Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Great Debate: How Do I Actually Sell My Apps?

Preface: Note that all figures talked about in this entry are approximate, but based around my own sales and costs to make the figures relevant.

This argument seems to pop up again and again in the Mac development circle:

How do I collect money from my users?

Back in the days of shareware being distributed on floppy disks with magazines, many developers simply asked the user to send a $5 bill through the mail. These days, however, cash is pretty much obsolete for anything but car boot sales. Now we have to charge the user’s card ((This includes PayPal accounts, since they’re just another thing the user has that contains money)) over the web and have the license delivered by email.

When looking for solutions, the aspiring Mac developer has two options: either write the store yourself and integrate with a payment gateway (like their bank or PayPal) or use a third party service that does the lot (like eSellerate).

At first, doing it yourself looks like the much better option. Payment gateways are cheaper than full services, and you have the coding experience to throw together a simple store that integrates with them. It’s also been done before, and there are a few open-source stores you could use instead of writing your own.

Number Crunching

Right, let’s break down the average direct costs of selling apps - not including man-hours.