PocketGear Sales

[fzammetti]

I don't think anyone really has a problem with their new policy. I completely understand it from their perspective and I agree, I don't see how they held out so long!

However, what I don't think was well-stated by them in the beginning was that you could have the threshold set to whatever value you want. For those of us that don't have many sales through PocketGear (for whatever reason, I'm not trying bash them) it is obviously very bad to have to wait potentially months to get a check.

The staff at PocketGear handled this particular situation for me very professionally and promptly and I thank them for it. I think the same can be said of the people who have posted here on this issue. But, it could have saved us all some angst if they had told us changing from the default threshold was an option all along.

I suppose I can understand not doing so too, they don't want to have every developer defeat their new policy!

[brendan]

Theres a reason why Handango have a policy of developers placing there URL in the splash screen etc so they get the final purchase.

If it's anything like me, Then whats happening is trails users are comming to your website to get purchase details, and you have a "handango" preference, thus they sell more than pocketgear.

-B

[simonjacobs]

[brendan]

[simonjacobs]

[brendan]

[simonjacobs]

[Hosed]

[simonjacobs]

[simonjacobs]

[brendan]

Sorry, I should have pointed out that all my games point to my website for sales, as I have a handango power store. I try not to "endorce" any other sites etc, but my store (handango powered) forfills the "requirments". However I have not problem in placing "watermarks" in software for sites.

Ok now stats wise (ratios):

about 1-2:100 (1-2%) purchase from pocketgear,
about 5-6% purchase from handango.
(depends on the quaily of product as well)

of these stats, about 50% of the handango sales are purchasd through my e-store.

from my web stats, and download trail stats on other websites such as download.com, zdnet.com and various small game directories they make up about 60-70% of all downloads when compared to handango. (It could be higher as developers demos tend to pop up everywhere)

i.e handango 30-40%, others 60-70%

now from this I conclude that the 50% of sales from my web store is semi consistant with the 40/60 ratio, there is most likely a slight differnce in there with users going directly to handango etc, and there is also a percentage of direct purchases, this is where the handango advertising kicks in. (After all it is the most popular site, and most PDA users have accounts)

I'm not saying this data is 100% conclusive, and I think there would be a slight differnce anyway because of the extra advertising handango do. All I'm saying is that these large number of trail downloads (more than handango combined) have to appear as sales somewhere?

In the case where a dev does not have an e-store, then it makes it a bit harder to understand the data. i.e if your site just points all sales to handango, then it would appear that handango sell more, which is true. It also depends on where and how many of your trail version are being downloaded from neither pocketgear and handango.

Maybe a test? point all sales in the game and site to pocketgear? see what this does to figures

-B

[simonjacobs]

I think what you are saying is very possible for smaller developers, that if they are selling less than 80 a week for instance, and dont have a way of telling if a sale came through their site but is just passed on to handango, then sure the downloads from cnet could distort the ratio.

I'm just saying that some people who do track the sales seperately still see a lower sales ratio at pocketgear, so your theory isnt the explanation for that.

Anyway, I regret causing a big argument about it, we are both entitled to our opinions, and I wish you luck selling your games whatever channel the sales come through

[brendan]

[Guest]

ok here is a good one:

"Handango! Here is a company gobbling up all download sites but do people realize what they are doing? Their top software are only titles that reference Handango in the registration screen. So you can have a piece of crap software, mention Handango in the title screen and congrats you222re now a Best Seller! And to top that, they have their software competing with ours! Maybe they should give us a royalty every time they sell a copy of theirs! "

[simonjacobs]

huh?