eCommerce Comparison

This is a comparative discussion on eCommerce solutions.

I am running this in a similar manner to the discussion on Networking solutions, where there is a publicly editable google doc for storing the data in addition to the normal forum thread discussion to be had here.

Please edit the document in the spirit it is intended. Only add or update information you know about and don't disparage or denigrate services you don't like purely out of vindictiveness.

This will take a while to get up and running. We will need everyone's input to make this successful as there are so many solutions out there.

 

eSellerate (http://www.esellerate.net/):

This is currently the only sales solution I use.

Pros:
- Works find for me.
- Relatively easy to set up once one wades thru the docs.
- Tech support is always helpful. Usually takes 2 days to get a turn-around on response.
- Has a "split pay" option to automatically split payments between two different authors, allowing co-authors to be paid directly from eSellerate.
- Never yet had a complaint about service.
- Has a built in Key Generator for activation codes, or one could supply an externally generated list.

Cons:
- Without a lot of customization, the stores are a bit... bland.
- Site is just slow enough that while editing, there is a large and noticeable lag during every major step.
- Documentation is complete, but not necessarily clear and can be heavy wading to get thru with only a few simple "let's get going" guides.
- To sell pure code or unity packages (not software applications), one must contact technical support and ask them to remove the Electronic Download Service (EDS) option, because if people select this, then they will be unable to receive software updates. "Redownloading" is the only way to pass on new updates and this is limited to 3 redownloads of the same software version, then the users account needs to be reset manually. This means that with every 2-3 updates (or more often if they reach or exceed their download limit), a users account must be manually reset.

 

I'd install Magento or Joomla+Virtuemart on my webspace to build a free e-commerce solution.
Magento looks really cool, but needs some RAM which means you have to have a root- or virtual server.
Joomla with the extension Virtuemart runs on any mature PHP/MySQL webspace and works well and fast, but doesn't look as fancy as Magento.

I am using Joomla+Virtuemart and it works fine for my digital content.

Cheers
e

 

Ethan,

If you run your own site, do you deal with taxes, vat, and all that felgercarb?

 

Just a question, can anyone share some experiences with unitymagic?

 

Virtuemart (and most other e-commerce solutions) has some functions for this, though. You have some options to adjust your VAT for customers from your own country or foreign countries etc.

In my case i didn't need to charge VAT, because in germany you would have to write sth like "including 19% VAT" to every price you are displaying, except if you are a small business with a turnover less than ~16000 Euro/Year (that's my case).Then you don't have to take VAT from your customers, but you have to display that your are a small business, like i am doing it on polyload.com. Every price has this * beside it which leads to the message "All displayed prices are final and VAT exempt according to § 19 Abs. 1 UStG (small enterprise)".
A lawyer translated this german law text for me for my page.

 

Ethan: That makes sense. I'm not the business person in my small company, but I'm aware that there are difficulties and peculiarities when dealing with global clients.

Chickenlord: I have not hear of UnityMagic. These people: http://www.unitymagic.com ?

There are a number of other "asset store-like" sales portals. Maybe this is worth talking about as well.

 

Yes, exactly that one. Haven't heard of them as well, so i'm not sure if they are handling things well.

 

That depends on your contry's law. But this shouldn't be too hard to google or to ask a lawyer. At least this would be cheaper than paying like 6 or 9% of your sales.

 

Ok, as wanted in the other thread - here are a few words about gameprefabs, unitymagic and turbosquid.

All of these platforms working well for me, no problems at all.
You get your money monthly through paypal and it doesn´t matters how much or less you sold.

turbosquid:
The most known marketplace for 3D content at all.
Putting up your models also in a non-unity format (fbx,obj) will get you some more sales.
(Unity isn´t the only engine on the market, you know ?)

gameprefabs:
Good amount of sales. They advertise your assets with a first weeks discount and
their newsletter. No one who starts with unity don´t know the tornado twins
Good upgrowing, professionell Game-Ready Shop !

unitymagic:
Very new, so the sales are lower here. But maybe get higher over time.


If you want to increase your sells - but your Stuff up on these stores.

 

Phex: Thanks for the insight! That's very good to hear.

Am I correct in believing you sell primarily (only?) 3D models? Do you sell any other assets?

