Serious question:
How do you prevent your (paid) programs from being downloaded for free?

I really want to earn money from softwares but I'm so scared... (I'm 16 only)

Piracy will always be there, unless you’re a big company then you need to consider how you’re approaching this matter. You can make it so it needs to be online and connected to server for license verification but this probably will pissed more users

You can't prevent it, but paid software exist, which means they earn money right? Just don't worry, as a dev, you'll earn money

set a HWID (google what that is but beware, its highly complicated and meant for the big boys)

or set a network access for identifying the user and a unique hash that indicates if they have bought or not. pull and store this data from mysql. again, this is for the big boys

You could make some sort of online license check and in the case that fails like strip away everything but the absolut bare minimum of features to encourage the users to get a license

SaaS
But even that is not perfect.

@bkwilliams I absolutely hate the subscription model of SaaS and would prefer paying more once any than a little a lot.

@hexc yes, but (re)paying for point/major releases is a good way to get recurring income from existing customers. It’s like a paid DLC or in app purchases for business/prosumer software.

@SukMikeHok How is accessing a database "for the big boys".

Release your own pirated software to keep track of who isn't paying and try to figure out why your application sucks so much that people don't want to pay.

@BigBoo
Thats classic. You can troll pirates so hard with it. You can limit you software automaticly or add a hidden timer to shutdown the pirated app after some amount of time! Just create account on app sharing forums and play with them! I have to try it out as well!

When i first got here, i saw a guy post something about his software was being pirated (or posted it himself, not sure).
I may get the story wrong, but it ended up with a donate button and people sometimes sent him a bit here and there.

What i really remember, is that some guy donated a lot more than what the non-pirated software actually cost, because he wasnt aware and his butt wss saved by the pirated version :P

Develop for IOS. Nobody can pirate nothing.

Remember that those who use the pirated version most likely wouldn't pay for the legit version anyway.

@visudo Truth

@SoulOfSet u gotta be working with tokens

@S-Homles-MD or some swearing as the shutter sound

@Gregozor2121 Or just track who's pirating and figure out how to make them pay (for the app)

This is a worthwhile article.

Tldr: some TV company showed "free t-shirts" ad for those who didn't pay. People who wanted to claim the t-shirts were later captured.

http://articles.courant.com/1993-02...

.

​

You can't prevent it. I would offer a basic/trail version to get people interested and offer a more advanced version to buy.
I would not offer subscriptions for your first product, since it is hard to make legally safe contracts. Maybe you could offer updates and mail support for a limited time period after buy.
As @visudo said, the people who pirate your work wouldn't pay anyway.
Make a great product for your customers and don't loose your time on chasing the others.