Creating/Selling Palm/mobile shareware…what do I need to do

This question has been asked on various boards and forums – time for me to “bust it for good”. Feel free to link here if someone ever asks you again about what needs to be done to create a shareware product for a mobile device.

Make the product “sharewareable”
First of all, in order to make a product sharewareable, you need to add the following to it:

• A buying incentive(IMHO, expiration works best, stuff like introducing random errors or heavy bugging dont)
• An unlock algorithm, best based on the Hotsync name – AVOID static unlock codes like I avoid Pepsi

Link up with an ESD
You need to get cash from your user someway. Unless your name is Dmitry Grinberg or AstraWare, forget an own online store. Link up with ONE so-called electronic software distributor. These folks sell your software at their store, and keep up to 45%(PalmGear, average rate is 40%) of the purchase price. They pay you in blocks…

I can personally recommend MobiHand. This ESD is rather small, charges only 20% on regular sales, has a very big sales network on many enthusiast sites, has good customer care, is fast, has a god online interface and excellent marketing support.

Basically, this is what you need to do from a technical perspective – plan at most two or three days for it due to the processing time at the ESD, etc. Obviously, to get sales you need to do much more – but that’s what a part of TamsPalm’S posts are about!
Technorati tags:
ESD
Shareware

Related posts:

1. On ESD marketing/public relations
2. MobiHand starts Palm OS app sale – for Classic
3. Selling ringtones the T-Mobile way
4. [UPDATE] – MobiHand fun over
5. Selling to users without hotsync ID via Mobihand – it’s possible!