A simple program

Ok, here's what I would like to think is a fastlane idea. I'm hoping you all can help me put together some of the pieces.

I've thought of what seems like a simple program that people would be interested in. It's something that I could use and I think others might be interested in it too.

It seems like the program would be simple enough to put together and I want to keep it as low tech and efficient as possible for the end comsumer. It seems like the hard part will be getting people to actually take a test run to see how simple I would like it to be.

From what little I've learned about web marketing I hear a viral type of plan might be good for what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I don't care if I only get a dollar for the program if I can send it around and get a dollar from a million people.

Has anyone here heard of anything like this ever working? I'm thinking the program might be "neat" to have and can save people time. I would pay a dollar for it in a heart beat. I just think you could get a lot more of the general public interested if it was only a dollar or something like that. I see Dollar General stores everywhere I go. How you keep it from just being copied and sent to all your friends seems impossible.

I've been writing down everything I can think of for an online "system" and this little program came across my mind. I found some online web design classes down at the local college and am looking forward to building my first internet system or something as close as I can get to one.

Please tell me this works. I know only the market will tell but I sure like the model of selling a program now that I think about it.

Well...since you are being pretty vague, it's hard to say if your idea is fastlane or if it will work. I suppose the premise sounds fastlane: appeals to a large number of people, internet-based, affordable and easy to use. If your idea fills a need or just plain appeals to enough people, and you can figure out a way for it to be done, then I would think it can be done. To see if there is enough interest, you could always ask 20 people and see what they say. ...Even if they don't like it, ask them questions as to what they would do to make it better.

Like yves said, it tough to tell when the information is so vague, but as a developer I can tell you the real "cost" in programming is the support and maintenance.

In this way your "sell it to 1 million people for 1 dollar" approach is worrisome.

What are you going to do if you get 1000 support requests a day?

My guess...run for the hills and charge $50 for your next simple program.

Here's what I believe is a better approach, and one that I personally use:

Give the program for free, just make people register with their email before they can use it. Then sell to the list (promote your other products or other people's related products), but you don't have to feel guilty or obliged to have good support since the program is free, people haven't lost anything if it stops working.