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Audio converter


Pockins

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Are you asking how much it would cost to write a program similar to that one? Or looking for similar programs and their costs? I only know Total Video Converter, which handles audio files even if the name nor website says it does. The Audacity project on SourceForge also can do audio conversion and has plugins to get other features.

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Well, we don't have anything that allows for that kind of discussion here on MSFN. I know there is a "Programmers for Hire" type section up on Devshed.com, but their forum appears to be down at the moment. Check out that site when its back up and look for that section. Its 2/3rd of the way down on the index I believe.

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You can hire plenty of programmers, locally or online (even from countries with cheaper labor). There's definitely no shortage of that.

And how much it can cost?

There's just no straight answer to that.

I want to start online business and that why I am execually asking.

And I believe this is where you REALLY have a LOT of work to do first!

-You don't seem to have much expertize in-house, seeing how you need to hire devs and don't do web sites either so mostly everything will cost you $$$

-Do you have any experience or knowledge in how to run *any* business, online or not?

-Do you know anything about running a Micro-ISV in particular?

-What about accounting and such things? (all kinds of stuff! Invoices, purchase orders, taxes, you name it!)

-Do you think you have anywhere near as much knowledge as you need software-wise? Do you even know what you should ask your programmer(s) to do? (What language do you want this written in and why? What set of "widgets"? What about cross-platform compatibility? How do you want them to manage versionning? How about unit tests? What installer type? Are you just expecting them to hand over a perfectly polished app with a good looking and usable GUI? ...)

-You need to register a domain, create a site (design and also writing all the content and FAQs and everything), setup email for that domain, possibly create a support forum (and then spend time to moderate it), setup payment methods (and deal with the fees, chargebacks and all that fun stuff), ...

-How do you expect to keep track of who paid, for which version, when, how much, their license name/serial and all that are? Scatterred across hundreds of email? By hand? Besides, most people want their registration # pretty much as soon as they've typed their credit card #, not "when you get around to email it, eventually"... You likely want a trial version as well.

-How about updates for your program? You'll have to have something in place on your website for that as well

-How about someone writing a proper help file for your product (and possibly translations, for your app *and* the help *and* your site)?

-And loads of very important questions like for bugfixes: how much it will cost you (agreement/contract with programmers) and same for features you want added

-Are you good at marketing? If you want any sales at all, people have to actually know about your product first! (and not just blindly paying for ads, you kind of have to know what is somewhat effective and what isn't!)

-What about pricing? Picking the perfect price point isn't as easy as it may seem (and think about upgrade pricing and such too). Just picking the wrong price may kill a perfectly viable product by itself

-Keep in mind you've just became their technical support should anything go wrong with your program...

-How do you plan on keeping track of bugs (submitted by customers and otherwise)? And what about collecting customer feedback (through surveys or otherwise)?

-What about legal stuff? (EULA? should you incorporate? ...). This may be be even more of a requirement as lots of such programs make use of various open-source libraries (FFmpeg and what not), without paying royalties for various media formats (mp3 and others) which is not exactly legal and it could eventually be a problem (I definitely wouldn't want MPEG LA suing me personally!)

...

And I'm not even sure you've actually thought through the very basic, most important questions either:

-what problem does it solve, or how do it solve an the problem better than existing solutions?

-is there money to make there at all? Especially when that market seems pretty crowded with hundreds of inexpensive and freeware converter apps (why would anyone want to buy yours over all the others?)

-have you studied your competitors' products to know what they have, and at what price?

It sounds like you have a LOT of homework to do still. Getting an app developed by a 3rd party is truly the trivial part here.

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Why do I have to learn sow much if I got the money? :unsure:

Sure, you can hire several programmers (those to write the initial version, those to do maintenance and write bugfixes, those for new versions, etc), a copyright lawyer, an accountant, a web designer, a web developer, content creators and translators (help file and website), an usability expert, testers, a payment processor, a consultant that will figure out for you what the program should do and what it should look like and how it should be written (and translate that into a "requirements" list for the hired programmers), someone to moderate your forums, someone to answer emails, perhaps a manager to make these guys work together and on schedule (and resolve all the problems that will arise), etc.

There's no problem at all with this picture, unless you plan on making any money. It doesn't matter if you have billions to give away to all kinds of consultants and experts. You still need to make money as well. The more work you get done by someone else, the more expenses you'll have to cover. Startups and micro ISVs normally try to minimize these by doing most of the work themselves. And since you're gonna get basically everything done by someone else, you'll have to make loads of money (from a crowded market, filled with freeware and cheap apps and all kinds of mature/established/well-known products), either by a high volume of sales (unlikely) or by high prices (good luck). And when I see a fairly large percentage of ISVs that can handle most of that in-house (without any expense besides their time) with good products don't ever make a penny... Not that I see any money to make with this particular kind of app in the first place (I'm fairly happy with BeSweet and Audacity which are both freeware). Right now, what I see is a nice way to sink a 5 figure amount.

