The Do's and Don'ts of Shareware, Part 3
Pages: 1, 2

Payment Processing Provider Comparison

Below is a comparison table of the three Payment Processing Providers described previously. As stated above, these providers are always evolving their services, so it's important to check with them when you're ready to sign up.

• All providers were asked for input when creating the table to insure correctness.
• The table below does not include one-time fees to sign up for any particular service or feature.
• The table does not include any features that were/are under development by the Payment Processing Providers.
• All information is correct as of October 4, 2002. (See now, I'm just trying to be fair.)

Although this article only discusses three Payment Processing Providers in detail, there are many others. Authors should look for themselves and compare services and percentages to find the best match for their products. A few other providers that come to mind are RegNow (20 percent commissions) and new player Plimus (10 percent commissions, see its "BuyNow" solution). PayPal's merchant solution is also an option, although your customers may not want to become PayPal members. PayPal's support is also difficult to get ahold of and its system can arbitrarily lock out accounts with no recourse. In any event, it wouldn't hurt to send an email to the tech support folks at all of these companies to see how quickly they'll respond to your questions. Such response time is usually indicative of how seriously they take their responsibility.

There is one other option we haven't discussed: setting the whole thing up yourself. There are a number of articles and books detailing e-commerce implementations. Below is just an overview of what you'll need to process sales from your very own server:

• A server that stays up 24/7 with all of the appropriate security measures installed. (An Earthlink business hosting site costs $34/month.)
• Scripts to drive your Web store. (PHP and MySQL come to mind as an excellent solution.)
• A security certificate (Thawte.com charges ~$100/year via Earthlink.)
• A payment gateway like Authorize.Net. ($20/month + $0.10/transaction.)
• A merchant account at your local bank. (Bank One charges $8/month + $0.17/transaction.)

Now all of that sounds like a lot to keep wired together. But there is a simpler solution: Amerimerchant.com is both a payment gateway and merchant account with fees as low as 2.4 percent + $0.31/transaction. All that's needed is the server, scripts and secure certificate. Amerimerchant can also wire your payments directly to your bank account every day. In the spirit of Tim O'Reilly's penchant for Open Source, there's a real opportunity here to create a shareware payment processing system for use by the entire shareware community.

Providing Support

We've all been there as users... working under a deadline... stuck on a problem... the software isn't quite working right... and you need help. Enter the world of technical support.

The first rule of providing support is to always be nice to your customers. No matter what profanity they send you. No matter how rude they are. No matter how demanding they are. Rise above it, and be nice. The one problem with email is it's very difficult for both the writer to relay tone and the reader to interpret tone. And words translated from other languages to English don't always express feelings and characterizations fairly. So have patience, and err on the proper side of being courteous.

If you don't stay on top of it, support can really get overwhelming at times. Don't Panic! There are lots of things you can do to seriously reduce your support load. My own general rule is that if I receive the same question more than twice, I add the answer to my shareware Web site in one form or another. This serves one great purpose: to lower my support load. And it works. Users, for the most part, are ready and willing to read your Web site to find answers to their questions. The challenge is making it easy for them to find the answers. Here's where FAQs are so important. (Oh, don't call them FAQs. Very few users know what that those three letters mean! Spell it out: "Frequently Asked and Answered Questions".) You may want to keep your FAQs in a database so they can be exported to static web pages. A little scripting will save a lot of time here.

In addition to FAQs, an "Important Notices" section on your support pages can call attention to pressing issues. Important notices are a great way to handle problems with your software that will impact all of its users. If you release a corrupted archive accidentally (and you will, at least once) you'll definitely hear about it. So an important notice is warranted to reduce that support load. Position the "Important Notices" section on the page so the users see it before they get to your support email address. If you have too many Important Notices, they will probably be ignored. Use them sparingly.

