John--no offense, but I wouldn't want to be a customer for your company! It doesn't sound as if you like customers.

Your motto seems to be: "The customer is always wrong!"

I am sure that you are right about all the pressures and problems of owning a small business, but still, if you aren't friendly to the customers, do not try to please them, , just look at them as pains in your a**, etc., they might not be very happy to do business with you! Now you will say that I am trying to tell you how to run your business. Nope, I wouldn't.

Anyhow, back on topic. One poster wrote, that it is possible to get a download only option on the telephone, although not online. Has anyone here done it. How much did it cost?

Quote:

It was normal and desirable to have staff meetings and decide if logistically it was desirable to meet reasonable expectations.

It also became almost impossible to explain business decisions to customers. Selling a 30k computer tested and supported with peripherals and tape drives and 24 ports for terminals that were essentially the same as you could buy from Jack's kid who's a computer whiz and is running dbase on the kitchen table killed almost the whole lower end computer market. The government changed and the socialists said only colleges they ran could get cash for job retraining. I sold the business while I could.

We had 3 divisions and 20 employees, and my partner bought me out. Now there are 250 employees and 2 departments. My wife runs one department.

Everyone here seems to think it's cut and dried. Just put those files on your server and bingo, you don't pay for packaging. You don't pay for drives. You save money. YOU THINK? If it was that simple who wouldn't do it. Rule #1 of owning a small business. EVERYONE, even your MOM tells you what you should do. If it was that simple we'd all still be there, making huge amounts of cash.

Work the business model backwards. Office rent, electrical, employee wages, advertising, packaging, taxes, development costs, licensing, etc. Get a number. Add in 20 profit at least. Now the average cost. Come up with annual sales. Figure out the bandwidth requirements, the storage requirements and go to the websites and have a look around for someone with 3000 potential users, website costs and costs for downloads. Look at load factors. 3 releases a year, 2 pc, 1 mac. And what's the backup plan if that company goes down? That's not a problem when you have 2 day North American distribution.

I bet there is a per user cost for downloading too. Maybe check that out.

However it SEEMS so simple right?