B4J Question Monetize Apps made in B4J

I find it interesting that both those sites set off Norton's alarms and the products advertised therein feature installers that Norton correctly categorizes as adware and trojans. It seems their software make changes to browser settings and display popup ads. If they are anything like other similar software, they are most likely changing homepages, installing toolbars, changing default search engines, etc... without the user's permission. In my opinion, the (most likely small) remuneration you might get for using these services is not worth the damage to your professional reputation as a developer.

for some reason most of these companies don't support the desktop platforms.

I bet you can cheat with some of them but that will probably lead to being banned after a while.

The thing you have to bear in mind is most users of desktop computers have admin rights, and can easily block any ad's you put in simply by modifying the hosts file or using ad blocking software (not browser ones but system wide ad blockers). If a program is good people will buy it. If it's not good enough to sell, it's probably not worth publishing it.

that bitTorrent client had (or still has?) ads in it, I guess that's widely used and worth it.

not sure what method they use(d) inthere tho.

And still less annoying than installing crap apps like reg cleaners and toolbars in the background.

The uTorrent situation is an interesting case study. They built a huge user base by being a free open-source no-ad program that outperformed all the competitors. Then, once they had a huge user base, they decided to monetize their program by adding ads and making background upgrades the default (the program would upgrade itself to the latest version in the background, without user input or approval). The ads were the subject of a good deal of public backlash but it didn't seem to hurt their install numbers too much. There was a uTorrent Pro that you could buy that would remove the ads, but I guess it didn't generate much revenue because they then introduced a background Bitcoin miner that would continue to run even after you "closed" uTorrent. You had to kill the uTorrent process in Task Manager to stop the Bitcoin miner. Obviously, you weren't keeping the Bitcoins mined on your computer. This received a much larger public backlash and it must have hurt their install numbers because they took that out of recent versions.

The obvious lesson here is that users don't want you to have any money, whatsoever, regardless of how you get it. They won't give it you. They won't agree to being a party to your getting it elsewhere.

Roycefer said:

The obvious lesson here is that users don't want you to have any money, whatsoever, regardless of how you get it. They won't give it you. They won't agree to being a party to your getting it elsewhere.

Click to expand...

That's a bit of a sweeping statement. I for one, hate ads in all their forms in software. I don't want to be forced to see things that someone arbitrarily decides I should, 99.99% of which is not even relevant to me. I regularly un-install programs and apps from my phones/devices and PC because they display ads. If there is a purchase option and I find the program useful, I am more than happy to pay a reasonable amount for it. This helps me too as I don't keep apps on my devices that I don't use.

The second scenario you described is far worse in my mind. An app running an unrelated process using my computer and network connection for the benefit of someone else without my knowledge, well that is just theft.

I was, of course, being hyperbolic. But humor aside, individual users aren't keen on paying for software, especially when, from their view, there is so much free software available. Android users even less so than iOS users. The data suggest that they are much more willing to tolerate ads than pay outright for an app, making your position (which I share) rather uncommon. I suspect this situation is a little worse on the desktop. Ads are tolerated in mobile apps because they've been there almost since the beginning of widespread smartphone adoption. But ads in desktop applications are rather unusual and desktop applications have been used by many for decades. I think introducing ads to desktop applications will be a hard sell. Users don't seem to tolerate them to the same degree as they do ads in mobile apps.