none of
those people ever wrote back. it's so hard for me to figure out who my
audience is this way. it sure would be nice if groups.google.com would
let me
search on particular headers, such as User-Agent:, so i could see where my
users are hanging out. alas, that doesn't work.
SO, HERE'S THE IM****TANT CONCLUSION: if you are using the program, i would
love to hear what you think about it. if you've actually registered the
program, then i'd almost pay *you* to hear what you think about it. i can
get
any number of "it should do this" comments from people in the mac
newsgroups,
but i don't put too much stock in that kind of feedback. if they are not
using the program, then i have to assume they don't really get what i'm
trying
to do, so they are not my audience. people who ARE using the program
always
have my ear. especially now, when i don't have too many users yet. just
ask
ciprol. he's made around 30 suggestions so far. i've implemented perhaps
20
of them, and i intend to implement another five or so, once i get some
prerequisites out of the way.
now is your chance, folks. if you are a pnews user and you suggest
something,
the odds are excellent that such a thing will make it into the program.
if
pnews becomes successful to the point where i've got hundreds of users, it
will be harder for me to hear each individual voice, so now is an
excellent
time to speak up.
--
A free market interprets monopoly as damage and routes around it.
-- Paul Graham
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