Share-Ware money transfers
Ed Dressel
know this has been asked before, maybe someone has a link. I did not find
anything at deja.com).
Thanks
Ed Dressel
Tim Sullivan
than some, but you get complete control over the look and feel of your site,
and if you set them up to e-deliver your software you are protected against
fraud. Pretty sweet. http://www.digibuy.com
--
Tim Sullivan
Unlimited Intelligence Limited
Dimethylaminoethanol for your software
http://www.uil.net
"Ed Dressel" <Dressel@Bigfoot_NOSPAM_.com> wrote in message
news:8uvh1l$gf...@bornews.inprise.com...
Joe
online. I can't reference one specifically, but several that I have
purchased from have allowed me to receive the product immediately after
purchasing. I don't want to wait 1-2 days for the product. When I decide to
buy, I'm ready to get working with it.
Dejan Maksimovic
Check out http://mini.net/pub/sharegs.html
It's a collection with all details of most Shareware registration sites.
Regards, Dejan.
Ed Dressel wrote:
> Can anyone recommend a site for collecting $ for share-ware programs. (I
> know this has been asked before, maybe someone has a link. I did not find
> anything at deja.com).
>
> Thanks
> Ed Dressel
--
Regards, Dejan M. CEO Alfa Co. http://www.alfaunits.co.yu and
www.register.co.yu
E-mail : de...@alfaunits.co.yu ICQ# : 56570367
Professional file&system related components and libraries for Win32
developers.
Alfa Units - #1 file and system handling units for Delphi.
Alfa File Monitor - #1 file monitoring system for Win32 developers.
Alfa Interceptor - #1 file protection and hiding system for Win32 developers.
Vinnie Murdico
> know this has been asked before, maybe someone has a link. I did not find
> anything at deja.com).
One note to start off: Be careful of the site mentioned above:
http://mini.net/pub/sharegs.html . In my experience, the list is very
comprehensive and has a nice feature grid to allow for quick, easy
comparisons, but some of the data regarding percentages and fees was either
incorrect or out of date if I remember correctly. It does make a nice list
to go through so you can check each vendor's site for their current fees and
features, though.
The best method (overall) is to get your own merchant account. The up side
is you have complete control and can handle "ad-hoc" special pricing and
charges on the fly on a customer by customer basis. For example, you might
want to give one customer a special deal for some reason, or you want to
credit part of a customer's charge for some reason. The down side of a
merchant account is that you do all the work to take the order (i.e.
shopping cart/secure server/etc.) or you farm it all out to a company like
goemerchant.com that would get you a merchant account, but then hosts your
product's order pages or your shopping cart on a secure server and offers
real-time processing built in. But, you will definitely pay extra for this
"plug-and-play" type of operation (expect anywhere from $20 to $50 per month
above and beyond the 2%-3% discount rate per transaction plus other fees
like monthly statement fees, etc.). But if you do a decent volume (anything
over $1500 or so) it actually pays off in the long run with your own
merchant account vs. the software registration sites. Keep in mind, too,
that with your own merchant account you'll be responsible for any fraudulent
transactions. Chargeback fees can be prohibitive, and if you get too many,
you can be cancelled or even blacklisted. You are responsible for verifying
that the cardholder is who they say they are. I could go on forever about t
he many ways to reduce fraud but the bottom line is that the CC companies
almost always side with the customer if he/she says they didn't charge
something. I've actually read articles referring to scams where valid
cardholders are ordering things online and then yelling "fraud" to their
credit card issuer so they can get the charge reversed (even if they really
did order it). I don't think that's the majority of fraud, but it does
occur. Also with merchant accounts, you'll have a long contract term
(usually 2-4 years) and pretty high startup costs to purchase software,
application fees in many cases, or setup fees. Bottom line -- merchant
accounts carry alot of responsibility and management issues. But you can
save money in the long run depending upon your monthly revenue, and you gain
flexibility.
