Brenda, >Maybe I misunderstood something. > >It's not scientific imho because comparing crippleware to >shareware gives you no "control" group.
The way I look at it, the 50% who did not have the cripple take place were in fact a type of control group. Same software, same nag screens, but 50% had completely usable output while 50% had every fourth page worthless yet verifiable it could work since the output was merely reversed. But even if you want to argue that is not your definition of a control group, look at the results. It suggests the *opposite* of the assertion: >I have heard that some people don't even continue to try crippled >software just because it is crippled. Like in this example, because they >can't get 1 complete output they just immediately give up on the program. If that were true, it would suggest crippled software would have a lower registration rate. Yet the study was tipped the opposite direction by a five to one margin. Even if you were to allow that a certain portion of people may immediately disregard software when they find it crippled, the irrefutable evidence in this example was that on balance the bulk of the revenue still came from the crippled version. One contributing factor may be that the segment of people who immediately disregard crippled software would by definition need to include those who have absolutely no intention of paying a registration fee, and only consider "freeware" solutions. I would suppose the method of the cripple itself may be a bigger factor with some software. This one seems like an ideal candidate for testing the difference because the user interface was exactly the same, and only the printed output was crippled. But even that was verifiable the software could work: 3 out of 4 pages were correct, with every fourth page having the right information (proving it could decipher the help file) but with the text reversed making it unpleasant to read. A very interesting study, IMHO. Getting back to the subject thread, it is also interesting to note that the original software only took about 2 days of development time. But within the first year brought in over $34K. Extrapolating the study results suggest it may have had the potential for bringing in over $50K in the first year. Not bad for two days' work! Doug -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
