O.K. it's about time for me to get serious with my plan to make a living from selling commercial audio plugins. i'm just not quite sure, what would be the best solution for distribution. my two hottest candidates are at the moment www.share-it.com and www.dontcrack.com. i see that both distributors are used by well respected companies in the field, so i guess both options are fine.

what makes me leaning towards share-it is, that they only take a small profit margin from the retail price for their own revenues. dontcrack takes a rather large margin: according to an (old, maybe outdated) contract form i received from them (about two years ago), they charge 35% whereas share-it only charges 4.9%. on the other hand, dontcrack offer to take over the marketing part for their money. i'm not exactly a salesman and i don't really feel like turning into some such. on the other hand, i'm not exactly paris hilton either, so it is mandatory for me to achieve a reasonable number of sales in order to pay my bills bring the food on the table - and i *really want* to work full time on my plugins. from their (www.dontcrack.com) website:

Marketing Services : We strongly promote our partners' products by advertising on targeted medias.

...and this is just about the only point which could seem to be worth such a large margin for me. but that statement is extremely vague. there are no hints on what exactly the advertising actions are - do they place advertisements for their distributee's products into relevant magazines like Sound on Sound or the Computer Music Mag? do they keep their distributees well informed about all their concrete advertisement actions?

it would be nice to hear some opinions from people who have some experience in the business. and of course, are there other options and what are their advantages/disadvantages?



thanks in advance, robin

haven't the slightest clue. but this might be an option http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=211809

oh yes, i already contacted william and i think i'll write some technical tutorials similar to those on my website for wusik. thanks anyway.

interesting... I myself am also not in the computer software bizz, but boy I can't stand share it. Its makes buying very difficult, their support is NIL.

I mean, seriously their customer service blows.

anyways, what about paypal, and google check out and the like? I mean, it would seem to me that providing excellent freeware, and an Open Source project, paves the way for software sales.

I mean, its looks that way. Not always, obviously... but, chances are, if your freeware is constantly getting use on my machine, sooner or later I am buying a payware from you....

difficult? what exactly are the inconvenencies here?



mmhh...service...what kind of service do expect from a distributor? license transfer stuff and some such? because - as for technical support - i think, i am supposed to take care of that myself.


yes paypal is on my radar, too. google checkout is something i didn't know before - i just checked it out. mmmhh...they do not seem to handle delivery of keyfiles and the like which would be something i need.



much thanks for the 'excellent' - and yeah, i hope so. i plan to continue to provide freeware in the future as well. i'm planning to offer a mix between free and commercial software.



yeah, we'll see. there will be always demos for the commercial products, so you can calmly check out whether you want some item or not.

Yikes.



For 35% their marketing services better be good...

I handle all of my sales manually through PayPal.

As far as promoting your plugin yourself, you can offer a NFR copy to various magazines in exchange for a review. SoundOnSound will (hopefully) publish a review of Cobalt sometime in the near future.

Um, unfortuately that's about all the advice I have. Advertising is something I always intended to look into but haven't yet. However, I will say that instead of relying on a third party to promote your plugin, I would put together promotional material yourself and take out advertising in the relevant magazines (provided that it's not too expensive). You know better than some generic marketing company how to best reach your target audience.

Good luck with this. I'm still learning the business side of things as well.

arrg, share it problems. I know for a lot of dev's there is just not another way. I don't really have a problem with any dev on kvr, but it just makes sense that they find a way to deal with costumers directly. Share it websites are slow, and if you have a problem with the dev sending you the software, as has happened to me 5 times, you will start avoiding share it completely. I know share it will send out software and key files on there own, but if you have a question, or you have any problem with the order, you can not expect share it to help at all. in any sort of timely fashion.

PLUS, and this is a total opinion.. I have just had better experiences from retailers, ie sweetwater, aud midi, or developers who sell directly, ie psp, virsyn, cakewalk. Now I know cakewalk is just big, but that really is not the point. Smaller devs nowadays, can just as easily sell directly.

there are too many hosting solutions that will send out links once a payment is received.


and, afaik, share it does nothing to help market. what a middle man.





sorry mate, I was not talking about you directly, just freeware in general, I should have been more specific.

I am on mac os x, I do not think I have used any product of yours.





absolutely, I have bought payware products from devs who also have freeware installed on my machine.

I think you are comparing two solutions which are completely different and further more actually not incompatible.

ShareIt is only a payment solution (with license delivery included), and Dontcrack.com is an online store. Shareit is just a service to help you be a retailer of you own products, and you can see Don't Crack as a partner that will sell your products as well as other ones. On Don't Crack people can browse the catalog and discover your products while browsing products from others, and I doubt people actually do the same on ShareIt.

So I think both approaches are complementary. Maybe start to launch your own retail channel and see what happens before getting in touch with partners.

BTW, if you know a little bit about web programming I would advise you to do your own retail site and use Paypal or Google Checkout as a payment solution: it lets you control the product delivery, and makes the customer experience much better: if they do not receive the license (oh, dear spam filters...) they will be able to contact your support (well, I guess you for the moment ) directly and you won't have to find out what happened on the ShareIt side.

Good luck!

i'm using dontcrack, since in the short term I worked out it would be better for me when my first commercial offerings hit the streets.

They provide webspace and unlimited bandwidth, do marketing campaigns, provide the shop front etc. If I were do to this myself, I would have an initial outlay, and take the hit for failed marketing campaigns. When I start selling, if business is slow, DC are still acting as a buffer for me being out of pocket. If business picks up, yes they will still be getting 35%, and if it looks like things will remain bouyant for me, I will consider getting alternative arrangements for my webspace, shopfront, etc - and by that time the 'business' should be bringing in enough to pay for itself.

Were I to do it all myself straight off, I would have to reconsider ballet and swimming lessons for my children, and maybe one or two other things: all depends what your priorites are!

DSP

Hmm, my previous comments were based on ignorance of what don't Don'tCrack is like. After actually taking the time to look over their website, I'm impressed.

I'm still reading the fine print, but could someone tell me off hand if there would be a problem with selling your plugin yourself, as I'm doing, off your own site in addition to using Don'tCrack?

@bluecat:

thanks for your explanations. unfortunately i'm not that savvy with web-programming apart from some basic html knowlegde. ...dsp and c++ is enough for me. yes, i see that these two approaches are somewhat different. that's why i asked which route to choose. you are among dontcracks distributees - i guess you have your reasons.


yes. that's exactly my point - i don't want to do such stuff and instead concentrate on the actual product development. can you be more specific about what kinds of campaigns these are? webspace and bandwidth...mmmhh...well - i actually have already a good provider for these things - on the other hand, it's not the cheapest either and with dontcrack i'd have that already inclusive.

as far as i remember, the contract is non-exclusive. ....checked. yep.

aha thanks for that tip. so you approached the magazine from your side or did they somehow pick you?

oops, nevermind then. funny is, i have indeed one opensource-project and some freebies out there.


with probability close to 1 since my stuff is PC only - but that will change.

back to why share it sucks...

first, I never remember my username because it's always my email with a dash and a number after it. I always somehow having to make a new account every time I buy something with them so I have like 5 accounts with them....

then I have to save the two pages of emails I get, and if something doesn't work right, I might as well pull my hair out. It just seemed messy...

I think audiodamage uses or used shareit, but at least their web site had it so you could register and then not worry about keeping these stupid emails, username, passwords, etc... I think they did it right.

If you're planning on doing it as a business, you might want to do it right too... I'm not familiar with dontcrack but maybe that would be better for you...