An interesting software distribution problem

Question

Hi Guys,

I have a problem which I am sure some of you would be interested to discuss here. Here goes:

I and a couple of friends have been working on a small Windows Application which may be exactly what a niche market wants. We are in the final stages of releasing 1.0

We have been thinking of distribution arrangements and we have come up with two essential requirements:

a) We are not keen on buying a payment gateway. We were looking for a suitable website where we can present our product information and which can take care of sales and distribution - including payment arrangements and pay us our share later. Something like the Apple App store for Windows Applications.

b) We do not want to deliver a copy of our functional binaries to this distribution site. Instead, we want to host the binaries on our site only and serve them to customers who have been authenticated by the distribution site. (We are a little paranoid about hosting the binaries on a 3rd party site - this unfortunately is an immutable criterion.)

Does anybody know of a distribution site which would pass a) as well as b) ?

Answer 1

We are a little paranoid about hosting the binaries on a 3rd party site

Why do you think the binaries will be safer in your clients hands?

It seems to me you are better off running your own download server where your will be accepting payments yourself. PayPal or GoogleCheckout may be a start. if you register a company, you can then sign up with some credit card processing company to handle payments for you.

Right now I'm not seeing what benefits you expect from the third party distribution site. A way to get to potential customers?

Answer 2

You may want to look here http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz

This is the kind of question that is discussed there all the time.

Answer 3

Computers are all about making copies of software. Once you let random people download it from your website, the genie is already out of the bottle. Quit worrying and learn to love The Bomb.

I'm not a proprietary software fan, but if I somehow found myself in your shoes with your values here's what I'd do:

• Use a license manager. Nothing stupidly fancy like a dongle. Just something that makes folks check back in with you and pay.
• Host both the full installer and a torrent on my own website.
• Encourage everybody around the internet I can find who might be interested to also host the installer and/or the torrent.
• Issue periodic upgrades, both to get more money from honest customers and to obsolete the inevitable cracked copies.

Answer 4

RegNow a.k.a. Digital River meets both of your criteria. However, they somewhat over-hype themselves, so you will probably not make life-changing amounts of money from their network of cookie-cutter shareware sites.

By the way, nobody is going to sell your software for you, especially if it's for a narrow niche market, so you're better off using something like PayPal which takes only a small percentage of the overall sale price. RegNow takes a much higher percentage, supposedly in return for their marketing services, but most of your sales will probably come from your own marketing efforts anyway.