Little Help: Processing Order Expenses

[JPGinLA]

Hi,

After reading about all the possible solutions used to sell games, prevent piracy, host web sites, host email, etc., I'm curious what amount others assign as the total expense to process a game purchase order: eCommerce fee (shopping cart, cc fee, PayPal fee, etc.), registration system cost, hosting expense, bandwidth expense, web design, etc. In other words, what is the cost of selling a registered game on a per game basis?

Thanks!

-JPG

[Fantus]

That's very hard to answer, as it also depends on how many games you sell. If you do everything you mentioned and only sell 1 game, you are not making any money of course.

CC and Paypal fee are usually payed by the customer, so no worries there. Webdesign is in most cases done by the developer. If you are a re-seller, and want a webdesign studio do the work, there are many other things to think about. Like a decent stats system for your developing parties for instance, or a good cms system. Even bandwith can't be answered because it's hard to determine how big the average game is.

Lower costs aren't everything, you'll have to find a way that suits you and your game. Do some research and put these questions in perspective of your game.

[mahlzeit]

This is how I used to calculate things when I was selling my shareware app:

Per product sold:

Revenue = what the customer pays
Direct costs = payment processing fee + sales tax (if any)
Gross profit = revenue - direct costs

The other costs are indirect costs: they cannot be assigned on a per-product basis, so totals only here:

Indirect costs = web hosting + books + company insurance + ...
Net profit = total gross profit - indirect costs

Since I used to run a sole proprietorship, all profit went directly into my own pockets:

Personal costs = food + rent + medical insurance + ...
Personal profit = net profit - personal costs

If you are incorporated that last bit is a little different. There's more to it, but this should give you some idea.