One more thing: there's a fairly common rule of thumb that says that only 1 out of 10 users actually complain about a problem. So if you're getting 10 emails on a problem, 90 others have had the same problem and didn't bother telling you about it. Keep this in mind when supporting any and all problems with your web site and software. All support issues should be taken very seriously.

There are two kinds of support: Technical Support and Sales Support. Technical Support involves questions about the installation and use of your product. Sales Support involves any questions about registration and payment. It's good to keep them separate, as users will want to help direct their questions to the correct "department". It's also easier for you, the author, to filter the questions into the appropriate box.

The #1 sales support question, without a doubt, is "I lost my registration code, can you send it to me please?" This is the most difficult kind of question to answer automatically because if the user lost his or her code, they also lost his or her order number. And chances are the user has either moved or changed email addresses since purchasing the software. So there's no easy solution. One thing that can help is a database that allows free text searches through any field. Searching for users' names along with their cities is a good way to narrow the search. Executing such a search right from your email client is a great idea that can save you serious amounts of time (see next paragraph).

My own registration code lookup works like this: (1) I select hopefully unique and descriptive text in the user's email. (2) I click a button that executes an AppleScript. My AppleScript opens my FileMaker registrations database, searches for the text in every field, and presents me with a list of possible matches. (3) I click a checkbox next to each match for all orders the user has ever made (there may be more than one!). (4) I then execute another script that creates the registration message. This script also pastes the text back into a reply to the user. The whole process takes about 10 seconds. If you have about 10,000 customers, you can expect 1-6 of these requests per day. Not too bad. But these requests will usually spike when you release an update. This is why many shareware authors will send users their registration codes at the end of their press releases. (See eMerge above.)

The above example describes why keeping a copy of your sales database on your local machine is so important. Be sure to get details on how to mirror a sales database on your machine when you sign up with a payment processing provider. (As for the Payment Processing Providers described above, eSellerate handles mirroring to your local machine by emailing authors a tab delimited text file with the previous day's sales. Kagi, DigiBuy, and eSellerate send authors an easily parseable email with every purchase.)

Notes on Localization

Localization is the process of translating your software to another language. Case in point: 15 percent of my sales come from a Japan. So Localization is something that should be taken very seriously.

Software named PowerGlot will make it easy for your translators to translate your software to their native language. PowerGlot is able to parse and change resources of all types (including PowerPlant), and apply translations from previous versions of the software to the latest release. It's an excellent time saver.

Go for Launch

So you've done all of this work and you're ready for the release. Below is a checklist that you can use before you upload your updated Web site to make sure many of the necessary pieces are in place. (Included are all of the items I personally have forgotten over the years at one time or another.)

One quick note: never make a release the day before you go on vacation. If you do, it is inevitable that your release will contain a bug that will take two days to fix!

• You've tested your software on a machine other than the one you develop on.
• All beta-version expiration code has been removed from the software.
• Your software "Weak Links" to libraries where appropriate.
• Verify that your registration number scheme is working as expected.
• Verify that your timers for registration reminders are working as expected.
• Verify that version strings have been updated in:
  • The ReadMe file
  • The product's Web page
  • The product's 'vers' resources (all of them)
  • The product's property list
  • The press release
  • The user's manual
  • This is where generalized version numbers like 1.x or 2.x come in really handy.
• The icons are laid out correctly in their shipping folder.
• The archives have been stuffed and uploaded to all mirror servers.
• You've scanned for viruses so you know that you're not distributing any bad stuff.
• You've downloaded, unstuffed, and executed the software from each archive to verify that the archives are not corrupt.
• You've used a tool like BBEdit to verify that all of the links on your local version of your Web site are correct.
• You've spell checked and had someone else proof read your press release.
• If you're using eSellerate's integrated or installer eSeller technology you've verified that the preview certificates are cleared AND disabled. Same goes for your Web eSellers.
• If applicable, you've verified that you haven't crossed international versions with the wrong archives.
• When assembling the email list for your users, be sure you've removed all of those users that have asked to be removed from all future mailings. A little redundancy here is a good thing.
• Verify that you've added the contact email addresses for the public news venues.
• The links are working from your off-site web store.
• You've verified that the return email address for the press release is working. You may want to use a special email address for this so you can filter responses easily.