 

Before you start to setup your own store

Check the legal issues of your country and how to deal with taxes !

In germany it is not that easy to run your own online shop. There is a lot
of things you should know first and a bunch of legal things you must
doing the right way.

I know that, because i setup a online store for one of my clients with
XT-Commerce.

Better sell your stuff on one of the stores mentioned above.
This way you only have to deal with your own income taxes.

 

Yes, i´m only selling models. Because i´m a 3D-Artist - not a coder.

 

Thx alot Phex, that's one useful information.

 

Thats a good point.
Another reason to use something like gameprefabs is that you are living in a ecosystem together with other similar things so people might struggle over yours as they check through the offerings for other stuff.

 

Yes, right.

No one knows "your" shop, but a lot of people know gameprefabs or just find it on their google search trip.

In my opinion, the best shop for unity assets around.

OK, only 50% non-exclusive - but a monthly payment.
For me thats a good deal. Half of all Dinky Dungeon Tilesets were sold on gameprefabs.
A few on unitymagic and the rest on turbosquid.

btw, a lot of people try to set up their own asset shops in the rush for quick money.

As unity3dworks. They offered 80-95% when you publish your assets there.
I wanted to give them a try and published my dungeon tileset.
No answer, no reaction, no nothing. It was 2 or more weeks ago!

in this case i only concentrate on the three,for me working, platforms.
gameprefabs, turbosquid, unitymagic.

...and later when the sales on these platforms go down i submit to the assetstore, too

 

Wow, I was actually thinking about using GamePrefabs.com, but only 50% for non-exclusive is awful. And then exclusive only gives you 70%? That's horrible. If i put anything on there exclusively, it'll probably only be as a plug so people know about my work.

If we pour our time and effort into something, we should at least get MOST of the money from it being sold.

 

I am using this https://www.e-junkie.com . It is very cheap... monthly fee is 5 dollars . For me the best solution....

 

Is it only a flat monthly fee? No % of each purchase?

Also, how does it handle updates?

 

You can send email to all your customers. So I will send them email where they can download new version.

5 dollars per month (no other fee) and you have 50 mb of space.

Pricing: http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/pricing.htm

 

That is the deal on most succesful stores, on turbosquid you get only 40%.
I would be lucky if all the money gets directly to me, but thats not common.

Maybe you sell 5 pieces a month on your own shop, makes you 100%.
But maybe your assets can sell 20 times a month on that stores makes you...

You get the idea.

Selling on the AS gets you 70% - but you have to wait 4 months before you get a payment.
And only if you brake the $250 barrier.

As i said before, check the legal stuff before selling something from your own site.
You must know what is the best way for you. But in most countries you have to
pay taxes on your income, your products and so on. It´s just an advice.

 

All of my experience selling my own software has been at a 70/30 split (XBLIG and Unity Asset Store), so anything less than 70% sounds crazy to me. But you are right, if it can drive up volume, then i make alot more money over all.

I definitely am concerned about taxes and such, which is why I want to use an established eCommerce site to deal with most of that for me. (Besides income tax of course)

 

You underestimate the flowing costs of such a store.
70/30 split is the best you can get, But the bigger or
better the store is, the lower is your percentage.

Nothing is that automated that you dont need some
real people doing things like checking your submissions,
paying your royalities - keeping it rolling, for short.

Those people also want to be payed for their work.

 

OK, I couldn't post until we made a final decision. We were in talks with Avengate for 2 weeks to see if they could provide the workflow we required, which included allowing users to download updates for free (without buying their special package thing for $3.50, or whatever.) While we wanted we created an account with eSellerate (thanks LittleAngel!). We had both ready to roll out, then Avengate replied that they could not do it, at least not any time soon. so....

Today we signed the final agreement with eSellerate. I believe we settled on 5.6%, which is better than Avengate anyway for less expensive products. Here are some items of interest from our eSellerate evaluation:

• The site is horrible to figure out at first. Once you get it though, you realize there are lots of redundant links they could get rid of, put a few things on one page and it would be easy to use. Easier than Avengate in a lot of ways too. Basically, you...
  • Setup an SKU (product) tell it to generate an activation code list automatically and upload your product, image, description, etc.
  • Create an eSeller (store), add any or all SKUs and pick a template. This will give you a complete site with a catalogue page and cart functionality in just a few clicks, but, as you will read in a moment, you can do a LOT more.
• The website is 1990-slow... I don't know why, but they seem to be on an older version of the internet, lol.
• You can choose to make a custom template for an eSeller (store). This is where eSellerate really gets awesome, if you have the web-skills to write your own HTML and JavaScript you can really do anything you want, and it is all through the website. You can add html files, change images, add new ones, etc, etc. Really anything you want!
  
