selling plugins - which distributor?

[Blue Cat Audio]

you are among dontcracks distributees - i guess you have your reasons.

Well, we are not (yet). I just wanted to point out that their offer is rather different from the shareit system. Be it better or not, it's not the question.

If you are not confident with web programming and don't want to "waste" time with it, just start with the solution that seems the easiest to you, and see how the business goes. You can choose another distribution channel when it's time.

[Music Engineer]

you are among dontcracks distributees - i guess you have your reasons.

Well, we are not (yet).

i thought i've seen you on the list, but having just checked back, i was wrong. but you are planning to switch?

If you are not confident with web programming and don't want to "waste" time with it, just start with the solution that seems the easiest to you.

O.K. that would be dontcrack then. yes - i think, i will choose that route. also, share-it seems not to be very popular among the customers.

[ckatrun411]

Hi Robin,

I had a chance to glimpse your site, you have some really neat ideas. Can't wait to see some os x btw, I think don't crack is allright as long as its non exclusive, but I'd still like to encourage selling to your customers directly. From a buyers point of view, I have just had so much better luck with dev's who are available, have a full and complete e commerce store. And I am sure it brings in a whole lot of clientele as opposed to just being on don't cracks. Fortunately there are plenty of open source css apps that you just don't even need to know web languages to have an ecommerce store.

Trust me buddy

I have been exploring e commerce myself... ( not music related )

I am not sure if you can do it from Germany, but if you can use GoDaddy, for your store and site, I highly suggest. Godaddy will provide everything, including SSL security, and all the open source weblications you need.

GoDaddy is like the best for non computer coders, so if you code computer it is going to be super easy. It is so much better to at least have your store as an option and get 100% for your hard work, than just give in, say, OK, don'tcrack and have -35%

cheers

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

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

+1

[botkiller]

We use Shareit, they're pretty easy to work with when it comes to uploading and selling your software, the only issue I've seen is that if you sell products that are boxed, you still have to give them something to be downloaded when someone purchases an item. This can be a bit hard if your product has a big file library, like NexSyn, which we can't do a download of the sound library for.

Other than that, it works pretty well, I think - but I'm just the support guy, too

I think doing a paypal checkout is a good way to go - just know that with Paypal you will still also get kicked with fees off of what you make - but paypal works nicely if you can make it work for you, and they have widgets which you can edit and embed in places from paypal labs - http://www.paypallabs.com

[Blue Cat Audio]

i thought i've seen you on the list, but having just checked back, i was wrong. but you are planning to switch?

No, we will always keep our own retail site, whatever happens on the earth . We are just discussing a potential partnership to distribute our products on dontcrack, as an additional retail channel.

I agreee with ckatrun411 about the customers perception. Again, when you want to grow you will have no choice but have your own retail site (using shareIt, paypal or whatever solution). But in the meantime, you just need to get started. Wait and see...

[duncanparsons]

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?

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

One thing they do ask, is that if you sell the products elsewhere, that the dontcrack price is offered with a 20% discount.. so your £100 plug sold on your own website using [share-it/paypal/gimmeyermoneyvaluedcustomer/etc], will be offered at £80 on dontcrack. This isn't a problem for me, since when I have a product ready for commercial consumption, I will initially only be using DC.

So.. selling via your own channel, you lose the x% that [share-it/paypal/gimmeyermoneyvaluedcustomer/etc] take off, but you keep the rest and have your overheads. Also selling with DC you get 80%*(1-35%)=52% of the 'full price' back. Now, if you think that's bad, compare to if you are a company providing boxed products into shops: the distributor adds a certain markup to your raw product, then a shop will take a quantity on a Sale-or-Return deal, and will at at least 100% markup. So if you work backwards, if your product was on the shelves at £100, the distributor will get £50, and give ~£35-£40 to you... If you're small, the distributor may have a S-o-R clause as well, so when times are slow, you may have a quantity of your merchandise arrive back on your doorstep that couldn't be sold. Mull that over...

dontcrack actually offer pretty generous terms, considering they pay your rent, tell everyone about you, and still cover your donkey when things are slow.



DSP

[WilliamK]

Just my 2 cents.

Share-It, never uses, their fees are too high, and they take too long to pay you back. The same for Kagi. BUT, depending where you live those are good solutions.

DontCrack is nice, but I never got much sales from them. But again, I sell an older version of our software there, so you could blame that.

My advice is to get your own site up, and use PayPal for your sales. They have the lower fees, and you get the money right away with their debit-card, or by withdrawing to your bank-account. (not all countries works with PayPal)

Them, avoid any invasive copy-protection, as this tends to scare users. We don't use ANY, only a SN check, and the latest version no longer checks for it. Its too easy to crack. We focus on the paid-users, instead of making them feel bad with stupid protections.

Listen to your users, keep updates coming with as many requests from users made as possible. Just be careful with requests that would break your code.

You can't please everybody.

You can't please everybody.

You can't please everybody.