Now you're ready to upload your Web site, send out your press releases, and go to bed! If all went well, you'll wake up the next day to a few dozen sales and a bunch of happy customers. :-)

Working from the Road

Let's face it. We don't all sit in the house all day and wait for support emails to arrive. We take vacations or go on business trips. Working from the road is easy. Just dial up once per day and answer your emails. Users who expect support will be very patient with you if you're on vacation. Users understand that even shareware developers need some time off too. :-)

Find yourself an ISP that has dialup numbers around the World. America Online comes to mind. Here's where a portable computer really comes in handy too.

If you don't want to lug around a laptop, be sure your ISP supports a Web-Mail interface so you can check your mail and respond to questions from CyberCafes. In Europe, CyberCafes appear around every corner.

Conclusion

I think we've covered just about everything... from conception, creation, testing, sales, Web sites, ISPs, downloads, mirrors, sales, support, you name it. There's nothing I've described that's revolutionary. I just tried to bring all of these little facts together into one place.

Keep your goals realistic, listen to your users, and shareware can be a really fun hobby for any programmer. And that's really the bottom line... having fun with what you do.

References

Although it's nice to close my eyes and dream that I'm the shareware king of the world, when my eyes reopen I am always reassured that it really was only a dream. Nobody works in a vacuum. There are references throughout this series to articles, utilities, and other works that take different tacks on the shareware industry. A few references I couldn't squeeze into the content of this series are below.

Rick Holzgrafe wrote an article entitled Successful Shareware. This article was reprinted by the good folks at TidBits back in 1997. Rick's shareware was so good that I snapped up a copy for myself.

Although a few years old, Colin Messitt wrote an article that details cost figures for his software as well as insights into why people register. The article is reprinted here.

MacTech ran an article a while back by Tonya Engst on How to Write a ReadMe.

Chris Smolinski over at Black Cat Systems is maintaining a list of Payment Processing Providers. It's a hard list to keep up to date, so be sure to verify all values with the Payment Processing Providers themselves.

Let's not forget all of the shareware developers who blazed the trail in an industry trend that grew incredibly fast. Just about all shareware developers will give you hints and tips. All you have to do is ask. We're all part of a community here, and working for yourself is no easy task.

And a special thanks to the O'Reilly editors!

Sanford Selznick is the owner of Selznick Scientific Software, LLC, a programming, consulting, and shareware company based in Tucson, Arizona.

Read more Developing for Mac OS X columns.

Return to the Mac DevCenter.

Sanford has covered the basics very well here, but personal experience is invaluable. What have you learned along the way?
You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a talkback.

Showing messages 1 through 19 of 19.

• Consider bytecommerce
  2007-04-06 09:00:32  DotNetLover [Reply | View]
  
  
  You may also consider www.bytecommerce.com which is probably one of the most convenient and innovative services to sell online digital goods. No setup fee, no monthly fee and no per-order commission.

• Merchant Account Alternative for Low-Cost E-Business Start-Up
  2006-10-03 19:59:36  Terrance_E.Smith [Reply | View]
  
  
  You have a product and must accept credit cards to sell online, but who wants to spend a fortune on upfront costs. As noted in a recent PC Magazine article, "Even if you can get a
  merchant account, you may not want one for a startup because of the fixed costs. The alternative is to contract with a third party to sell your products using their merchant account."
  http://www.sherylcanter.com/movabletype/archives/000005.html
  
  A Third-Party Payment processor is the merchant account alternative to big upfront costs.
  
  http://littleguyonline.com is designed for you, the small business owner. Avoid the problems with other merchant account alternatives, which led us to develop LittleGuyOnline.com. No bandwith restriction or payment delays. Our service is straight forward and simple with sterling customer service. We don't make money off of you, we make money WITH you. Low start up fee, no hidden, monthly or annual fees. We succeed through your success. We will help market your product, provide a shopping cart to match your site and deal with processing payments. Our dealing with the financial end leaves you free to sell and ship your product.
  
