paypal or kagi?

[Najdorf]

I was thinking of making a game shareware: which of these payment methods should I choose? It' s nothing too serious, I don' t expect to make much on it, (though the game is gettin cool :) ). I also love the idea of Jake to make the price ad hoc, so I think I must choose paypal if I wanna do that.

[Jake]

I use Paypal and Snail Mail, and I would have used Kagi, but I couldn't do the choose your own price thing with Kagi as easily.

Originally posted by Najdorf
I also love the idea of Jake to make the price ad hoc, so I think I must choose paypal if I wanna do that.

That worked out great for me! The people who wanted to pay 10 bucks paid me 10 bucks, and the people who wanted to pay 5 payed 5, so everyone was happy and I didn't lose any sales because of a high price, or profits because of a low price.

[applekid]

I'd go with Paypal myself. None of my comments are based experience, but more based on how the services work.

Paypal has withdrawing by check, ATM card/Debit card, and wire transfers. Kagi has a monthly paycheck, but if i remember correctly, with a constant monthly fee. Paypal fees aren't even that big (pennies on the dollar), so that shouldn't be too bad.

And always leave snail mail as an option. Some people just don't trust online services at all.

My 2¢.

[Najdorf]

Jake, your technique of letting the user decide how much to pay is pure genius. Did you think that up yourself? It also gives the game a friendlyer feeling: you are not asking for 5 or 10 dollars, simply for a "donation" in a sort of way. "gimmme 5$" :shock: "gimme what you want":wow: (and maybe you get 10!). I think it' ll be paypal...

Oh, jake, how many regs did you get via paypal and how many snailmail? And wich ones were bigger donations?

PS: Curious thing I didn' t even think about making people pay for the game until that guy sent me 10 Ä... human nature, if they give you nothing you want nothing, if they give you some you want more... :???:

[Jake]

Actually ResExellence came up with that idea and I copied it :p

37 regs were from paypal, and i have had 3 snail mail ones for 10 bucks each. The average for Paypal is about 7 bucks, with about 75% of them being 5 or 10 dollars (a few odd numbers in there + a 20 buck reg from The Woz :))

I think thats cool someone sent you that money even thouh you didn't ask for it :)

[jSTIN]

Originally posted by applekid
Kagi has a monthly paycheck, but if i remember correctly, with a constant monthly fee.

Kagi doesn't have any monthly fee, but they do charge a lot per transaction. I use kagi and for every $10 sale I only get $8.25 (it was only 7.50 for a while ). Donation wouldn't be hard with kagi (actually they have something for that) but if you got a small donation (like $4 ) you'd lose most of it since they take a minimum of $1.75 (I think):blink:

[Najdorf]

hey jake, did you find out about the set of RPG sprites from wich you got your escape guy? is it public domain? I think I' ll use'm too (don' t worry, not gonnna use your guy!).
In paypal, do you use the "merchant tools"? wich one, the "donation" or other?

[Jake]

The RPG sprites are in the public domain :)


Originally posted by Najdorf
In paypal, do you use the "merchant tools"? wich one, the "donation" or other?

Yeah, I use donation, and when the user finishes it redirects him to the download page

[FreakSoftware]

eSellerate all the way. Seriously though.

They take the least amount of money (unless you're a personal pay pal) and offers the greatest range of features by FAR.

[kemalyun]

both!

Paypal charges less but requires the user to create an account, so some can't use it immediately.

KAGI charges more but anyone can use it ad hoc, no registration whatsoever.

My opinion about the "donate" thing:

Let's say, you ask a $10 fee for registration.
Of 100 people who like the game and would be willing to pay something for it,
how many do you think you'll lose because of the "too high" price?
Let's say you lose 25 of them.
Makes 75 people x $10 = $750.

Now let's assume you take a "donation". If people can choose what to pay,
they'll tend to pay less. So let's say the 100 people pay between $5 and $10,
like you said $7, which makes $700 at the end. A little less.

The difference is: In the first option, you still have 25 people who would like to have your game, so some of them might register later (after you add some levels and send them an email). In the second option, all people already have the game. So I prefer the first option.

[Najdorf]

You might be right, but I like the idea of an intermediate form between shareware and donationware, more ethical and friendly. Anyway I' ll think about it.:wacko:

[BeyondCloister]

Well I discovered by accident - and the hard way - which method works best.

After recently buying a Palm Tungsten T, I installed one of my Palm shareware titles on it.

As I was playing I noticed to my horror that the code that locks the game up after so many wins was not working :blush: even though I'm sure I tested it many times before release.

At first I was a bit upset that all the people who have downloaded it have been able to play it forever for free.

But then I felt really good when I realised that all the people who had registered it must have really enjoyed playing it to still give me the money for something they could have kept for free. So either there are some generous kind appreciative people out there, or people who just did not read the registration notice shown to them everytime they played.

However, and I know this will upset some people but I do have a Tungsten T and iBook to pay for :D, I have fixed the bug and released an updated version.

The one thing I've learnt from this is that you have to charge for your games if you want to see any return. Another similar shareware title I have which does have working lock out code has seen about 5 times as many registrations.

[Najdorf]

Yeah, Jake put "pay how much you want but pay" option that you need to pay something to get the code, it's not without code.

[Najdorf]

Hey, I got into eSellerate and I have to say it's great! They only ask you 10%, it's really easy to build an online store and offers great support (e-mail answered in hours); thanks FreakSoftware!