Hi all,

I'm from England and have finished a game which brought me to my next step - selling it. I have absolutely no idea how to go about this and I'm hoping to hear from experience where to start. I have emailed a few online publishers over a week since but no replies yet.

One main question which is really bothering me is:

with being from England does that make things a problem and limit possibilites? From FAQ's I read that "checks in USD will be sent every month" - so I imagine cheques will cost more to be sent overseas AND probably wont cash without massive charges? =/

I was thinking of using a service such as "regnow" or "kagi", they allow users to sell their software from your own website. - anyone from England used regnow or other e-commerce services?

Paypal is another question, is that an idea?

help me I'm lost and I really want to get my game out to the world :D

so where to start?

advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you

regards

Chris.

First of all, welcome.

Allthough it's tempting to go all guns blazing in trying to get your finished game out the door, I would suggest that you have a read through the various articles that Steve Pavlina as written on this site. I think the main link is "developers resources" on the front page of this site.

The main things to consider in your situation, assuming that your strategy is to sell direct to consumers through shareware, is the game polished enough and are the registration incentives the best they can be. And then there is your website, have you optimised it to sell and support and promote the game etc.

As for payment in dollars and who to use etc, it's not costly, but it shouldnt be a priority at this stage. Best to get the above right first before you start worrying about the process and costs of selling.

Hope this helps.

Alfie

hey chris,

Im based in uk too and use http://www.shareit.com for my order processing. They are based primarily in europe - altho now bought over by Digital River :( - and very frirendly/convenient for europe based developers. Cashing a check in the UK is not very expensive. There are standard rates for certain ranges - best to ask your bank about specifics.

I suggest dont use Paypal. Better to go with an order processor whose primary business is with software developers. However, it may be useful to provide Paypal as a last option to users who may have a paypal account already and/or are paranoid about using an uknown order processor.

Hope that helped.

Originally posted by Chris
I was thinking of using a service such as "regnow" or "kagi", they allow users to sell their software from your own website. - anyone from England used regnow or other e-commerce services?

I don't think you will have much problems receiving money from U.S. companies like Kagi, BMT etc, but there is a British company that provides the same service:
www.swreg.org

Hi, I'm in the UK too. I'm desperately trying to finish my first shareware game :) and have decided to go with swreg.org. They are based in the UK, but your customers can pay in USD or whatever. Now, as I haven't finished my game I haven't sold any copies! So I don't really have a good feel for swreg pros and cons yet. Setting up a store has been ok though.

Norbyte, your store front is cool! Did you do that with templates or something more complicated ?

Originally posted by Jason Colman
Norbyte, your store front is cool! Did you do that with templates or something more complicated ?
Thanks!
Our sales page www.norbyte.com/BuyOnline.html is basically just a few 'tables' really, and we used a plain text editor.
When you click on the continue button, a form sends some info to a Perl script on our server, and then you're taken to SWREG's server to complete the purchase.

Thank you all for your quick and helpful responses, and for the welcome alfie :)

I have read and read all I can find and I will read through the articles on this site again. The more I read the more confused I end up :S

There is no registration for my game, I have a seperate demo installer from the full game, I really hope that wont end up being a problem.

jaggu: mind if I ask you a few questions about your experience with shareit? I had a look on their site I liked what I saw!

-> I didnt see anything about a signup fee / monthly fee?
-> Do you host your files with them? if so is there a charge for that?
-> Can you cash their checks for free?

The whole checks bunsiness confuses me, if checks are sent from overseas company/bank then it wont be in GBP currency? and knowing banks here they will charge for sorting it out =/

I had a look at swreg and regnow websites recently they also appear to be good so Im trying to decide which will be best for me.

Also last question:

How do you decide how much to sell a title? :)

ISTR british banks (at least my husband's bank) don't charge you a fee for foreign currency if the check is small - under 80 pounds or so.

Of course, due to the wonders of british bureaucracy, I don't *have* a British bank account (not allowed one!), and mail all my checks back home. :)

Originally posted by Chris
[BThe whole checks bunsiness confuses me, if checks are sent from overseas company/bank then it wont be in GBP currency? and knowing banks here they will charge for sorting it out =/ [/B] I'm in the UK, and I use BMT Micro & Regnow as my payment processors. Each of them send me a USD check (or cheque :)) once a month which takes about a week to get here.

I bank at Natwest (good bank) who have a foreign currency transaction charge of £10 per transaction. That means whether you pay in 1 check or 100 checks, the fee is still £10.

Natwest then do their funky thing with the check(s), and about a week later I receive a letter of payment credit advice which tells me the money has successfully gone into my account, and what the conversion rate was at the time of payment.

There are other banks with lower/no processing fee, but I've been with Natwest for a long time and have come to appreciate their service so the fee is worth it for me.

So in conclusion... don't worry about it. :)

Ah so it seems charges wont be too bad, like I was expecting. Im suprised you cant get a bank account over here papillon =O

RedClaw, I also bank with Natwest =) thank you for sharing the details, helps a lot.

Things are becoming clearer to me, my first step definately seems to be to get an e-commerce service set up.

I would definately like to hear someones experience with SWREG since they based in the UK.

I'm torn between Regnow, Shareit and SWREG..

You can't get a British bank account if you don't have a British job. (Or so I'm told in many places, including banks.)

You also can't get an NI number. Being signed up with a temp agency doesn't count. Being signed up with a temp agency and having been on assignment the previous week doesn't count either. You must be actually required to be in the office at the time that you speak to them and thus be taking time off from work to be there or they won't let you come in. :) (Or so I was told by the NI people on the phone.)

(I tried temping very briefly. Somehow it doesn't appear to work - they tell me my test scores are absolutely amazing and then won't give me any work.)

Hi,
I don't know about Regnow or Shareit, but I've been using SWreg without any problems. Once a month there's a bank transfer directly into my account, and that's it. There's no charge for this.

They run two schemes which basically amount to:
1. 6%+$1 per sale, and $20 monthly fee.
2. 15% per sale, no monthly fee.

My sales are very low :-(, so I'm on option 2 at the moment. Although this means that their commission is higher, I'm not paying anything if I don't sell anything, and I still don't have to pay for the bank transfer.

Note: Until recently option 1 was 4%+$1, so they've increased it. This might mean that they intend to increase commision on option 2 as well...

One other thing, SWReg will charge european customers VAT. Apparently this is a legal requirement now, and I understand that the other processing companies will have to do the same soon if they don't already.

The SWReg service is quite flexible. For example, I've got a program which requires a keycode. My keycode generator is hosted on my server, but I use SWReg to provide the download for the program itself. This way it's all totally automated. Whenever anyone buys anything I get an email giving me the details, but I don't have to actually do anything, the customer gets an email containing the keycode and a secure download link within a minute or so, and I know how many keys have been issued because the generator is on my site. Also, the order page on SWreg can use templates, so it looks much like the rest of my site.

Hope this helps.


FWIW, here is a comparison chart for the various registration companies. Don't know how up to date it is though...
http://www.regshare.com/matrix1a.asp


Cheers - Steve

astrofish thank you very much for that info on SWREG, its exactly what I needed to know. For a while I have been looking at 3 inparticular and I now feel that its the one for me. Sorry to hear your sales are not high :( and I dont expect mine to be high so I'll also go with the 15% option.

And I would like to thank you all because a week ago I had absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing and how to do it. Now things are much clearer and I'm close to getting it finished!

Many thanks,

Chris.