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Well, DOOM shareware and looking back a bit before the actual release of the registered copy.
COMMANDER KEEN SOFTWARE
As the fall approached I had begged to be driven a few towns over because I wanted to scope software at some of the computer stores that I hadn’t been to in a very long time. I took a little break in the summer of 93 and started selling other things, comics yard sale action figures. I continued to do this until I thoroughly killed my market and could barely move any more. He and my dad got really into fueling my new hobby, buying me sleeves and labels. In two weeks, between my 4H meetup, Church and the neighborhood I sold out!! I was completely stumped and so was an uncle of mine who I would call to tell all about how sales were going.
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My dad being a good sport bought me 100 floppies and off I went to make packaging for 10 copies of 10 of my favorite shareware titles. Whomever packaged this copy went into effort explaining the shareware business model in a little pull out paper sandwiched between the disk and plastic shell that housed it.Ī gigantic lightbulb flashed above my head and I started incessantly asking my parents if I could do this too. In 1992 when I was all of 12 years old I was given a homework assignment to actually “read the fine print” as it were on things I owned and share my summaries of the various toys packaging, food, items around my house.ĭuring one of my daily searches and sat in front of my shareware collection and had a read of my copy of Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons.
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So I shared this story in another subreddit about selling Linux Distros on USB and was asked to go somewhere else and share my experiences in the 90s selling shareware disks.
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