No, that's the awesome thing about software sales: You absolutely can be!
Step 1: Price software at $20
Step 2: Assume hosting costs of $10 per month
Step 3: Convert at a ratio of 200 views to 1 sale [1]
Step 4: Profit!!!
Admittedly, your profit for the first month will be $40 - $10 = $30, and your hourly wage will be $30 divided by however many hours you worked on the thing.
But let's say the software, like BCC version 1, is basically "a random number generator attached to a GUI" (as I vaguely remember patio11 describing it once), so you didn't put in too many hours. Now if you can manage to maybe triple your daily uniques to an entire 120 views a day and keep converting at that ratio without putting in too many more hours, you already have a business that'll pay for your pizza, forever, without really all that much effort on your part.
Now, if you assume an opportunity cost at google salary for working on this, of course it'll never be profitable. But if I assume google salary opportunity cost for my work, I'm losing money at an incredible rate by being a doctor, too.
[1] Someone who actually sells software for a living could probably give you more realistic numbers here, but these don't seem entirely unachievable to me.
I don't sell software (yet) but I do Sell Things On The Internet.
200 views to 1 conversion is a little high, but not completely impossible. 1000 views to 1 conversion may be a bit more realistic. However, if you've got 40 uniques a day, that still means you're selling more than 1 copy a month, and are thus in profit!
(This is why SEO plus software or other product sales work so well, btw - the CPM you're getting off your views with a well-targeted match between content and product is far, far higher than you'll ever see anywhere outside of poker blogging. )
No, that's the awesome thing about software sales: You absolutely can be!
Step 1: Price software at $20
Step 2: Assume hosting costs of $10 per month
Step 3: Convert at a ratio of 200 views to 1 sale [1]
Step 4: Profit!!!
Admittedly, your profit for the first month will be $40 - $10 = $30, and your hourly wage will be $30 divided by however many hours you worked on the thing.
But let's say the software, like BCC version 1, is basically "a random number generator attached to a GUI" (as I vaguely remember patio11 describing it once), so you didn't put in too many hours. Now if you can manage to maybe triple your daily uniques to an entire 120 views a day and keep converting at that ratio without putting in too many more hours, you already have a business that'll pay for your pizza, forever, without really all that much effort on your part.
Now, if you assume an opportunity cost at google salary for working on this, of course it'll never be profitable. But if I assume google salary opportunity cost for my work, I'm losing money at an incredible rate by being a doctor, too.
[1] Someone who actually sells software for a living could probably give you more realistic numbers here, but these don't seem entirely unachievable to me.