That counts 3 times, as its true.

Group-buys are also a good way to promote your stuff, and get more users too.

Remember, if you think your software is worth 100 grand, most people may not agree, but its actually worth 50 grand. There are two things, the price people will think your software is worth, and the price they are willing to pay for it. There's already too much stuff on the market. Also, the more you sell, the better. So sometimes a lower price will get more sales, compared to a higher price. Some people say that a lower price will make your product look bad, but only a very small % of users really think that lower-price = bad-quality. Most companies today are lower prices, as they see that Software don't have to be expensive. And also due to the high amounts of piracy. Or at least have a lite-version that is very cheap, for people who can't afford expensive software.

Not sure what else, I think that's it.

Best Regards, WilliamK

[Music Engineer]

thanks to everybody. i think, i will go with dontcrack but will also check out paypal and godaddy as options.

@William: additional thanks for your general advises. and no, i won't do intrusive copy protection - i have spawned a simple and user-friendly xml-based keyfile meachnism for the licensing.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

...

agreed every single word

[ddummer]

I've figured out my approach.

I'll start selling to my music friends and trough their connections and so
on.

And if the response is positive I'll try to make a deal with some distributor
ón a low level like a music store with people you already know and we'll see
what will happen...

Internet? No.

//Daniel

[Urs]

I use ShareIt because their accounting system makes tax declarations easier. I'm hit with a monthly accounting summary with the VAT and everything declared in one go. With PayPal (or other services that work "immediately") I would have to declare each single sale.

Also, ShareIt nicely distinguishes between EU sales with and without VAT-Id and sales made out of the EU. This (different VAT rules) makes up for compensation of the hilarious dollar exchange rate.

Last but not least, they have overcome many critical issues I had with them (dead emails, gmail/mac/hotmail addresses) but I think that was after I threatened to leave.

The next step would be setting up a merchant account and doing everything automatically by myself including Credit Card/PayPal integration. It's not too difficult to do, but it's a lot of work and testing. I have better things to do hence I'll stay with ShareIt for a while...

Cheers,

Urs

P.S.: Any service that wants more than 20% is a no go unless they move a shitload of units. For boxed products in retail you usually have to sell 8-10 times the figures of online sales to just so break even (there's an accumulation of support incidents... don't trust any distributor about their support system... all they do is, they forward the support incidents to your own email account... that's their support)

[Music Engineer]

Urs, much thanks for your advice as well! i really appreciate established companies helping out a newcomer.

I use ShareIt because their accounting system makes tax declarations easier. I'm hit with a monthly accounting summary with the VAT and everything declared in one go. With PayPal (or other services that work "immediately") I would have to declare each single sale.

oh well, i think that's a no-go for me then. as far as i know, dontcrack accumulate the payments for you and every once in while (when a certain threshold is exceeded) you can send them an invoice to transfer the money - i guess (and hope), this transfer can than be accounted as one unit for the book-keeping.

P.S.: Any service that wants more than 20% is a no go unless they move a shitload of units. For boxed products in retail you usually have to sell 8-10 times the figures of online sales to just so break even

ah, so online selling is much more efficient then. nice - i do not plan boxed products anyway.

don't trust any distributor about their support system... all they do is, they forward the support incidents to your own email account... that's their support

yeah, i would have guessed so - at least in case of technical support. how can a distributor be supposed to provide technical support when only the developer knows the internal details of the software.

[sosayweall]

Sorry to barge in this thread to ask for some suggestions.

We are trying to find a new transaction service provider. Is there any other service which hasn't been mentioned in this thread that we could look into?

The thing is, we just want an online transaction service which acts as an online cash register.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Unfortunately, it seems that most of todays popular transaction service providers want to be more. They want to posit and enforce themselves as 'reseller/retailer' upon the seller. Say, Shareit has changed its policy to pushing every vendor to provide them with complete access to the goods and with restricted delivery options. That's not a tolerable policy in our book. Another transaction service that I have looked into even prohibits the vendor to refer to it as 'a transaction processor'. What the heck?

Sorry for the rant. We'd really appreciate it if anyone has any suggestions.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

My pretty stable to date two-year experience: 2CheckOut.com + ThePlanet.com (for hosting). I could not find anything better (and I tried hard). PayPal is cheaper compared to 2CheckOut, but 2CheckOut is maximally automated and so far delivers very little fraud-related chargebacks, it also accepts PayPal payments, but at twice the commission in comparison to PayPal itself (it's still 5.5% + 45c only).

I'm also very happy with ThePlanet and their hosting solutions. It's pretty good overall: I'm renting a server with 750 GB monthly bandwidth, and also renting cPanel license that makes server management a hassle-free thing - you won't need to hire a linuxoid techie. Or you may simply install Windows and use some remote desktop control (but that will be pricier, of course). Shared hosting is not an option for me anymore - too much traffic, but if you are just starting, take a look at PowWeb.com - I also had a good experience with that one.