  Let us help you! At LittleGuyOnline.com, your success IS our business.

• Shareit?
  2003-07-03 10:30:45  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I was wondering if anyone has used Share it ( www.shareit.com ) or has heard from someone who has. From a seller's point of view, it looks almost too good to be true, so I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with it. Sanford, did you look at shareit at all when you wrote the article? It seems to be a great way to sell globally with extremely minimum overhead, and compared to the ones you mentioned, it seems like a good deal. I was wondering if you looked at it or not, and if yes, for what reasons did you not include it? I was also wondering, given your connections, if you might be able to find out if anyone you know has used it, and what their experience was.
  Tom
• Shareit?
  2003-07-03 10:37:49  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I did not review shareit for these articles.
  
  Shareit seems pricey when compared to eSellerate. Those minimums can get pricey with low cost shareware products.

• Kagi offers integrated selling
  2003-07-03 05:06:10  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Kagi apparently now offers a Cocoa framework for integrated selling like eSellerate.
• Kagi offers integrated selling
  2003-07-03 10:39:26  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  This sounds really excellent. But almost 25% of my customers still use Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, so a Cocoa framework won't help them. (As of July3, 2003.)

• Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix Users
  2002-11-07 22:55:16  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  

  Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
  
  

  I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
  
  

  Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
  
  

  Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
  
  

  There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
  
  

  Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
  
  

  Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
  

• Internationalization for monoglots?
  2002-11-04 14:00:13  mechanist [Reply | View]
  
  
  OK, the point about internationalization is well taken. But what's a shareware author to do if they don't actually speak Japanese, or whatever other language seems appropriate? I'd be glad to do a Japanese version of my software-- except I don't speak the language or know anyone who does. Or, for that matter, where I might look for professional help or how much that might cost me. What can a shareware author do to get translations in the first place?
  

• digitalcandle.com
  2002-10-30 20:09:19  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  check out digitalcandle.com. i use them.
  flat 10% fee. flexible payment options. no fee for chargebacks, phone/offline orders.
  

• 2checkout.com
  2002-10-28 23:31:41  Jacek Artymiak | [Reply | View]
  
  
  I recommend 2checkout.com for credit card processing. They handle single and repeated purchases (like monthly subscriptions), offer a shopping cart, Perl scripts, and customization.
• Merchant Account Alternative for Low-Cost E-Business Start-Up
  2006-10-03 19:54:24  Terrance_E.Smith [Reply | View]
  
  
  You have a product and must accept credit cards to sell online, but who wants to spend a fortune on upfront costs. As noted in a recent PC Magazine article, "Even if you can get a merchant account, you may not want one for a startup because of the fixed costs. The alternative is to contract with a third party to sell your products using their merchant account."
  http://www.sherylcanter.com/movabletype/archives/000005.html
  
  A Third-Party Payment processor is the merchant account alternative to big upfront costs.
  
  http://LittleGuyOnline.com is designed for you, the small business owner. Avoid the problems with other merchant account alternatives, which led us to develop LittleGuyOnline.com. No bandwith restriction or payment delays. Our service is straight forward and simple with sterling customer service. We don't make money off of you, we make money WITH you. Low start up fee, no hidden, monthly or annual fees. We succeed through your success. We will help market your product, provide a shopping cart to match your site and deal with processing payments. Our dealing with the financial end leaves you free to sell and ship your product.
  
  Let us help you! At LittleGuyOnline.com, your success IS our business.
  
  
• 2checkout.com
  2004-01-16 09:56:20  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  2checkout.com is very difficult to deal with. They are late with payments, computers breaking down and no one to reach if there's problems. Stay away. I'm moving to Paysystems right now. I've heard they're good. I guess I'll find out.
  
