1)If I wrote a game is there any way I could get a publisher to take it on, or anyone to market it for me for a percentage? 2)How would I get it put on CD to post (other than sitting all day clicking ''copy CD'' every 12 minutes(!)) and how much does that cost?

I Don''t know about the CD''s, but I do know that Setsystems.com will do the actual sales via credit cards and what have you, for a low comission (%20 or so)

Whoah, whoah. Hold on there. 20% is a bit high for just credit card processing. Take a look here:
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/regservices/

You can get the processing done for less than 10%, and they are most all reputable companies. A lot of people around here use BMT, Digi-Buy, Kagi, RegSoft, SWREG, and a few others, and all seem pretty happy with them. From what I can read about setSystems, they dont seem to provide much value above what the other, cheaper alternatives do.

Digital Candle looks good. They take 10%, no minimum fee, no setup fee, and will ship CDs for no additional fee. Can anyone say anything good/bad about them? The rest of the services (Digi-Buy, RegSoft) seem to have at least a few dollars in minimum payment, as well as setup fees.

Alternatively though you could use PayPal and take care of the sales yourself. The only major disadvantage with that is you have to manually send keys, which might take you up to 24 hours (or god forbid you go on vacation or something) while the services have scripts that auto generate the key and send it to the customer. Though PayPal has a ~3% +30 cents charge per order which is a lot less than any of those services will charge you.

[edited by - FenixDown on June 19, 2002 11:46:58 PM]

There is another problems about paypal. Paypal is not a painless experience for the buyer if they dont already have a paypal account. You cant just go type in your name and CC# and be done. You have to actually create an account. While this account creation is done inline with the checkout process, it does form a mental barrier for the user. Creating an account means they know paypal is going to retain their information. They are going to have to remember another login/password. If someone breaks into their accoount, they will be able to find out their CC# and stuff. They will probably continue to get emails from paypal.

And besides this, there are a lot of people who dont trust paypal because of the problems others have had with them. I wont get into that though.

Yeah, you''re right. Those services would be a lot more convenient to a customer, and to you also, so they''re worth what they charge. Though the only inconvenience is that you get paid monthly. With PayPal you can transfer the money into your bank account at any moment. But that''s a pretty minor issue I suppose, since most bills are monthly also.

Hmmm...I''m currently searching for a good distributer and DigitalCandle looks sounds pretty durn good. Anyone dealt with them in the past? Positive, negative experiences?

Only thing is I''m in the UK and I presume would be selling mostly to the UK (I prefer to sell a hard copy, for downloads the US is a big sales opportunity), plus I think they would pay me in dollars which is a pain to convert and pay commission. Anyone know of a british equivalent?

Re: Digital Candle

I havent dealt with them, but I have been looking over their site (I need to pick a payment processor in the next couple of weeks). A couple of this I noticed:

First, they do NOT ship CDs for free. They charge the customer $9.95 for this, its just that they charge the buyer directly and you never need to know about it. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but just be aware that your customers will NOT get this service for free.

The other thing I noticed was a lack of customization. The order info is filled in on their site, and for the most part, the page is theirs. You can customize the header and footer and the background, but most of the page is not customizable. This means it may not fit into your site, you cant remove the "Digital Candle" name or their graphic from the top of the order info section, etc. Also, I noticed in their FAQ that require that you email them when you make changes tot he product (price, description, etc) . They did say they are working on a new version of the management system, but it wont be ready until April???? (does this mean its already done, and they havent updated the page? Might have to ask about that).

Lastly, they send payment by check by default. If you want a direct deposit it costs $30. They say "if the developer has more than USD $1,000 gross sales per month, DigitalCandle will usually assume part or all of this fee". Im not sure what 'usually' and 'part or all' means (maybe they mean they will cover it unless the fee is unusually high?).

OK, I lied...there is one more thing I noticed. It doesnt look like you can sell multiple products in a single order.



[edited by - LordKronos on June 21, 2002 10:24:39 AM]

Ouch. Thanks LordKronos, I guess you get what you pay for. Let us know if you do decide to go with them. In light of this information I probably won''t.