Need your ideas about how Comodo can generate revenue from free products! :-)

[Guest]

[panic]

What woult the advantage be, plus some people may feel Comodo is going back on their promise. What I would suggest is to sell the manual for the Firewall, something more in depth then the Help file included, sell it for a small fee such as $9.99 per book each book would be designed for the latest version of Comodo Personal Firewall but when a new version with some changes comes out then you can update the book and sell the updated ones. That way you might have a solid income, and the consumers who buy the book are happy to get a easy "noob" friendly guide in configuring the firewall and learning its features. As for the book I think that sending it as a PDF file would be good, unless they would want to buy the hardcopy for a more expensive price.

Example: Comodo Personal Firewall Users Guide (PDF Download) $9.99
                Comodo Personal Firewall Users Guide (Hard Copy by Mail) $19.99 (plus shipping however much that would be)

If your going to produce manuals for sale, why create manuals for just one of the Comodo product? If you create a manual that covers all of them for a reasonable price, they users will know about all the products (even if they were originally only interested in one) and have more of an incentive to adopt all Comodo products, which is where I think Melih would like the market to go, in terms of expanding security to enhance e-commerce usage to increase sales of HA certs.

What do you think?
Ewen :-)
 (WCF3)

[mike6688]

If your going to produce manuals for sale, why create manuals for just one of the Comodo product? If you create a manual that covers all of them for a reasonable price, they users will know about all the products (even if they were originally only interested in one) and have more of an incentive to adopt all Comodo products, which is where I think Melih would like the market to go, in terms of expanding security to enhance e-commerce usage to increase sales of HA certs.

What do you think?
Ewen :-)
 (WCF3)

Ewen, that may be good and gets people to see what other products Comodo offer if the the book for the application(s) they already have.

But, what about those who maybe just one application from Comodo for whatever reason?  How about selling one manual covering all as well as smaller manuals aimed at specific products.  These smaller manuals could contain some information on what the other Comodo products offer.  Do you think there will be enough economies of scale to implement this?

Mike

[panic]

Ewen, that may be good and gets people to see what other products Comodo offer if the the book for the application(s) they already have.

But, what about those who maybe just one application from Comodo for whatever reason?  How about selling one manual covering all as well as smaller manuals aimed at specific products.  These smaller manuals could contain some information on what the other Comodo products offer.  Do you think there will be enough economies of scale to implement this?

Mike

If we make separate manuals, a user may never know what other products Comodo produce, only about the one product he has a manual for.

If we put all the manuals together, that same user would have the manual for the specific application, but, as he has the manuals for all the other apps, he would be able to fully understand the other products and hopefully appreciate the need for a broad, unified security layer.

I think the idea of a "master" manual is best and shouldn't be too much more than the cost of separate manuals, if at all.

Ewen :-)
 (WCF3)

[mike6688]

Ok Ewen.

Either way, I'd buy a manual if Comodo offered them. 

Mike

[Júštiñ™]

Hi,

My idea was to make say a Comodo Personal Firewall Manual for the current version (i.e. Comodo Personal Firewall 2.0) then when Comodo Personal Firewall has a new upgrade (i.e. Comodo Personal Firewall 3.0) they would come out with a new manual including all the new features for the new 3.0 version that people could buy for a low price. If it was successful the maybe make a Master Manual for all the current Comodo Desktop Program versions and update that as needed. But the only problem is that the price would need to be low so people would want to keep buying the latest version of the manual, that way Comodo can possibly profit from it. 

[friendly_guy]

I can see I've come in a bit late in the discussion, but here goes:

1) Have some adverstising on your site so your grateful fans can click them & earn you some revenue.

2) Whatever you do make it easy to pay.  Having been impressed by the free AVG anti-virus (but not the firewall!!) I installed the 'paid for version' in my workplace - another incentive was that there was a bricks & mortar address in the UK I could send a cheque to & get a CD & a proper invoice for our accounts from.    (Someones business model working there .. hope this is interesting).  AVG also give a license for two years making it a good buy.  Also for the business there was proper

3) Support - the model that drives most of the free & open source industry.  Because money is involved businesses need good telephone &/or email support because downtime is money lost.  Firms that live off of Linux make their money on free software offering this support.  Companies should be able to pay & get technical help.

regards

Guy

[Blurr]

A agree with friendly_guy. I wouldn't mind (and would proabablyt click on) some ads below the froums and above them. But if you're going to host ads, plaese don't make them "flashy, or loud" those ads annoy me (and I think most people, and I would just block them.)

