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The thing that is killing me the most is all of these free companies have changed consumers expectations. While there used to be narry a complaint about paying $49.99 for software at CompUSA, people write me ANGRY emails that I had a nerve to charge anything for a premium version of my software (which costs $29.99 per year), and I still offer a free version! Try charging $.99 cents in the app store and wait for all the furious reviews.

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If my reading of patio11's business of software stance is accurate, I believe he'd say these irate emails are actually helpful signals to you that these people are not a market you want to bother serving! Because they have so little invested in understanding your product and making the most of it, they need to compensate with volume and vitriol. It's better to focus on people who more strongly need and want what you are selling and are willing to signal that with $$.

There are different customers today than there were back then, though. The market of "people who buy software" has expanded massively as software has crept into all sorts of places it didn't used to be found. Lots of people are buying apps for their phone who would never ever have walked into a CompUSA, so they don't have the preset expectations of what software "should" cost that you and I do.

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