Best Way To Sell/Distribute Software Online

I haven't used them, but I hear FastSpring - E-Commerce, Merchandising & Fulfillment Solution for Desktop Software and SaaS is pretty good for what you're trying to do.

I think the best solution for you at this moment, is to go to the Joint Ventures forums on this website and offer a partnership for someone who already sold software.

I think that it is easier to sell an online service than a desktop software. So if you can make your software 100% online then go for it.

You will only ask for people to create an account and pay trough paypal the small amount you want. Then they can use the tool instantly. You won't have compatibility problems, antivirus issues, different operating system versions, updates, etc. On a web app you can push updates right away and they will be available for all users.

On the other hand, if you want to sell your desktop software, if you want to keep everything on your own, install s2member, ask people to pay and create an account. With the account created they will get access with updates, tutorials, manuals, etc.

There are also many places where you can sell your software. It is ok to send your stuff there but you should only focus on 2-3 things at a time and try to take the most out of it.

First make website with billing software.
Make a trial version of your software,then share in software sharing sites like c.net ,brothersoft.com etc
Upload your software in payloadz.com and copy link or button and paste in your website.

I would think selling software wouldn't be any different that selling any other product or service. I would say build a website and target your software's keywords and integrate your keywords on your website.

You could also join software forums and be active in the forum and including your signature leading them to your website where you are selling your software.

The more traffic the more sales, I have seen ugly websites still produce sales but that doesn't mean don't work on conversions.

All the best

If it's a software that has to be downloaded after purchase, I think e-junkie should be a good choice, but you will have to pay $5 monthly or more depending on the size of your delivery package or the number of products you have.

I'm about to give a try to Click2Sell, no monthly fees, just 5% on all purchases. Both use PayPal by the way.

Many years ago, I looked into writing and distributing software as "shareware", as it was called then (and might still be!) - basically, a free download and trial period, then the user was required to pay for the thing to keep using it.

I never actually got around to releasing any shareware, but there used to be active developer communities and online forums for people who made their living (or part of it) in this way. It might be worthwhile looking around the net for those communities, or whatever they have become in the intervening years - there was a lot of good information around on the development, distribution and payment processes, and while I'm sure things will have changed, there must still be people building and selling software this way.

Hope that helps a bit!

if you meant about protecting your product download link, you can check many sites that offering download link protection...

one for example : getdpd
this site offer download link protection, but it has monthly fee...

as for other, i think you can also check : click2sell

Warm regards,
Hendy AUgust

it's kinda big question, but I will focus on the "the easiest way to market it online".

First you can go to avangate, that affiliate network program is specific for a lot of softwares and apps.

For the pricing, I recommend you to increase the price and give more margin to the distributor. You can't sell to many low priced products because your network will need profits too.
If you don't have distribution channel, you can't sell a lot, right?

So, try contacting avangate and talk directly with them

I work with Plimus and I'm kinda satisfied. But Plimus offers also to find affiliate marketers who promote your software and get a provision, which you define. Download links are secure and all the payment stuff is done through Plimus. Me as an affiliate would like to find more reliable platforms like Plimus to find software to promote. I choose to promote software because the commissions are higher than average product provisions.

I've been selling software online for 15 years so can probably help you.
I use Share-IT - they handle everything including the payments and shopping cart and deal with distributing demos and full versions worldwide. Shareware sites work well for demos.

You will face lot of difficulties in selling softwares. You will need a proper help. I recommend hiring someone knowledgeable enough to run your software business. However, sales and marketing you have to focus. Noone, can handle your sales and marketing (unless, you yourself know what you are doing).

There are ton of ways to protect and distribute license keys. Just google it.

Thanks

Try avangate, they can help you accept payment, distribute product, manage affiliates...

Hello, not to be out of the way but selling your software, so cheap. I mean selling is selling, but i have a small suggestion. Why dont you give the software away using conduit or so. That way you can choose to advertise other software.