[zorank]

I just installed Comodo Personal Firewall and I wondered why is it free?

The discussion above about firewall=free/server=pay for gives the answer. I think that you present model is smart strategy in the long run. So let me tell you how I got to use Comodo, just as an example why I believe your strategy is the right one.

I started using well known firewall program, freeware version, let’s call it X. In all honesty, I uninstalled it after one day because I was frustrated how little it had to offer. In order to print I had to put server that connects to printer to zone that my computer trusts, and I was really uncomfortable with that. Also, I did not want to bother by testing Pro version (the one you have to pay for) since I felt insecure whether I would like it, and at the very end feeling insecure whether I could scratch some money for it. Installing, configuring takes time, I do not want to go through the same thing after 30 days trial period is over (either being unsatisfied, or not having money to buy it). So X lost me forewer.

If I wanted to try something, then I wanted to be reasonably sure it is a good thing, I can use it for free, and it can do more than freeware normally does. Again, I want to configure once, and forget about it (plenty of things to do, like everyone else). That’s wanting lunch for free, I know. I switched to Comodo since it offered free lunch.

Okay, now being happy about all this (being using program for one day and love it already), I started to wonder what are you (Comodo) getting out of this. From my side you are getting my complete trust. I will be very familiar with the program, and will reluctantly change to something else (I simply do not have time to learn how to use and configure 10000 firewall programs). Meaning, when I do scratch some money (and I am in a position to govern it) I will certainly turn to you because I want to stay with Comodo once I’ve learned it.

My two cents on it…

Zoran

[zorank]

And, of course, option to donate is something that should definitively be considered... / Zoran

[rgreene501]

How about a paid Trustix server app that polls for A/V, Firewall, etc updates and distributes them at the LAN rather than having an office full of users pound your update site.  Charge a subscription fee for saving the end user bandwidth.  Or, they could simply continue plugging along with the free service.  You could include reporting to show which nodes are no longer participating and show current versions of installed products.  One of the problems I run into routinely with products is that they are often disabled by various attacks and updates cease.  The end user never notices till the machine is crawling and by then the cost of repair is greater.

It would be a "Comodo Enterprise Subscription" model.

I could talk clients in small to medium size offices into purchasing as long as the products are of good quality.

[Júštiñ™]

I am sorry but I don't understand your idea of the Paid Trustix server app

[tlagrassa]

How about a low cost VAR and OEM program?
Preinstalled Software could be the niche you are looking for.
Exposure + Awareness = Profits

[rgreene501]

I am sorry but I don't understand your idea of the Paid Trustix server app

A product for deployment on a Trustix Linux box that proxies client update requests.

I use Trustix for SMB (SAMBA), mail (qmail), dns (TinyDNS), firewall (iptables), web proxy (Squid)...  adding another box or service is trivial and would help control bandwidth usage for frequently updated items such as A/V signatures.

For this service, many of my clients would happily pay a monthly fee.

[CCN]

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Also, use Prosperity Automated System (PAS) to sell your offer 24/7, and earn $10,000 - $30,000 a month or more:

Make A PAS Request To Call:

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[UnseenMenace]

Personally speaking I would never use software bundled witha toolbar as these usually provide 'statistical' information and as such to a certain degree creates privacy issues, this is without mentioning the fact that Windows is bloated with enough unrequired applications from default that I would not wish to download more.

I do not believe that 'paypal' style donate buttons create vast revenue as people like a free lunch and do not wish to tip for it, and advert supported applications have a poor image...

One source of revenue im surprised has not been investigated further on the internet is 'market research' The user of an application could complete questionaires on a regular basis which you could sell to market research companys.... These questionairs could be softly forced on the user by having a time expiring serial number which expires if a questionaire is not done once a month for example... The effect of not doing the questionaire would be that the application would no longer update.

Giving up ten minutes of my time a month for a free application is no problem

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