Solutions for setting up a shop through your own website

[BadMinotaur]

I'm on the cusp of finishing my first commercial game. Now that I'm winding down and testing is almost done, it's time that I work on actually selling the game. While I will be submitting the game to portals, I'd really like to have my own direct solution as well, and that's what this topic is asking about.

I have a domain and hosting already, so now I need some kind of outlet to actually sell the game through. To this end, I've been searching around Google for options, but a lot of it is full of advertisement gunk from either the big store hosts (Shopify being the main culprit) or some downright shady folks.

So now I turn to you all. It seems as if I have two options:

• 1) Integrated storefront - A store that integrates into a website that you already have. I hear there are some commercial WordPress plugins for this kind of store, and also there is BMT Micro, which is recommended in Shaz's stickied topic on how to sell your game. I'm fine with using BMT Micro, but I'd like to examine my options first.
• 2) All-in-one store hosting - Mainly Shopify and BigCommerce, it seems. These are stores that let you choose themes, and act as an all-inclusive website for whatever you're selling. Sadly, not only do they usually cost a fee ($30/mo for Shopify), but at least Shopify doesn't allow you to sell digital downloads without a plugin, FetchApp, which also charges a $10/mo fee. So selling on Shopify costs me $40/mo, AND they still take 2% of each sale! That's a serious cut into my earnings! But, if there is something similar to Shopify with a more forgiving monthly fee, it's not off the table.

This is what I'm going off right now. BMT Micro is the forerunner right now; even though I'd have to build a website to accommodate it, it's the cheapest solution for the amount of copies I expect to sell initially. Also, if I am wrong about needing a website for BMT Micro to function correctly, feel free to correct my assumption because that pretty much makes it king.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give, I appreciate it!

EDIT: It looks like this topic has some interesting info in it -- I don't know how I didn't find it before -- but if anyone has anything to add other than more portals or Gumroad, I'm all ears =]

EDIT 2: Right now, it looks like Gumroad is pretty amazing, but they don't do affiliates, which is kind of necessary if I want to sell through portals. So currently we're seeing if setting up Gumroad for our direct selling and BMT Micro for our affiliates would be a good way to go. I don't see why not at first blush, but just in case...

 

[Andar]

First advice, check your provider - the one that handles your regular website. Very often they have preinstalled packages that are cheaper than the big shop systems.


Second advice, check with a lawyer for your countries laws on webshops. Depending on your country, you need to obey those laws - if not you can get sued faster than you think.


Third advice - as soon as your webshop is online, you'll have to check regularly whether or not the system is still secure. Otherwise you risk having your customer's data stolen. Things like that happen about once per year or often to big companies who can afford to hire professional admins to check on security - your shop might be lower on the target scale due to lower number of customers, but it will also be much lower on the difficulty scale if you do not stay current with the security...

 

[BadMinotaur]

Thank you for the tips!

I actually did check with my hosting service, and their package is not only more expensive, but is apparently legendarily bad. (I use 1&1)

As far as legal-wise, I'm interested to know what you mean. I'm in the US and have a EIN/federal tax ID, and we'll be doing taxes ourselves; is there some other minefield I should avoid? Do you have any resources/articles handy for learning about these things?

 

[Andar]

As far as legal-wise, I'm interested to know what you mean. I'm in the US and have a EIN/federal tax ID, and we'll be doing taxes ourselves; is there some other minefield I should avoid? Do you have any resources/articles handy for learning about these things?

No, because I live in Germany. But in some countries, there are some <censored> lawyers that simply wait for changes in the law concerning business websites, then automate a search for websites that haven't updated and send the owners of those websites legal warnings to be paid for their failure to comply to the laws. I don't know how it's in the US, but in Europe that's a big problem for small companies...

 

[BadMinotaur]

Oh wow, that does sound terrible. I don't *think* that's a problem in the US, but I could be wrong. I'll do some searching tonight to figure out what we should avoid. Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

or maybe those portals have their own selling provider? like they'd host the game file for you and they'll also handle the payment processing and such using their own instead of a third party provider? I'm sure Steam uses it's own system...

 

[Shaz]

Not all portals go through an affiliate system.  If you want to sell your game via Amaranth Games or Aldorlea Games, for example, you would need to be able to set up affiliation.  If you wanted to sell through Big Fish Games or Steam or any of the other big guys, they will not affiliate.  They will wrap your game with their own DRM and will sell it through their own sites, and will send you your share of the sales after they pay all their own expenses and take their cut.

 

[BadMinotaur]

Smaller portals like Aldorlea/Amaranth are what I'm honestly preparing for. While it would be nice to get on Steam, it's our first commercial game and I'm not expecting a host of fanfare enough to get us Greenlit. I would love to be wrong, but I see a lot of our sales coming from the more dedicated but niche portals.

Has anyone ever utilized a multiple-shop solution like this? I'm sure it's been done, but can anyone share their experience with it? Any pitfalls that would come from having to maintain two copies of the same file across different systems? Nothing immediately comes to mind that would be an issue, but again I like to benefit from experience before leaping in.

 

[Shaz]

Then you also need to consider what payment providers those portals use.  Amaranth Games uses BMT Micro now, but has used Plimus in the past (I'm not sure if we still have an account with them, as just HAVING an account results in overinflated fees).

If you go with a payment provider that the portal isn't already signed up with, then you introduce extra work to them to create a profile in order to affiliate your game.  You're more likely to have your game accepted by them (or at least faster) if you go with someone they already use.  I'm pretty sure Indy uses BMT Micro as well.

Multiple copies of the same file introduces the requirement for you to remember where they all are and make sure they're all at the same version.  If you make a fix and release it, you've got to replace ALL of them.

 

[BadMinotaur]

Ah, see now I'm showing my ignorance haha. I didn't realize that third parties had to have an account with e.g. BMT Micro just to be an affiliate. I thought there was some standard that they all adhered to? Like banks talking to each other, they're all separate institutions but can transfer funds freely. Except that's not how it is for this at all =]

Well in this case BMT Micro is definitely on the table because Amaranth/Aldorlea are two portals I'd like to attempt to get Runes and Dunes on. As far as the many different locations for the game, that's an issue but a little organization should help make it easier to keep up with.

Thank you so much for all of the advice. The options were making my head spin, but I think I have a decent grasp of the situation now.

 

[Shaz]

Yep - if you want to become an affiliate for a game that's listed on BMT Micro, then you have to set up an affiliate account.  Otherwise, you can't direct customers to the download link, BMT Micro can't register that you've sent customers to tha link, and BMT Micro can't tell if a sale was a result of a link being given by you.  So they have no idea that you need to be paid.  When you set up an affiliate contract for a game, they can track exactly who sent the customer to them, and if a sale is made, they can log it against your (the affiliate's) account, so they know you need to get a share of the sales at the end of the month.

BMT Micro will host your game.  If you get a more expensive package with them, they'll also host a demo for you (but if you're doing an all-in-one that just needs the key to unlock, you don't need them to host the demo).  You don't need to provide other download locations unless you WANT to.

 

[BadMinotaur]

Ideally I'd just host it from my webspace I'm already paying for. It has a very large amount of bandwidth available to it so it should be fine on multiple portals, and it simplifies everything a lot. Just not sure if Gumroad will let me host remotely (I think it does but I've researched so much I could be getting it confused).

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

You could take a deeper look at Gumroad as I never saw that kind of option...

 

[BadMinotaur]

You are right, it appears they don't support that. I'm not too bummed about it, but it does add testing time and, as Shaz pointed out, potential version inconsistencies if we're not cautious.