Getting in Business

So you've got a a great application and now you want to sell it. For most handheld software vendors, that means "shareware". To turn your app into cash, you need to do three things:

1. Add a trial mechanism. Will you allow 10 free days of use or will you let the user start your application 20 times?
2. You need to find some way to collect money. Where will you sell your application?
3. You need to issue keys to unlock your application for those who have purchased. Are you going to do these by hand or are you going to automate the process?
4. Keep track of your customers. Will you track them in a database or just keep them in an Excel spreadsheet.

PocketPurchase can take care of all four tasks for you. In about 15 minutes, you can convert an application into a money-making product. Here is all you need to do:

1. Add a trial mechanism

You can either spend time writing a trial mechanism or you can just leave it to PocketPurchase. With a single call from the PocketPurchase library, the user will be shown a screen describing how much time is left in the trial. They will be offered the opportunity to keep trying your application if it is not expired, or to purchase your application immediately.

2. Collect the money

What better place to sell your product than on the user's handheld? PocketPurchase allows users to purchase your application directly on their handheld while your application is running. The PocketPurchase plug-in will collect all necessary information from the user to complete the purchase. Next time they HotSync, the transaction will be completed. We handle all credit card or bank account processing. We can then pay you via check or direct deposit to your US bank account.

Besides purchasing directly on the handheld, you might want to offer an option for customers to purchase directly from your website. PocketPurchase will shortly roll-out a service to allow you to add a Buy button directly to your website. We handle the rest.

You might also wish to sell your application through one of the major online stores. The two most popular are PalmGear and Handango. PocketPurchase purchase now offers the ability to handle purchases through other stores as well as described in the next section.

3. Issue keys to customers

Typically your application will require an unlock code for the customer to continue using it. Issuing these keys has always been a challenge for developers. What algorithm will you use to generate the key? How will you send the keys? Are you going to check your email every day and manually send keys to customers who purchased your application? Are you going to spend time automating the process?

PocketPurchase solves this problem, too. The PocketPurchase system includes support for digitally signed registration codes. These codes use 1024-bit RSA encryption and are extremely secure. Only the user that purchased your application will be able to use the key.

If the user purchases your application through the PocketPurchase service, the key is automatically installed on their handheld. The user is never sent any key by email since we have a direct connection to their device.

If the user purchases through some other store, we still send your customer a key. We email those customers a small file that they can install on their device. The next time they run your application, they are registered.

If you use our automatic trial mechanism, the registration keys are automatically validated for you. All you need to do is add a few lines of code to your application and your product is ready for sale!

4. Keep track of your customers

Whether the sale originated through us or we simply generated the registration code for you, we keep a complete list of all customers who have purchased your application. We will shortly be completing the developer area of PocketPurchase.com. Then you will be able to simply login and see all of your customers, issue refunds, download a mailing list and more. You will also be able to send coupons and upgrade offers directly to their handhelds as described later in this document.

How does PocketPurchase work?

Most handheld software is sold on a "trialware" or shareware basis. The problem with using this model on a handheld device is that the user will almost certainly not be in a location where it is possible to purchase your application when the trial ends. PocketPurchase addresses this issue by providing a plug-in that you can connect to that will allow the user to purchase and unlock your application immediately, directly on their handheld.

Here is the basic flow of events:

1. Your application is running and the user decides to buy. They may have hit a 'Buy' button on one of your screens or you may have displayed a "This application expired. Buy now?" message and they hit 'Buy'. If you use our trial mechanism, this is all done for you.
2. Your application calls the 'Register' function of the PocketPurchase plug-in.
3. Our plug-in takes over the user interface and acquires all necessary information to complete the purchase. If the user has purchased before, they need only verify their billing address and sign. If this is their first purchase, they will also need to enter their credit card details. The credit card data is encrypted with 1024-bit RSA.
4. Once the user is finished, the plug-in will tell your application that the purchase is pending. Your application should remain unlocked for 7 days while the purchase is 'pending'.
5. When the user does a HotSync, the transaction is sent to the PocketPurchase server, the credit card is processed and a registration code is generated. The code is sent back to the handheld and installed automatically.
6. Next time your application runs, the plug-in provides the registration code, which your application validates just as if the customer had entered it manually.

Coupons and Upgrade Offers

Besides handling on-device purchasing and automating the registration process, PocketPurchase also allows you to create coupons and upgrade offers. These are automatically downloaded to the user's device and displayed next time the user runs your application.

A coupon is sent to trial users and can be time or device limited. For instance, you can create a "holiday special" that gives $5 off between Nov. 1st and Dec. 25th.

An upgrade offer is sent to registered users of a product. It can either be for the same product or for a different product. For instance, you can offer $10 off the 'Pro' version of the product that the user already owns. Or you can offer $5 off a completely independent product. The other product can even be from another company if that company consents. These upgrade offers will be displayed the next time the user runs your application and will offer to download and install the second product for the user.

Any discounts will automatically be deducted from the purchase price if they are still valid when the user purchases.

Cost

There is no cost involved in using our purchase service unless a sale occurs on the handheld. Our studies to date have shown that these are mostly incremental sales. We process Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, Discover and JCB. We will shortly be adding the ability for customers to purchase directly from their US checking or savings account. Our fee is 12.5%, plus a 30 cent transaction fee.

If you wish to have PocketPurchase send our registration keys for purchases through other channels, such as PalmGear or Handhango, we charge only 50 cents per registration code issued. This covers not only issuing the key, but also adding them to your personal database and reissuing keys to customers who have lost their original key for some reason.