• 2checkout.com
  2004-01-07 23:57:16  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  2checkout.com is the worst company I have every worked with. They owe me $500 and will not pay me. Seriously, Don't work with 2checkout.com they will not pay you the money you make.
• 2checkout.com
  2004-01-05 23:22:09  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  DON'T USE 2checkout.com
  They have worthless customer service. We haven't been paid in two months and the customer service is doing nothing to help us. I suggest working with any other company, if you want to receive your money that is...
  
  
• 2checkout.com
  2003-12-19 20:41:50  landlines [Reply | View]
  
  
  We started using 2checkout.com in 2001, and were satisfied with the service through 2002. Then the organization started breaking down, with new problems every week. There were big delays in payments (with no warning), a complete lack of customer service (we think they hid under their desks if they thought their clients were calling). No answer to emails, tickets, FAXES, or phone calls trying to get REAL PROBLEMS solved. Then a fatal mistake: they tried to take control of their servers 'in house'. Almost immediately, their service developed 'quirks', problems, and was down more than it was up. We finally were forced to get our own merchant account and quit trying to deal with 2checkout's 'problem of the day'. Our own merchant account is much cheaper, we get excellent customer service 24/7 (2co is 8/5), and our payment gateway (NOVA ViaKlix) NEVER is 'down': and they provide dial-up voice approval as backup.
  
  Lesson: Better to do business with real companies than to rely on 'kids playing with computers'!
• 2checkout.com
  2003-12-19 20:40:01  landlines [Reply | View]
  
  
  We started using 2checkout.com in 2001, and were satisfied with the service through 2002. Then the organization started breaking down, with new problems every week. There were big delays in payments (with no warning), a complete lack of customer service (we think they hid under their desks if they thought their clients were calling). No answer to emails, tickets, FAXES, or phone calls trying to get REAL PROBLEMS solved. Then a fatal mistake: they tried to take control of their servers 'in house'. Almost immediately, their service developed 'quirks', problems, and was down more than it was up. We finally were forced to get our own merchant account and quit trying to deal with 2checkout's 'problem of the day'. Our own merchant account is much cheaper, we get excellent customer service 24/7 (2co is 8/5), and our payment gateway (NOVA ViaKlix) NEVER is 'down': and they provide dial-up voice approval as backup.
  
  Lesson: Better to do business with real companies than to rely on 'kids playing with computers'!
• 2checkout.com
  2003-12-19 20:31:54  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  We started using 2checkout.com in 2001, and were satisfied with the service through 2002. Then the organization started breaking down, with new problems every week. There were big delays in payments (with no warning), a complete lack of customer service (we think they hid under their desks if they thought their clients were calling). No answer to emails, tickets, FAXES, or phone calls trying to get REAL PROBLEMS solved. Then a fatal mistake: they tried to take control of their servers 'in house'. Almost immediately, their service developed quirks, problems, and was down more than it was up. We finally got our own merchant account and quit trying to deal with 2checkout's 'problem of the day': it's much cheaper, excellent customer service 24/7, and our payment gateway (we use NOVA ViaKlix) NEVER is 'down'.
  
  Better to do business with real companies than to rely on 'kids playing with computers'!
• 2checkout.com
  2003-06-10 15:34:05  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  2checkout.com are little short of credit card fraud cheats....I "purchased" on-line from pass-guaranteed.com a month ago....they failed to deliver the on-line purchase despite repeated emails...i then contacted 2checkout.com...I received an initial e-mail that looked as though they were going to do something about the matter...nothing happened despite repeated emails.Dont trust them.
  Signed"
  Ripped Off !!!!!
  Australia

• Taking shareware on the road
  2002-10-27 05:30:31  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Here's a great two-part article from TidBITS about a Mac shareware author who did it:
  
  http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-508.html#lnk2