AKA: Accessorizing
Payments for merchandise, swag, apparel, mugs, stickers, books, NFTs, or other content created by the maintainers. Often one-time payments without many recurring options.
Requires:
Variants & Options:
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Days | Logo-design can be outsourced. Creating a book is a lot of work |
| Effort to maintain | Low | Updating merchandise is almost no work, updating books is more work |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Low cost from Logo design, etc. |
| Cost to maintain | None | Â |
| One-time Income | Low | Merch and books are relatively cheap |
| Recurring Income | Low | Book updates might have an recurring effect |
| Income Predictability | Low | Constant reminders to merch might be necessary. Merch producers might bring new customers |
| Full income Threshold | 500+ | buyers per month; |
| Recipient | C | Â |
| Additional Work | None | Maybe if logo or content is updated |
| Visibility | Medium | Easy to oversee. Merch listings & wearers might increase reach |
| Necessity to pay | Low | Might increase with the “prestige” of the software |
| Entry Threshold | Low | Credit card is sufficient |
| Countervalue | 1xWork | Creation and update of book is time-consuming |
| Scalability | Medium | Scales with the number of users (who want the merch) |
| Effort for marketing | Medium | Customers might find merch & books via platform / google |
| Competitors | None | Logo or designs are probably copyrighted/trademarked by one maintainer or collective |
| Software types | Big SW | Better for big, complex and widely-used software |
NOTE: Potentially, “unofficial” books can also be issued by non-maintainers (i.e., just expert), which could increase the competition. However, if the logo etc. is a registered trademark, merchandise from competitors might not be a problem.