I developed a handy little application that can help a lot of people. I would like to sell it for a few dollars/license, but I do not have any infrastructure for hosting or big money for advertisement.
What do you suggest, where should I start?
EDIT:
I would also like to come up with a very catchy name, I need a (preferably free) nice icon set, so every bit of information helps
I suggest you start with the Business of Software Forum FAQ at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?W1341
This FAQ comes from the following forum http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz which also has archived discussions at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?pg=pgDiscussArchive&ixDiscussGroup=5
Make a web site. blog about it get a paypal account there were sites that used to do things like this but I think they are mostly passe now. (cnet and others)
Go to forums or sites that relate to the product/software. Introduce it - but not in offensive or underhanded ways. Participate in forums or discussions/become one of the "experts" if that is relevant to the domain.
Make a video or a podcast about it and put it out there. youtube, etc. Show how to use it in the video or podcast.
Hosting is CHEAP. Paypal setup is free. Try it out. You have nothing to lose. It is not going to be an overnight thing. It will take time. If it doesn't work, at least you have the experience for the next one.
EDIT: ChrisW's advice/post is good.
Here is an excerpt from one of the links within his link:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.636951.17
In my personal experience, getting that first $1,000 a month was mostly about getting the product and website polished. The second $1,000 for me was about 50-50 improved use of AdWords and creative SEO. (Apparently there are a couple hundred people out there who really, really need Insect Bingo cards. Some portion are willing to pay. Repeat times a few hundred.)
After you've doubled once to $2,000, you know all you need to do to get $10,000? Repeat the $1k to $2k process about 2 times and then add a little to push you over the finish line. (I'm not mentally invested in ever seeing $10k a month with BCC, but I have absolutely no doubt I'll hit $3k and probably $4k eventually. So much in this business scales geometrically rather than arithmatically, which is good news for us -- the difficulty of multiplying by 2 doesn't vary wildly.) Patrick McKenzie (Bingo Card Creator) [Recognized User] Send private email Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Unless it's absolutely amazing, you may find packaging a program into a product just isn't worth the effort.
But if you want to anyway, the "Association of Shareware Professionals" used to have fairly active forums that discuss this type of thing. http://www.asp-shareware.org/
This has already been covered in this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/409026/software-marketplace
I am in a similar position, as I created an app which I think can help other developers just as it helps me doing my job (which was the original intention ;)).
It would be a nice feature of SO to have a stackoverflow marketplace, where active community members could present their product.
Then I thought, one could add feedback pages and comments and voting and tagging, but then we end up with a second SO installation.
And theeen I thought the easiest way would be to allow a "marketplace" tag for those interesting in publishing and browsing apps and tools.