[General Monetization] Xgeda:
So you are a talented individual (or a group) whose product out there some people would benefit from ?

Or not yet done with your product yet?.. but you do have the skills that you can use to build a product, that is a great gift by itself! and it should not be gone unnoticed.

“Nothing from nothing ever yet was born”

Neither it comes out of nowhere, nor it would just disappear.

Inspiration and outcome.. two elementary aspects for the process, and the main subject of this article as well.

You're either generously willing to gift your product to the world (which is highly appreciated by all your users) like so many free apps on the market. That works very well as long as you can afford the luxury of supporting your product without expecting a financial return.

Or naturally, you would be thinking.. can I get money out of this? which is absolutely fine, and it should keep up your desire to support, update, and upgrade your product, what you should be thinking is how!.

Software

Writing this article having software production as a primary subject in mind, I strongly believe that the discussion can fairly fit any other kind of product.

In this article

We will be discussing some very common methods first, as well as some unusual methods later on.

it’s not a guide with a couple of steps to follow and unleash the jinni!

It is meant to briefly provide our brain juice by covering different aspects in ways we can provide a better cause for our innovation.

Straightforward

One of the first, yet most commonly used methods by mankind. Some would call it “being an honest tradesman”. This is when we simply ask our customer for money equivalent to the product we are providing. A good way to get a return for what we propose. When following a "straight forward" strategy, I would strongly advise a good product presentation and marketing campaign, this is how we can get our customers to willingly pay to get our product.

Sponsored

What could be better than someone funding our project, believing in our product and outcome. This is where we can focus only on our product, as having someone believing in our skills enough to sponsor our project is quite a push for self confidence. But the question remains; What does it take to get sponsored? How to lead a sponsored project to success?!

A spectacular proposal, promising outcome, uniquely identified features. As of leading our sponsored project to success, a solid plan in details is the main element of success.

Fishing?

Are you a fishing kind of person?

Lay ahead your net with all your goods for free to the sea of customers, some will gracefully offer you a fish in return!

Except you don't actually need a fishing boat to do so in here..

One more common strategy is depending on donations. Releasing our useful product absolutely for free, promoting either ourselves or our product, a satisfied customer will be offering us donations to keep up the good work. it’s not as easy as it sounds.. yet not too complicated, we have already done most of our part in this when we successfully produced a quality product mentioning that donations are most welcome. That being said, this strategy depends totally on the kind of customers we have.

Campaign Strategy

Previously, we mentioned 2 different methods, getting a sponsor and asking for donations. In campaign strategy we combine both these methods together. Like when we’re looking for a sponsor, we prepare the attractive proposal, but we don’t do it for a specific sponsor, we ask for donations support to build our project and bring our ideas to life.

A part of a bigger picture

Another commonly used strategy, not in a direct way occasionally, is supporting -with our product- a successful organisation by being a part of their production campaign. There is where we get a return for our efforts without caring about how is the product presented or published. However, using this method indicates lower risk factors, most likely our product will lose its identity by becoming a part of something else.

Trials

It is always an option to split our product into 2 parts, a stripped version for free, and a full paid version. A successful strategy, counting mainly on our product quality plus having attractive features to offer. A free product is attractive by itself for our customer, but that’s not all what we’re looking for, the end game here is to have this free product itself truly deep within its user experience to keep our users looking for our full version.

Ask for more!

Quite similar strategy to our previous one, but we don’t have to produce 2 different versions of our product in here, just one version.. but missing some features (or accessories). With these missing litle features we can make money. However, we are actually selling these desirable features in here, our product better be functioning and totally usable without these features. Product quality and user experience are playing an important role in here as well.

An Apple

Spotting Apple’s brand logo on any piece of technology uniquely identifies it, guarantees as well the quality and support. A regular customer would peacefully pay a huge amount of money for it without doubting the product.

To be able to ask for the price we’re looking for, we have first to build reputation, and gain our customers’ trust. What identifies our product uniquely ? Why would a regular customer prefer our product than others already existing? Unless our product is quite unique or a one of a kind invention, one good strategy is to actually compromise in terms of price.

Never underestimate the crowd

Our customer has already made it that far and decided to go with our product. it doesn’t mean nothing, it means we are actually one step closer to our esteemed goal, the more customers we get the closer we are to becoming an icon. so if selling for the desired price is not currently an option for our product, then spreading our product to gain popularity should be the first step. social networks would help a great deal in doing so.

Speaking of networks..

As it is surely easier to use an existing network, it is absolutely more powerful to build our own. even a symbolic return for our loyal customer promoting our brand would be an encouragement. There are many ways where we can use customers and fans to to gain profit.

The Idea of Sharing

What if the customer himself is actually finding our next customer? or actually selling one of our products in our name!

However, a simple return could be all what it takes when you ask nicely a satisfied customer, a symbolic return to the new business partner is not enough to keep the network growing, but sharing a tiny bit of your assisted earnings would do the trick.

The Art of Perfection

The concept of perfection is absolutely relative.. one would say it doesn’t exist!

It depends on how you look at it, and what are you looking for. From a consumer point of view it could be just satisfying whatever was originally expected out of it.

The future is the true success

Straight to the point.. it could be fairly easy to gain some profit from our initial product, however, this should not be the final goal, it can only be just a step on the way. regardless of how is the product presented, advertised, or promising are the features in it. The product quality and support is what puts in the final words with its customer satisfaction.

A final word

Out of all debated concepts of this subject, besides gathering our clear thoughts on the product outcome, a final thought in mind should lead to initially aiming for development and production, as close as it gets to its relative perfection. Which is a money making strategy by itself regardless the methods used.