How to make a sellable Indicator

Hello Guys

Need your expert ideas on this. I write lot of code and try to make some money for my effort. But the hardest thing is ex4 can be easily decompiled and crooks resell them

Does anyone know how to make a indicator sellable. I wish to hear what others got to say.
These are something i have in mind but not sure how?
1. Make the indicator work for only one account?
2. Make the indicator work for only one machine?
3. Provide buyers only a license for 1 live and 2 demo?
4. Make a dll and call from indicator?

Does MQ4 language provide any support for this?

Please guys if you have other ideas let me know..

Thanks
Adler

even window 7 can be hacked before it released .

so if you have a good system, make profit for yourself after 2 or 3 years,

after that, you will be rich enough to share your system for free !

You don't need to be rich to share it for free.

This is not a system, I am planning to sell, but general trade utilities which i write.

I cannot make money with utilities for traders unless I sell them

Can there be made any reasonable amount of money at all by selling indicators?

There are myriads of free indicators around and every commercial indicator has at least half a dozen free clones with similar or sometimes even better functionality.

Should I join the dark side and start selling indicators and EAs instead of trading?

Sure if you create useful quality demanding(!!!) product not what you like...

I would move important parts of the calculations into a dll.

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=219576

above is a link with a quick start guide and a simple moving average indicator and an example for a more advanced indicator contributed by one of the users.

If you don't use a mainstream compiler like MS VC++ or gcc (where i am sure that some decent decompilers exist) but FPC instead which is not yet mainstream enough, you would create an additional hurdle for decompiling. The software thief would need very good assembler skills to even figure out which compiler was used, let alone figuring out what is actually going on in the code.

Make sure you turn off debugging symbols and enable "strip binary" in the project settings.

Much appreciated and I will take your suggestions thanks.

hey adler..... selling anything never really enters my mind so i'd be very limited on advice ..... but you might contact some of the members that have.....

as far as flashy but usefull indicators go there have been some like , cja and ferrufx, that have tried it and at least appear to be happy with their results..... ferrufx might have sold all rights, or so the gossip goes.....

stratman in the commercial section below is another.....


there are some others also, but those stand out......


if you decide to procede and it's no bother, let us know how it turns out..... might change my mind if 6 figures are involved......h

My thinking is to not put the logic into the code at all. I'm thinking write the indi in such a way that it downloads the logic from a central server upon init() and deletes the logic upon denit() one example is any constant number should be turned into a variable, and stored on your server. An indicator is useless without the proper settings.

Another method to combat these pirates is to write the security mechanisms so that the indicator doesn't work if a security breach is detected, or uses an alternate, useless formula. With this potential model involved, people who actually pay for a license will see the legitimate signals, while people who use decompiled code or otherwise remove the security measures get a different result. Don't tell them about it. Don't bother putting in warnings alerting them to a security breach.

I launched a commercial EA a few months ago, the EA has a lot of indicators in it but the settings for the indicators weren't included. The end-user could change them as they wished, but it's hard to optimize 200 different parameters.

What this EA did was it would take the security values, send them to my server, cross check those values against a database of known users and their associated IP addresses, if a particular license was accessed by more than one IP address simultaneously, the license was fed false data. The EA would still work, the decompiled user however would have trouble getting the same results as legitimate users.

I don't try to prevent decompiling / piracy, it's impossible. Instead, I look for ways to detect it, so I can spoof the users.

Thanks RR, all suggestions are greatly accepted

true, even dll file can be cracked. yes it will be safer, but as for programmer point of view, sometime I cracked file is just to see how it work.

also as for indicator development, well, if the indicator it self is very accurate other wise what is point to develop.

but i would said why not share it with other traders.

as for you to make money, I would said, start trading for your self.

best regards