Revenue Sharing

We support four different methods of sharing revenue:

• Distributor share - A distributor can be any outlet for your application including device manufacturer websites and bonus CDs (Sony, Palm), online stores (PDASSI, PalmGear, Handango), download sites (Eurocool, download.com,tucows.com), magazine and book insert CDs, beaming stations in airports, shareware distribution CDs in retail, etc. If your application is acquired by a customer through a distributor, the distributor may be entitled to some of the revenue. You will need to attach a resource to your main PRC file to indicate the distributor for your application. We have command-line tools to simplify this, or you can use our installer builder and automate it completely.
• Affiliate share - An affiliate is like a distributor except that you can create a custom affiliate list per application. For instance, you could allow another developer to distribute your app on their site and specify them as an affiliate. When a sale comes in, the amount of money you specify is diverted to your affiliate. Again, this must be specified by attaching an affiliate resource to your main PRC. This is automated in the same way a the distributor share.
• Tool share - Like a distributor share, you may have used a certain tool, such as a Macintosh installer, and agreed to pay the tool vendor a per-sale cost rather than a large upfront fee. This is specified by a resource, much like affiliate and distributor revenue shares.
• Partner share - Unlike the other 3 revenue sharing mechanisms, the partner share occurs for every copy of the software sold, regardless of attached resources. Partner shares are useful for paying royalties for licensed products or splitting revenues with a co-developer.

All of these revenue sharing mechanisms may be specified by percentage or fixed dollar amount. If percentage, the totals are recalculated at each stage. First the PocketPurchase, credit card and distributor fees are taken from the base price. Affiliate shares are then based on the remaining money. Tools percentage are based on what is left after affiliates have been paid. Finally, partners and the primary developer are paid from the remainder.

Here is a worst case example. Let's say you have a product that is $20 and it is distributed through PDASuperStore. If the customer purchases with a Visa and PDASuperStore charges 10%, then you get:

$20 * 10% = $2 - PocketPurchase
$20 * 10% = $2 - PDASuperStore
$20 * 2.37% + $.25 = $.72 - Visa
$15.28 remaining

Now if you also have an affiliate specified (unlikely that you will have a distributor and an affiliate, but we'll stick with this for our example), and the affiliate gets 10% then:

$15.28 * 10% = $1.53 - Your affiliate
$13.75 remaining

If this is the Macintosh version, you may have worked a deal whereby you pay a portion of the proceeds instead of paying an upfront cost. This would typically be a fixed amount ($.50, $1) but let's stick with our 10% for this example:

$13.75 * 10% = $1.38 - Your tool vendor
$12.37 remaining

Finally, let's assume that this is a licensed product and you need to pay 20% to the licensor. The remaining money would get distributed like this:

$12.37 * 20% = $2.47 - Your licensor
$9.90 - Developer

Hopefully you will never need to split your revenue this many ways but this explanation should make it clear how the split will happen at each tier.

Getting Started

To make it easier for you to notify us of updates and new products, we accept Portable Application Description files (PAD). The files are standard XML documents in a format specified by the Association of Shareware Professionals. You can get more information on PAD files here. The point of PAD files is that you update your product description, company details, etc. in the PAD file and then either post the PAD file on your site or upload it directly to the various shareware distribution sites. Hopefully the large online stores will start taking PAD files as well.

We have a special PocketPurchase tab for the ASP PADGen tool. The PocketPurchase tab allows you to specify information such as your vendor number and the email message sent to customers at the time of a sale. The best way to get the entire PADGen package with the PocketPurchase tab is to download and install the PocketPurchase Install Builder.

The PocketPurchase Install Builder contains PADGen, the NullSoft Install System (NSIS), PocketPurchase and Installer tabs for PADGen, and NSIS plug-ins to make it easy to install Palm OS applications and conduits. These are all free to use. The NSIS plug-in will even make sure that all required PocketPurchase components are properly installed.

Once you have this installed, you can simply use PADGen to fill out all the information about your application. If you want to use NSIS to create an installer, go ahead and fill out the Installer tabs. Using our install system, you can painlessly create different installers for each distributor.

After you have entered the info for the PAD file, be sure to export the actual pad_file.xml. The PocketPurchase developer site is still under development so for now, send the file to developer© pocketpurchase.com and we will use it to create or update your company and product info. We will send back a resource file with your product and company names, signed copies of your product price, product terms, etc. Let us know if you prefer a .r, .rcp or .prc file for your resources.

Once you have those resources, add them into your main project. Now you will need to modify your application to take advantage of the PocketPurchase plug-in. To do this, download the PocketPurchase SDK and follow the directions in the implementation guide.

Registration Code Generation

PocketPurchase automatically generates registration codes when a customer purchases your application. We can handle a number of mechanisms including:

1. Static - This can be any text string.
2. Hash - This is a 32-bit number based on the HotSync user name or the buyer. The hashing algorithm may be supplied by you. We have a general purpose method of encoding hashing algorithms in a string that is very flexible but not very legible. We will be providing a web-based GUI tool for generating these algorithm strings as part of our developer web site. In the meantime, we can work with you to generate these formula strings.
3. Pool - This is the most problematic and we don't recommend it since it can result in a sale failing to occur if we run out of codes. You must provide us a pool of at least 5000 codes. We will notify you when the pool falls below 2500, or a 30 day supply, whichever is greater.

On top of these four methods, you can also digitally sign your registration key. The most useful combination is probably digital signature on top of a static code. The digital signature will contain your ProductID and the user's HotSync user name, plus the registration code. The digital signature provides strong protection against key generators while the static key helps ensure that your application has not fallen victim to a generic crack. If you use the PocketPurchase trial mechanism, the digital signature is validated for you automatically.

You can also have a separate registered version of your application. We will take care of sending the registered version to your customer after they have purchased. You should still have your registered version check a registration code so that pirates cannot simply release your registered version on the Internet.