Following my decision to release my first desktop app as donationware, I did a little research into the experience of others with this model and found a great interview with Hillel Stoler, developer of donationware app GetSocial.

My own reasons for releasing my first app as donationware are quite similar to Hillel’s actually, and are as follows:

• I don’t like apps with limited functionality and I don’t like apps with ads embedded in them (yes, I have released a number of Google Android apps with ads in them but I am trying to get away from this model).
• I am curious about the donationware model as a long term opportunity for open source developers to be able to feed themselves (thus being able to devote even more time to developing open source apps).

For those of you who want to know the raw numbers, Hillel estimates that he gets a 0.55% conversion rate (ie the donation/downloads ratio) and that an average donation is $9.19. Therefore, 1000 downloads bring in $50.54. He qualifies this further by saying the stats only represent downloads from his own website as he cannot quantify downloads from third party websites and furthermore, as he regularly updates the app, the same person might download the app several times over the active lifespan of the app to get the updates.

Thanks to Andy Brice over at Successful Software for publishing the interview, it is very informative