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The fate of the ASP.NET control

Once upon a time, in a distant land ... I created an ASP.NET control that now lives in the dungeons of my hard drive. This is a pretty well-tested and stable control that performs a very specialized task. I would like to do something with this control, and I can already think about it:

  • Commercialize it. It’s always good to make a profit, but since I don’t have a company and you don’t want to create it for this small purpose, how can I do it legally without excessive costs? Is there a marketplace or "eBay" for ASP.NET controls? In addition, it will take a little more work to prepare it for this, since I would have to write additional documentation, it is possible to create a trial version and, possibly, enable licensing and obfuscation of the control.

  • Open source. Make code in the world. Given the specific niche that the control fulfills, I do not expect any contributions from peers. And yes, there are many more ways to develop control.

  • Give it away for free. Thus, I could attract intangible assets for the recognition and reputation of peers, which is always good. What is the most prominent place to post?

What would you do?

UPDATE:

There are a couple of components on the market. I know binpress and codecanyon .

My control is a barcode control (one for ASP.NET and one for Windows Forms) that I put on google code .

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4 answers

If you want to open the source code, http://www.CodePlex.com is a great place, where you can publish your project, source code and take part in the community ....

I also believe that CodePlex has a system in which you could receive income from advertising displayed in the project workspace ...

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If you decide to switch to a “free” route, I highly recommend using it to drive traffic to your blog / website. Talk about it and start opening up your online presence to people to share your decision and benefit from the fruits of your labor. You receive income and potentially profitable traffic in return (through monetization of traffic / click / join).

Here's another route I saw with Brian Pauch some time ago using my Sitemap Generator tool. He started with a free beta to gauge interest and help work out any remaining excesses. He then moved on to an inexpensive payment model. Its traffic took off during the free phase and remained in the paid version.

Look, your (developers in general) time and knowledge are valuable. Noble to earn money from a great idea or solution to a problem. Good luck, and do not forget to update us according to what you decide!

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If you have no ambition to sell more of these controls, I would give them away for free. Assuming this is quality work, the benefits of peer recognition probably outweigh the net benefits of selling it.

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You can always open the source code and then offer support services for a fee to try to get the best of both worlds. If this is a niche, then they will not have many other offers to compare it, and your services may be more in demand.

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