One of the things I’ve been doing as I get ready to sell Runner’s Log is choosing a payment processing system. Since my expected sales don’t justify the cost and time of using a dedicated credit card gateway, I’m looking at services like Paypal, Google Checkout and Kagi, among others.
Doing some reading yesterday, I found a PDF from Global Talk Software comparing the popular options for OSX shareware developers. There’s plenty of good information, including estimated costs and income for different levels of pricing. It’s very useful stuff for anyone interested in selling a software product online.
If you’re in the same position, make sure you look closely at the technical details before you choose a service provider. Google Checkout, for instance, has very good pricing, but requires SSL encryption on your website to receive sales notifications (which you need if you want to automatically generate a license key for each sale). Since the payment details are handled on the providers side of things, there’s no other reason to have SSL encryption enabled on your site, and with other providers like Paypal you don’t need it at all. Purchasing an SSL certificate just to work with Google Checkout could end up costing you more than choosing another provider, even if they do have higher fees per sale.
Tags: 4 Comments
4 responses so far ↓
I haven’t looked at the Google Docs, but would a self-signed (or cacert.org-signed) SSL certificate suffice?
Unless I’m not digging deep enough into the API documentation, it’s kind of vague on that point. It does say “valid SSL certificate,” and to me that means one of the common certificate providers.
I could be wrong though, so don’t necessarily take my word for it if you’re also looking at Google Checkout.
I use PayPal and Aquatic Mac for payments; the advantages being that mostly everyone has PayPal, the integration with AM makes things really automatic once you get it up, and that it only requires a single button in the app from which your paypal site is launched.
One caveat is that, on Dreamhost.com for example, one must personally compile and install the math libraries used to generate licenses by AM. This didn’t turn out to be too hard, but it was really intimidating at first.
I really searched around and I think Kagi *almost* had the best product, but the purchasing interface is way to Mac OS 9 and the whole purpose of having in-app licensing is to not reveal to the user you’re using someone else’s product. Kagi’s persistent advertising in your app negates this, so it’s easier to just go PayPal.
Anyone ever heard of a web application called Trinity - http://www.payjunction.com? Just curious