Either ways, good luck to you. Hopefully having money will prove a valid substitute for knowledge.

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I just asked programmers for the price for this work and they told me about 10 000 dollars, is that not way too expensive?

It *totally* depends on what it is. Again, it comes down to the actual requirements list. It could be way too much, or way too little.

If it's a ghetto VB6 front end to a open source command line encoder, without support, without bugfixes, without documentation, without a fancy interface, without (...) and writen by a out-of-school n00b that also happens to be in a country with dirt cheap labor... Then it's WAY too much.

If they have to write their own codecs in assembly for just about every possible format from scratch, pay the licensing fees for every technology used, have to deliver full documentation, free bugfixes within 24h for the next decade included, including the subcontracting for usability studies and graphics artists, professionally localized in different languages (including the help and installer), and the code written by a team of guys with a PhD's from a top-ranking uni in the USA and all that, then you're at the very least missing 2 or 3 zeros.

Then for the website (including payment processing, the back end for the updates, bug tracking, keeping track of issued licenses, etc) you can very easily blow another 10K. And another 10K would disappear VERY quickly with adwords or such e.g. just for "audio converter" you're looking at $0.42/click (fraudulent or not), and out of the estimated 1M searches for those exact terms alone, even if only 1% click it that's $4200/month (still only for a single keyword combo)...

And that's assuming everything goes perfectly, but if you were more familiar with the software development world, you'd know that projects are hardly ever on time and on budget (and with every feature you wanted) -- it happens like 20% of the time perhaps. And most likely, there was a difference between whatever you wanted and what you asked for (99% likely) and you will have to revise your requirements (which will increase price, or they can spend the time on that instead of some other feature you wanted). Scenarios were people spent two or three times as much as originally planned before canning the whole project aren't exactly unheard of (sometimes costing hundreds of millions!) I've seen it first hand more than once. Project management is hard. Also, the next update/version won't be free either.

This is only the very beginning. And even if everything goes right development-wise which is quite unlikely, it doesn't exactly mean it'll be a commercial success either.

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I just asked programmers for the price for this work and they told me about 10 000 dollars, is that not way too expensive?

It *totally* depends on what it is. Again, it comes down to the actual requirements list. It could be way too much, or way too little.

If it's a ghetto VB6 front end to a open source command line encoder, without support, without bugfixes, without documentation, without a fancy interface, without (...) and writen by a out-of-school n00b that also happens to be in a country with dirt cheap labor... Then it's WAY too much.

If they have to write their own codecs in assembly for just about every possible format from scratch, pay the licensing fees for every technology used, have to deliver full documentation, free bugfixes within 24h for the next decade included, including the subcontracting for usability studies and graphics artists, professionally localized in different languages (including the help and installer), and the code written by a team of guys with a PhD's from a top-ranking uni in the USA and all that, then you're at the very least missing 2 or 3 zeros.

Then for the website (including payment processing, the back end for the updates, bug tracking, keeping track of issued licenses, etc) you can very easily blow another 10K. And another 10K would disappear VERY quickly with adwords or such e.g. just for "audio converter" you're looking at $0.42/click (fraudulent or not), and out of the estimated 1M searches for those exact terms alone, even if only 1% click it that's $4200/month (still only for a single keyword combo)...

And that's assuming everything goes perfectly, but if you were more familiar with the software development world, you'd know that projects are hardly ever on time and on budget (and with every feature you wanted) -- it happens like 20% of the time perhaps. And most likely, there was a difference between whatever you wanted and what you asked for (99% likely) and you will have to revise your requirements (which will increase price, or they can spend the time on that instead of some other feature you wanted). Scenarios were people spent two or three times as much as originally planned before canning the whole project aren't exactly unheard of (sometimes costing hundreds of millions!) I've seen it first hand more than once. Project management is hard. Also, the next update/version won't be free either.

This is only the very beginning. And even if everything goes right development-wise which is quite unlikely, it doesn't exactly mean it'll be a commercial success either.

How did you know that one click cost 0.42 for audio converter? :) And how much buyers I ll get if 1000 people will visit my website?

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How did you know that one click cost 0.42 for audio converter? :)

Check out the adword tools.

And how much buyers I ll get if 1000 people will visit my website?

There is no way to know that. If it's overpriced, buggy and doesn't look polished or usable, probably zero or very close to it. If it's the best thing ever and is just about free, a good amount. Price alone has a HUGE impact. Your profit vs price would typically look like a bell curve: you have the 2 extremes (a large volume of sales with a really low price, or a high price but almost no sales) and the sweet spot that you just have to find (max of units sold * unit price).

Either ways, that should be mostly to get them to download the trial which is what should convince them to buy it.

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