Let's assume Desktop includes Mac, Windows and Linux.
First You need an app that solves a need (doesn't matter if other commercial or open source alternatives exist) and does not completely suck.
That's the easy part.
Then you need a channel to display your app. That also does not seem so hard these days. Mac, Windows both have stores, we can consider Synaptic and Ubuntu store thing to be a channel too(setting aside money question for now).
Unfortunately channel is not going to suffice.
The hard part is getting a funnel, that is a way to guide your prospective customers to your product.
One method perfected by patio11 was to create SEO friendly content for one audience, but use the SEO juice to sell to completely different audience. This is very very hard to do.
Of course, if you already have your own channel(nice e-mail list), then you can push your apps too.
But building an e-mail list is again very hard.
The days of late 1980s shareware boom have been over for a long time, but I suspect with razor sharp focus there are still some success stories(paging Patio11 and his Bingo Card Creator).
Disclaimer: I write internal apps at mediumcorp for a living and have no personal indie success stories.
I am making a living with my windows only projection mapping application http://www.facadesignage.com
It started in 2006 but went online 2 years ago, and that was my best idea ever (i mean going online).
I learned a lot about software, products, funnels, marketing and niches. And best of all: narrowing down the user pain and solving it at the UI level.
Nice! Also a great example of what's being discussed in this thread. I'm interested in this sort of thing and I've tried several packages but I have never heard of yours. I will be checking out the trial when I get home from work later tonight.
Heh, good comment about Notch, and the others you mention too.
For those who don't know, from the Wikipedia article about Notch - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson :
"He is planning to stop working on this game after a recent deal with Microsoft to sell Minecraft for 2.5 billion dollars."
A huge outlier, of course, but the potential exists.
The company I work for makes a living off Enrollment software and Demographic software for Windows. A lot of our clients do not wish to have their systems connected/cloud.
I guess you have your question answered than. I was also a BoS forum user since 2008.
With the XYZ (Apple, Microsoft) stores these days I wonder if a $39-99 desktop software can truly have success on these compare the the average < $9 app.
High-end B2B software can certainly be profitable, I would guess the $500-2500 software coming with support, integration, training etc.
My wife recently became familiar with the Mac AppStore after only ever using the iOS AppStore. Her first comment upon seeing the initial screen was "$19 for an app?? That's crazy!" I cringed a bit. Has the $0.99 app ruined everything for us?
Why the hell cringe? Just ignore the naysayers or cheapskates. If you're a developer, you know how much time and effort it takes to make a good product, right? Take your own independent decisions, after taking all facts and inputs (to a reasonable extent) into consideration.
EDIT:
>naysayers or cheapskates
Didn't mean to imply that your wife was one.
The thing is, most non-software people don't know enough about all the work [1] that goes into a custom software app, let alone into a shrink-wrapped product (which is much more, if done well). (Using the old term shrink-wrapped, though a lot of software is delivered over the web these days. Same difference :)
[1] Figuring out requirements / features to include, design, development, testing, testing, testing, ... , support, ... , marketing, ..., maintenance, ...
I sometimes get mails from (not really) customers like: 'can you add feature x of the paid version to the free version?'. The paid version is $4.99 by the way.
If you have decent app that solves problems well and you have enough energy left to do some marketing then probably you can make a decent living. Or you have a lot of luck, then no problems at all. But if you hope that customers find you by themselfes, maybe you shouldn't bet on the business.
There are tons of companies and even microISVs that make a good living or more, from desktop apps, in both the developed and less developed worlds. (But they are not 5$ apps.) Hell, there are many small and medium software companies in India (for example) that were doing good business (and probably still are) with Clipper / XBase apps for small businesses, on (gasp!) DOS, to take just one area (of both tech and domain). VB and VB.NET too. Delphi too, probably. C++/Qt too. C++/wxWidgets. ... I see the (XBase or other) apps myself in many shops, malls, doing the accounts, sales, POS, etc. Seen such apps in many factories too (I was on the field for a while, earlier). Its just that they are not mentioned much here on HN. (See the recent thread about the Rails jobs). And I'm sure it must be so in many other less developed countries too, not just in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. (which are highly computerized). HN is not the whole universe, only a quite small part of it, though we techies sometimes tend to think otherwise.
Hell yeah! rails jobs... i automatically ignore all javascript/ruby/and all those script kiddy threads here .
the thing is that HN is one of the largest HUB for developers
to hear opinion about development subjects .
where else i can post questions like that on the net ...?
My cousin in fact makes his application looks like a desktop application to sell to his customer base. He makes pos/accounting software with a windows application(skin) that talk to his php backend over http. He sells these apps mainly to his customers in middle east.
First You need an app that solves a need (doesn't matter if other commercial or open source alternatives exist) and does not completely suck.
That's the easy part.
Then you need a channel to display your app. That also does not seem so hard these days. Mac, Windows both have stores, we can consider Synaptic and Ubuntu store thing to be a channel too(setting aside money question for now).
Unfortunately channel is not going to suffice.
The hard part is getting a funnel, that is a way to guide your prospective customers to your product.
One method perfected by patio11 was to create SEO friendly content for one audience, but use the SEO juice to sell to completely different audience. This is very very hard to do.
Of course, if you already have your own channel(nice e-mail list), then you can push your apps too.
But building an e-mail list is again very hard.
The days of late 1980s shareware boom have been over for a long time, but I suspect with razor sharp focus there are still some success stories(paging Patio11 and his Bingo Card Creator).
Disclaimer: I write internal apps at mediumcorp for a living and have no personal indie success stories.