Also you can use pay per install , there are a lot of stuff online about that.
Take care.

If you're interested a really easy new alternative that is worth checking out is Selz

Designed for digital downloads, quicka and very easy.
No monthly charges, only charges a small fee per transaction. You can do video previews as well.
Options of integrating with Google analytics, mailchimp or aweber for emailing. Or Facebook store and Wordpress plugin (although you dont need it as its just a copy and paste a snippet of code)

you might want to look at CodeCanyon? They are a dedicated software distribution site. They take a cut sliding from 50% to 30%, depending on your salves volume. But they do quite a business.

Hello,

As an alternative, please allow me to recommend PayPro Global. It's an innovative solution to sell software online. I personally work at PayPro Global and I would like to point out a few key benefits of our software eCommerce platform:

1. Support - We provide ultra-fast support, as we understand how important it is to receive high quality assistance FAST. You will get answers to any of your request in less than 1 hour.

2. Recurring Payments - We offer the most flexible and advanced subscription handling mechanism that is compatible with any product. You can delay the first payment, set any value of the first and of the following payments, set the desired frequency and period of payments.

3. Affiliate system - We offer a fully automated partnership and affiliate management tools. With these tools you can:

- Automatically distribute commissions according to your terms
- Limit the partnership to a subset of products and countries
- Price the commission as a percentage value or a value set in US Dollars

4. Coupon Codes - Our flexible discount coupon tools allow you to:

- Create coupons that can be applied to either all products in an order, selected products, only the highest priced product, or only the lowest priced product.
- Define discounts as either a percentage or a currency value.
- Create coupons in multiple currencies to better target specific markets (currency value coupons).
- Set the total order minimum or maximum required for using a coupon.
- Generate thousands of special offer coupon codes within only a few seconds.

5. Customizable Checkout Pages - It is one of the most valuable assets of our services. You will be in full control over the design; with full branding from PayPro global, you customers won't even notice that they were transferred to a third party payment processor. Moreover you will have a highly-skilled web designer dedicated to your account. He will be constantly testing and optimizing your selling process. You can also add/remove form fields so that your checkout page is fully compatible with your product specifics. Also I would like to mention that according to the A/B testing performed by our partners against other players in the industry, their conversion rates and sales are higher with PayPro order pages by at least 11%.

PayPro Global also offers a very special patented marketing tool - Cross Sale Pop-Up, which allows you to promote additional products in an elegant and risk-free manner after the customer submits his order. It has proven to increase sales by at least 5%.

6. Instant Payment Notification - PayPro Platform performs IPN transmissions using the POST method. When a customer purchases a product, you can have the purchasing details immediately sent to a script on your Web site (for example, to log the information into your database).

7. Needless to say that we accept all credit/debit cards, PayPal, Alipay, Phone/Fax orders and many other international and localized payment methods to ensure that your products successfully penetrate various markets.

As a conclusion, I would like to add that all of our partners benefit fully from the above mentioned tools, along with many more, absolutely free of charge. Also we don't ask any exclusivity agreements for additional features. We offer premium service as standard to everyone.

I hope my answer was helpful to you and may you have additional questions, I would be happy to answer all of them.

You can register absolutely for free with no obligations and request a free demo to explore all the real benefits of the innovative PayPro EasyCommerce Platform.

Regards,
George

I sell physical products, information products, and software, and there is one big difference between them...the amount of customer support required!

99% of the time you can sell an eBook and you won't ever have any customer support issues. The customer will download the book and you'll be done with it. Sometimes the person will lose the download link, claim they weren't taken to the download page, the receipt will show up in their spam box, etc. and they will need some sort of minor customer support.

However, with software, you will usually see more customer support issues. Even if the software is super easy to use, there will be people that have issues, problems, questions, etc. on how to use it and you will have to help them with it. If your software is really good, you will hopefully have less issues, but they're still going to pop up.

Just my observation from selling multiple types of products.