Note: The following monetary values are in United States Dollars and are designed to be used for hypothetical comparison and illustrative purposes only. To convert these numbers to your own currency you may use the XE.com Personal Currency Assistant.

How much is your time worth per hour? $5, $10, $15, $25, $50, $100 or more? I wish we could all say "more", but even if it's not worth that much as far as our current earning power, I hope you will agree it's at least worth something more than $5 or $10 per hour.

Have you ever kept track of how long it takes you to submit your program to a shareware download or search-engine site? The truth is that it can vary substantially between sites as some are very quick and easy to fill out, especially if they accept PAD, while others my take considerable time to do properly. I think it's fairly well understood that 15 minutes is the average time it takes, lacking any submission aids. Assuming this average is correct, it would take approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes for you to submit a program to 15 sites. This could vary depending on the sites you're submitting to, but it seems to be about right on average.

What if you could submit to those same 15 sites in half an hour or less? We have Shareware Tracker customers that can average 40-50 sites per hour for all the sites in our database. Assuming it took you half an hour, or 30 minutes, how much money do you stand to save based on the worth of your time?

I know this is a very simple calculation and I hope I'm not insulting your intelligence by walking you through this. If you are already very conscious of your worth and how important time savings are to you then you probably don't need this. Unfortunately, many of us lose track of this fairly regularly and therefore end up spending far more time on things than we need to, thus diminishing our productivity and eventual worth.

So you can quickly get an idea of how much time (time=money) you can save by using a tool like Shareware Tracker I've built this little table. If you don't fit very closely with any of the numbers I have provided I would encourage you to make the calculation yourself. If you always remember when allocating your working time that "time is money" your chances for success will be greatly improved.

Savings in time/money when submitting your program to 15 sites using Shareware Tracker, vs. no tool at all -- 3.75 hours minus .50 hours = 3.25 hours saved, which is valued as follows:

Your hourly time value	Money savings
$5.00	$16.25
$10.00	$32.50
$15.00	$48.75
$25.00	$81.25
$50.00	$162.50
$100.00	$325.00

If you license Shareware Tracker under our permanent licensing plan, your average annual cost over 5 years, including maintenance and all updates, will be $57.80. This means that if the above table is true, you will break even if you're worth about $18.00 per hour and only submit one program to 15 sites once each year.

Of course, if you have Shareware Tracker, you won't want to stop at only 15 sites, but will surely recognize the great value of having your program listed on as many as 300 sites, and you will be able to submit as many programs as often as you need. Even if you feel I've exaggerated the comparison above, you will have to agree that the time and money savings become absolutely incredible when using a tool such as Shareware Tracker to help you with your submissions.

I invite you to try the others and determine for yourself if you can submit to as many sites as quickly and easily as you can with Shareware Tracker, and still have the control you want over the entire submission and tracking process. I have myself experienced, as have many of you, the disappointment of using a program that claims to do all the submissions for you -- all you have to do is fill out some information once and select the sites and send it off for them to work their magic. Sounds great, doesn't it? I thought so. The problem is, what they promise and what they deliver are dramatically different, at least in the experience of all I have heard who have used such a service, including several who are now Shareware Tracker customers. So, don't be fooled by such claims. Try Shareware Tracker for yourself and see immediately if what we claim is true.

I only wrote Shareware Tracker because of my disappointment I encountered while using other tools. I had to have something that I could count on and figured my time savings would be worth the time I put into development even if I were the only one to ever use it. Since I decided to sell it as shareware I have put much more effort into it and have invested a great deal of work to make your job as easy as I can. And I'm not finished. I won't be finished until there is nothing more to be done to improve the balance between productivity, control and enjoyment of use. As things evolve that day may never come, but I invite you to take the journey with me. I'm committed to your satisfaction and the growth of your business that will take place as a result of taking full advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist on the Internet for promoting your fine software.

Great developers know the value of great tools. Make Shareware Tracker one of yours.

Best wishes,

Eric Peckham, Author
Shareware Tracker