How long should a software time trial be?

[bingocards]

Good day.  I am the author of one of the blogs linked above and noticed you in my referrer log.  Someone was asking what typical return rates are in the shareware industry.  Speaking only of my own experience, for mature software versions I experience somewhere south of a 2% return rate (my total lifetime return rate is about 5%, which is a function of a relatively high number of returns for the first release of my product, first release of the Mac version, and two updates which did not go smoothly on machine configurations I had not anticipated).  I made a blog post talking about this in more detail which some of you may find interesting.

http://microisvjourn...ers-request-refunds/

[mouser]

Welcome to the site patrick - your blog has been discussed here a few times and i'm a regular reader.  It's a tad too focused on maximizing profits for my normal tastes (that's not a knock on your site at all just a comment on the kinds of blogs i normally read), but it really does make for interesting reading and I think it's a wonderful resource for new microisv people to get insight into selling their own software.  I think it's incredibly rare for someone to be so honest about how their business is doing and why, on such a regular basis.

Really nice to have you drop by