When we first created Altered Brain Chemistry from its parent company, Hyperformance Solutions LLC, we were primarily testing out an experimental software licensing service. However, we wanted to have users to see how much it would cost to serve our licensing service for 1 store website. One would think, "There's no better way to test out the performance and costs for a web service than by using it in a free product," but it turned out that out of the billions of people on the planet, only one person besides myself "purchased" a free license for my software. And the person who obtained the free license did so because I personally asked them to (by the way, thank you Badr).
How could this be? Who doesn't want free software that can make a noob sound like a badass at the guitar? First and foremost, I will admit that marketing products towards a small market (the music producer + guitarist market) is bound to have fewer users than targeting a larger market. Second, the flow for obtaining free software through my site was kind of long. It asked for the user's email and checking out asked for an address. I figure that asking for too much information for a free product might be hindering the process. Also, users of free software do not like to license it, possibly because this company is not a big, well known company.
So what is the solution? We believe that increasing our prices is the best solution. We will continue to offer free trial licenses, but all perpetual licenses will have their prices increased. For some of our software, we will continue to make the software usable after license expiration, but at a reduced output quality (when applicable).