IS HANDANGO INSANE?!? (Or am I??)

[fzammetti]

I just got an eMail from Handango. Before I go completely nuts, can anyone else that got it verify that I am reading it correctly and that the commission they take is being rasied to 40%?

Please tell me I'm wrong...

[fast_rx]

I was just about to start this thead myself...

The other thing that is strange is that the up the commissions to 50% after you make $60k. Seems like they should lower commissions after you 'gave' them $40,000!

Yes, they have lost their minds.

[Ohayden]

Wonderful news everybody, first it was PocketGear and now it's Handango. Well that means we can equally raise the prices to cover the increase from the both of them. It's absolutely crazy. We handle 99.8% of all our support since Handango and the like aren't up to our standards. We do 100% of all the research and development. We stay up endless nights fixing issues and improving the products. Then Handango and PocketGear wants a bigger cut of the pie? How rewarding is that? Talking about not biting the hand that feeds you...

I think it's time to start investing more into our own marketing. If we are going to pay so much for marketing, then we may as well have our direct site benefit from the marketing and not the distributors. Quite amazing how distributors can demand how much they want from you. I always thought it was the manufacturer who set the price .

And who is losing in this battle? Our customers! That's what infuriates me the most. Even when we start spending more for marketing, we are NOT going to increase our prices on our site. Like that, any customer who buys directly from us will not have to feed Handangos and PocketGears insane greed.

[egarayblas]

The question now is what do we do? Maybe its about time we put together our expertise and create our own "developer-and-customer-friendly" online store and pull out all our products from these sites and sell them there exclusively. If we have good products there, it will be a lot easier to promote it.

[AizaDGreat]

This is all so infuriating!! I mean, we work off our butts here and they want to get so much more.

This makes me soo mad.

[sponge]

If anyone wants to gather a team for making an alternate site, let me know, you'll certainly have my support and PocketGamer's.

[j.edwards]

Just a quick note to let you guys know that I'm currently developing a website (www.runningant.com) you will be able to use as an alternative to handango/pocketgear etc. It is not intended to replace them obviously given the traffic they receive, but it will be to your advantage to direct as many orders through it as possible.

The website is completely based on web services, and all functionality such as product, orders, security, and customer management will be exposed as web services that you can use to integrate as required, e.g. develop your own management tools, automated tasks etc. This doesn't mean the website won't do anything and you need to build everything yourself it just provides much greater flexibility.

Royalties have almost been finalised - there are 4 account types, and basically the more royalty you pay the more features and exposure you receive, but the choice is up to you.
1) Economy: 5%
2) Standard: 10%
3) Advertiser: 15%
4) Premium: 20%

Although it may not be to some developers liking, I decided that I will separate out the transaction fee and the royalty. So on top of the above royalties there is a $0.30 + 3% transaction fee - that is the raw cost that is just getting passed straight on. So on the above percentages, add another 5% for $10 product - so the Economy rate works out to be 10% in total. This may seem to be overcomplicating for no reason, but what it allows in the future is for alternate payment gateways to be integrated, and the flexibility for developers to chose which one(s) they wish to use.

The way the fees are structured allow developers who just need a payment gateway service to receive orders at a 10% rate (which will no doubt be used for many existing products), but also provides other developers who want to take advantage of advertising options to do so.

I will keep you informed of the progress. At the moment I'm developing core functionality, but once that base has been established I will start opening it up for discussion to those interested.

[sponge]

j.edwards: Need any help with the graphics or web design? Absolutely no experience with any languages :\ but perhaps I can still lend a hand.

[j.edwards]

sponge: Thanks for the offer. At this stage, not really. However, I would like to have a chat sometime soon about PocketGamer. One of the things I have to resolve is how best to publish news etc, and integrating with a site like PocketGamer would be ideal. For instance, are there any plans to provide an RSS feed in the future? What I'm thinking at the moment is having a title and brief summary that links through to the PocketGamer site. The RunningAnt site will not just be for games though, so other news sources will need to be integrated as well, and a consistent integration approach would be ideal. For instance, I could provide a web service that your website could call everytime a news article is published so it publishes in both places simultaneously. My plan is to allow partners of the RunningAnt site to integrate news within their site, so if I can get the articles from various sources all within the site, I can provide it in a consistent way to others. What do you think?

[Dan East]

Many developers, myself included, have strongly recommended to never send customers to Handango or PocketGear from your own website. Use eSellerate (10% fixed rate) or similar. After all, Handango did nothing to cause that sale, so they should not get paid a commision as if they did.

BTW, I received an email from PayPal last week that they have lowered their rates, based on the amount of money you receive over a month. The new pay scale will start in a couple months.

Dan East

[sponge]

j.edwards: I'm just the news lackey, best talk to David about that one :P I could've sworn there was an RSS feed somewhere after there were a few requests for it though.

[superman]

Just to throw in my two cents/mini rant. I think Handango and PocketGear have pushed it too far. I was unhappy about the original 30% they got for my products, but I swallowed it because they were giving me more exposure than I could get on my own. Then, PocketGear came along with their lovely "we have record profits, so we're gonna squeeze some more from our supporters" letter. That didn't bother me so much, since they bring in relatively few sales. Now Handango is going to pull my already miniscule profit down even farther. From what you posted, j. edwards, I think your site will be much better for developers, and I hope that everyone will at least add their products to your site. It would be better if everyone dropped Handango and PocketGear all together, as I plan to, but that probably won't happen. I really don't have the time or resources to set up my own processing module right now either, so I'm sort of stuck with a reseller site. So j. edwards, please let me know when you get your site ready, and I'll be one of the first in line to sign up.

Thanks, Chris

[j.edwards]

Dan, I agree it's a good idea to use something other than handango to receive payments. The pricing structure I have adopted provides a fairly competitive platform (i.e. approx. 10%) for receiving payments, but with the added advantage of additional exposure.

I wouldn't say that Handango etc did nothing towards the sale - if they didn't have people visiting their site how would they know about your product? Not sure of your specific case, but you must be paying someone somewhere to advertise your product. i.e. I think there is still a role for sites like Handango that consumers can visit and "discover" products, although I think it's about time the fee structure for developers was fair.

[fzammetti]

I've never had a problem with the rated Handango was charging because they were doing a fair amount of publicity work for me. To me as a small-time developer, it's very much worth it to pay someone to do as much of that as possible because I have limited resources to do it myself.

At some point however it's not worth the amount I'm giving to them, and in my mind this is clearly that point. I'm not sure what I'm going to do just yet, but for really the first time I'm going to be seriously considering other options.

j.edwards, I too would be willing to help in any way I can with your site. Being as I do web development all day long for a living (and have plenty of experience with Web Services to boot), feel free to contact me if you think I can be of any service.

[blazingwolf]

In this post at Brighthand they talked about something similar when Pocketgear raised their prices. Someone has started this sitewhich is suppossed to be cheaper to use. I don't know if will help you developers or not but it might be worth looking into.