We looked into Digital River, who I believe now owns some other shareware
registration companies (PSL?, etc.), but they wanted a huge percentage of
the profits (something in the 40% - 50% range), and there was also some type
of startup costs if I remember correctly. I guess it depends on your
product's market as to how valuable their service is. The person I spoke to
kept trying to convince me that the higher fees were being charged because
of their value-added services such as listing the product on hudreds of
sites, and the extra costs would be more than made up for by the additional
sales we would see due to the high exposure they offer. Of course, they're
not running print ads in magazines for you, they were really just offering
to list the product(s) in many online "stores" and online "catalogs" (which
you can often do for free yourself). This is fine for some products, but
when I asked for a specific list of the "stores" and specfically a
"categorized" list so I could see what percentage of the stores would have
traffic that might want my product, I was unable to get such a list. Since
our products are targeted especially for developers, it wouldn't make sense
if 75% of their exposure is through "consumer-oriented" web sites and
catalogs. So, in the long run, the higher percentage would not have
translated into sales. It really helps to know your customer base and
where they shop so you can determine if these high-priced solutions are
really cost-effective.
Originally, we started with RegNow (www.regnow.com). Beautiful site,
well-managed, paid on time without any problems, but took 20% of each sale.
Good company, great service, but a bit pricey in my opinion. 20% seems to
be near the top end of the commission scale for most shareware registration
service providers.
We then went with RegSoft (www.regsoft.com). Another great company - I've
spoken to one of their lead guys and they worked with us on different
requests and features when they rewrote their site last year. Again,
well-managed, paid on time without any problems, and only took 10% of the
sale. One minor drawback, their "control panel" interface for the vendors
was a bit clunky compared to some others we saw. But overall, it worked
well and allowed decent customization features.
Early this year we switched to a merchant account. It really worked out
great, except that the processor had lots of problems, and support was very
difficult to reach. We were promised 24x7 support, but it turned out that
"after-hours" support was handled by another company who didn't have the
ability to troubleshoot or correct many of the problems we experienced.
Needless to say, when a transaction fails at 6pm on Friday, you can't very
well tell the customer they have to wait until 9am Monday for their order
(especially when we're talking about an online, "e-delivery" type of
product). This, among other problems, and the late addition of an "annual
fee" that was not in the original contract, put the final nail in the coffin
and we decided to cut our losses and move to another (recommended) merchant
account processor.
During the next month or so until we get our new merchant account switched
over, we are using ShareIt (www.shareit.com). I can't speak for their
timeliness on payments since we are just starting with them this month, but
so far the orders that have gone through went smoothly (no customer ordering
problems yet!). The biggest benefit with them is they take only 4% of each
sale + a $2.95 fixed fee per transaction. Their "control panel" seems very
comprehensive and their order page customization feature is very nice.
Essentially, you can paste HTML into the "style template" and include the
keyword %CONTENT% in your HTML. They will generate the secure order form on
the fly and include their order form wherever you have the word %CONTENT%
inserted. It makes it possible to have a very tightly integrated order page
in your site. You can check out our site for an example of how the
integration looks (just start going through a fake purchase to see each
page -- you don't need to actually purchase anything <g>). We were really
pleased with how well the order page fit into our site's design, and it
really didn't take too much work. All of our products/order forms were set
up in about a day.
I think overall, if you just want to put up an order page link and don't
really require super tight integration or the flexibility of your own
merchant account, you'll probably do ok with any of them. While I can speak
for only three of them off-hand, I can say that any of those above would
probably be fine to work with. Our decision to switch has been primarily
based on the commission rate each time (and also on features). But overall,
most of them have very similar feature sets so it is possible to shop on
price. Most recently with ShareIt, the 4% fee (especially on higher priced
products where the $2.95 charge is insignificant) is almost comparable to
that of an internet merchant account, and you wouldn't have any recurring
monthly fees, contract obligations (often 2-3 years) or monthly minimums as
with a merchant account, nor any problems with fraud or chargebacks. Many
of the registration services will eat the cost of the chargeback fee if the
transaction is contested. You still lose the sale revenue, but you may not
get charged the "chargeback" fee the processor got hit with (often around
$20 or $25 per chargeback).
Well, that's alot of information, but I hope it has helped -- there are many
things to consider with this type of decision so be careful. Good luck
with your decision!
Vinnie Murdico
Software with Brains, Inc.
http://www.softwarewithbrains.com
Igor Glukhov
>and if you set them up to e-deliver your software you are protected against
>fraud.
