Ideally you should estimate the profit per sale to be enough so as to reach break even after around 25 to 30 sales. Again, while doing this you need to keep your competitor’s price in mind. If you offer a niche product, customers may be willing to pay more.

There is no simple answer to how much should you charge your customers for your product. A client based software could be charged at a higher price compared to a web based software. Besides, you can also have different versions of the same product. The basic version would have the most common functionality and would be priced the lowest. Premium or advanced versions would have much higher functionality and would be priced higher.

12.4 Choosing a Programmer

No one’s expecting you to sit down and code this baby by yourself. There are plenty of people who can do a great job in a decent amount of time—and sometimes even for free.

Why would a programmer who usually charges about $100 an hour work for you for nothing? Well, that's where things get interesting...

A great programmer is a genius at coding. He can put together 1 and 1 and make it equal 10 or 11, or whatever two is in binary. That’s his job. But few of them could sell you water if you were dying of thirst in the Sahara. They’ll tell you what water’s made of and design a program to count the molecules in the bottle but they’ll have absolutely no idea how to persuade you to buy it.

In effect, you’re going to offer a programmer a joint venture: a collaboration of his programming skills with your marketing ability. Neither of you will make any money with a program idea alone. But together you can make a fortune.

That’s what most corporate programmers dream of. They’re just dying for someone with a great idea to come along and help them with the marketing. It’s a match made in Silicon Valley heaven.

So where can you find these freelance programmers waiting to hit the big time? Again, Elance is a pretty good place to look. Many of the programmers advertising there are professionals who have made their money and are looking for a lower stress level than the 9-to-9 that most computer companies expect their whizzes to work. Many will expect payment but you should be able to find some looking to code for a 50/50 split of the profits.

Scriptlance is even better. This works in pretty much the same way as Elance, except that it’s targeted precisely at programmers. Again, you just submit a description of your project and wait for programmers to bid on it. As with Elance, the person you choose will depend in part in their price and in part on their experience.

Now, I’m not going to claim it’s a walkover to find a programmer who will work on the promise of future profits. They are out there, but you’re not going to bump into them on the street. Most of the programmers on Elance will expect payment—and that’s fair enough.

But there are plenty of programmers who have been waiting years for the chance to come up with that one idea that will give them a constant income month after month for no extra effort.

Be careful who you choose though. There’s nothing worse than picking up a duffer who isn’t prepare to put in the time needed to make the deal work. Ideally, try to find someone local; the whole process is going to go much smoother if you can create a decent personal relationship.