  One of our team used to be a web developer, so he made us a really clean custom cart page. We wanted to do this because we already have a new website with product pages (releasing this weekend we hope), so we really only needed a one-page cart for each product separately, with almost no options. We are really happy with the custom look we were able to create.
  
  Again, you don't NEED to go this deep, but you CAN, which is awesome!
• I just got a call from our team member I just mentioned. He had to call eSellerate to find our a few list minute things and said they were easy to get on the phone and very helpful. They said they can get us activated within 20 minutes of sending them the agreement. A very good start.

... and yes, we will have PayPal, and just about everything else (as we did at Avengate btw.)

In spite of the negatives I am finding the overall experience easier than Avengate and with less constraints and manual steps. I'll report back if anything unexpected comes up (and when i can provide a link to our new page)

 

eSellerate have been fine. You've summed them up perfectly.

The only problem I found with eSellerate, and you can correct me if this has changed was to get updates one had to have them disable EDS on your account and to download an "update" one had to do this:

This is what they say:

This option seems to have a 3 download limit that the seller needs to manually reset, or more downloads are impossible.

Did you find this to be true as well?

 

I use share-it.

They used to have a real sucky interface but they improved it tremendously. They do have a set of rules to comply with, though, like having to have a website that has contact info for you and a product you sell through them has to be on your website within 7 days or else they remove your product for sale etc etc etc.

On the up side, though, no monthly costs, small commission, payment directly to your bank account for $2 fee, reseller support, discount coupon generation, resellers and if you decide to nominate a commission to resellers and sign up for their free (I forget what they call it), your product is advertised on (what feels like) over a hundred different sites free of charge (well, the seller get's their cut, obviously, but you get to say how much, though they recommend no lower than 20% in order to attract more resellers)... Overall a nice options and I am quite happy with them...

The biggest problem I have with them is that their new interface no longer allows my browser to store my username so I have to remember that looooong numeric login name and for some or other inexplicable reason that simply doesn't make sense to me, their login system also requires that you enter a captha code for each login... How annoying is that!?

Up until their last site update all I had to do was click on login, enter my password, hit submit and I was in. Now I have to click on login, open up Mail, scan for an email from them, copy my account number, go back to Safari, paste y account number, enter my password, enter the captia and hit submit... To answer my previous question: REAL annoying!

But with that being the only problem I'd say it's a decent enough option

Edit:
Just had a look at eSellerate and the first thing I noticed was the Digital River logo beneath their name. Seems they and Share-It are part of the same team or something. I then noticed that they are very similar to Share-it with the most visible difference being:
- eSellerate charges $15 for international Bank transfer where Share-It does it for $2
- eSellerate does websites and carts and in-app registrations etc, Share-it does none of these
- eSellerate pays via PayPal (at no charge) whereas Share-it does not!

This last point converted me and I am signing up for an eSellerate account right now...

 

MrDude: Thanks for sharing!

http://www.shareit.com/

For those looking for a quick link.

 

if somes are interrested to share their works on MyStore they are welcome.
ask me for more informations.

 

Nice looking site. The unity web player is a nice touch.

 

thanks, i'm actually working on advertising part and referencements.
you'll fund it on facebook and top 3 with google i espect ^^

 

for cInput2 we are using ByteCommerce

No montly fee.
Everytime you sell 20 assets, the payment of the 20th asset they keep for themself.
So if you only sell 19, they don't charge you anything. Payment goes trough paypal.
You can choose how many times the buyer is able to download (or how long) - you can set this to unlimited also.

This was for us by far the best deal i could find. So far we don't have any complaints about it yet, i can recommend it !

 

I use Wordpress and WP-eCommerce.
$0 to setup, $0 fees

This was be far the best deal I could find.