Shareware Author Tips - Ecommerce Options

(this article is part of a series)

Update: SpamButcher is now using Plimus as an ecommerce provider and recommend them over RegSoft.

If selling software becomes a major portion of your income - you may want to consider maintaining multiple ecommerce accounts. Like all other services - they are prone to periodic outages - and having a working backup may let you sleep easier at night.

http://www.regmatch.com offers comparisons on some of the more popular registration services.

For a number of reasons, SpamButcher no longer endorses the use of Regsoft. You may want to consider using Plimus instead.

SpamButcher's primary ecommerce provider is RegSoft (part of DigitalRiver).

RegSoft is geared towards software authors as opposed to physical products.

RegSoft Pros:

RegSoft Cons:

Other companies offer similar products to RegSoft with competitive pricing. Some services offer lower rates, but so far I haven't found one that inspired enough trust to warrant trying them out.

RegSoft has never seriously screwed up with me - which in this world is high-praise.

Still, using RegSoft may leave "money on the table." You could potentially increase your revenue by little over 5% if you are willing to take on some of the complexities of doing your own ecommerce. As I mentioned previously - the little things matter.

That RegSoft offers alternative payment options such as phone or check-by-mail offsets the additional costs to some extent. I get roughly 5% of sales via these methods. Some of them would've bought otherwise, but others wouldn't have. I would guess the 5% premium might really be more like 2.5%.

I've concluded what little gain I might get from rolling-my-own ecommerce isn't worth the time or the risk - at least for now.

Should I use PayPal?

But don't only use PayPal - also offer a more traditional ecommerce option (like RegSoft).

Some people want to pay with a credit card, some prefer PayPal. To some extent, they are two separate groups.

Even though you don't need an account to pay with PayPal, I've seen lots of circumstantial data suggesting people without PayPal accounts shy away from PayPal.

RegSoft and other ecommerce providers let users pay via PayPal - but users get hit with extra fees and have to fill out additional forms. That's probably not good for "conversion rate."

PayPal doesn't offer a built-in way of delivering serial numbers. You'll either need to handle manually sending them out via email, or write some code up to do it for you. I have moderate web-development skills, and was able to create an automated system in about half a day.

In order to retrieve money out of your PayPal account, you'll need to connect it to a checking account. I highly recommend setting up a separate checking account for this purpose, and keeping its balance relatively low.

A quick look around the web reveals people have had issues with PayPal. You don't want someone guessing your password and withdrawing money from your checking account that was supposed to be for paying the mortgage.

So, PayPal does present a few complications, but offering it along with a traditional ecommerce payment option can help to maximize your revenue. We started doing this a few months ago, and it appears to have resulted in a measurable increase in sales.

Back