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Subject: Re: some questions about chess programs and money

Author: Chris Carson

Date: 07:24:46 04/07/03

Go up one level in this thread


On April 07, 2003 at 09:56:54, Uri Blass wrote:

>Suppose that a programmer of a good program decides to sell his(her) engine only
>as a winboard engine(it can run under Fritz in these conditions)
>
>I am interested in your estimate for the following questions
>
>How much money (s)he can get from it in the following cases:
>
>1)The program is at similiar level to Crafty
    Nothing


>2)The program is at similiar level to Ruffian
   $10.00


>3)The program is at similiar level to Fritz
   $30.00


>4)The program is 100 elo better than Fritz8
   $50.00


>
>I thought that the programmers of the top amateur(crafty level that are not
>clones of other programs) are probably rich people thanks to the fact that they
>are good programmers so they do not care if they can make more 100$ per month
>from their program but it seems that I was wrong based on the following post
>when the author of smarthink claims that he earns only 100$ per month:
>
>http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/messages/46347.htm
>
>Another possibility is that I am wrong in my guess that he can make money by
>selling his program.
>
>More questions:
>
>suppose for the discussion that a programmer decides to earn 10$ per copy that
>(s)he sells.
  $15.00



>Suppose that the programmer expects to sell 120 copies per year.
>
>What should be the price of the program?
 Do something else, 120 copies is not enough and the price would be to high.



>
>Is the price significantly higher relative to the case that he expects to sell
>1200 or 12000 copies per year?

 Yes, a factor to 10 to 100 times higher.  I would think 12000 might not be
enough copies to get the needed price break over investiment/work needed.  At
$10/copie this is not enouth money, maybe at $100/copy 12000 might be
interesting, but $100/copy is to high, so you would need to sell more than 12000
copies to make the money worth it.  Do it as a hobby until it is very strong.


>
>Uri



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