Really they protect you against charge backs only.
They don't protect you against fraudulent use of credit card.
Below is a tipical message from digibuy.
>Dear DigiBuy Author,
>
>A refund has been processed for order RE2379553.
>Date of purchase: Thu Jul 6 06:54:58 2000 EST.
>
>Reason: FRAUDULENT USE OF CREDIT-CARD
They don't have a good fraud screening system.
Best regards,
Igor.
www.igweb.pair.com
Tim Sullivan wrote in message <8uvh7t$gb...@bornews.inprise.com>...
>I'm pretty happy with Digibuy. I've heard they're a little more expensive
>than some, but you get complete control over the look and feel of your site,
>and if you set them up to e-deliver your software you are protected against
>fraud. Pretty sweet. http://www.digibuy.com
>
>--
>Tim Sullivan
>Unlimited Intelligence Limited
>Dimethylaminoethanol for your software
>http://www.uil.net
>
>"Ed Dressel" <Dressel@Bigfoot_NOSPAM_.com> wrote in message
>news:8uvh1l$gf...@bornews.inprise.com...
>> Can anyone recommend a site for collecting $ for share-ware programs. (I
>> know this has been asked before, maybe someone has a link. I did not find
>> anything at deja.com).
>>
>> Thanks
>> Ed Dressel
>>
>>
>
>
Igor Glukhov
I am using www.digibuy but recommend you to
try www.shareit.com or www.regsoft.com.
See my post above.
Best regards,
Igor.
www.igweb.pair.com
Ed Dressel wrote in message <8uvh1l$gf...@bornews.inprise.com>...
Igor Glukhov
Edwin Lau
I use Regsoft.com http://www.regsoft.com for several years now and found
them
to be pretty good and responsive.
Edwin
--
http://www.batchimage.com Your source for Batch Image Processing
Applications
Edwin Lau ed...@iredsoft.com
---><---
"Ed Dressel" <Dressel@Bigfoot_NOSPAM_.com> wrote in message
news:8uvh1l$gf...@bornews.inprise.com...
Torry
> know this has been asked before, maybe someone has a link. I did not find
> anything at deja.com).
Greetings, Ed
Follow my experience, only two services well protected against fraudulent
use of credit card since last two years- Share-It! and RegSoft.com - they
uses address information for additional verification. It is very possible,
that new services such as V-Share (www.v-share.com) also provide the same.
I got several charge-backs from Share-It! over two years ago, but then they
fixed this - no any problems over two years. Also, they has cheapest bank
transfers from all services, 2$ per transfer only (almost all others changes
you at least 30-35$).
Dejan Maksimovic
Hmm, that's silly!
Usually, systems have the opposite!
What would be the reason for this thing? The fraud is their fault, and the
charge back is the author's fault, so why doing the other way around???
Regards, Dejan.
Igor Glukhov wrote:
--
Dejan Maksimovic
> of credit card since last two years- Share-It! and RegSoft.com - they uses
> address information for additional verification. It is very possible, that new
> services such as V-Share (www.v-share.com) also provide the same. I got
> several charge-backs from Share-It! over two years ago, but then they fixed
> this - no any problems over two years. Also, they has cheapest bank transfers
> from all services, 2$ per transfer only (almost all others changes you at
> least 30-35$).
I can't comment on fraud protection, since my products prices require a
manual check with the bank, but as for the fees, they are the cheapest. If You
are in Germany, it's even free - works great, and is fast.
The response is fast.
However, I am not that pleased with the service itself - sometimes I get the
feeling I am talking to a woofer, not a e-commerce expert.
Jovan Sedlan
have the lowest prices ($1 + 5%, add 2% for AmEx), customer support is
excellent, they send checks without any charge. I guess second best (and for
high-priced products cheaper) is ShareIt. A new one on the market is
Order1.net. They claim that they will pay you even for fraudulent orders
(it's their mistake, after all). A bit expensive, though - they charge 15%
(11% for Euro-Share subscribers).
--
Jovan Sedlan
in...@sedlan.com
http://www.sedlan.com
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"Igor Glukhov" <ig...@pair.com> wrote in message news:3a145f6a_2@dnews...