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Looking for Advices - Website to Sell Addons

Marc L

Marc L

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2,162
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france
Hello Fellow Developers!

You probably saw I that, after years of stuggles and Unachieved projects, I got to complete and makes some release: MNLP and UKLI being the ones I have topics for here, still published 2 more on FS.to (better later than never, right?)
Well, beside those freeware projects, I got a Bigger Project, and the first part of it is getting close. I am aiming at Payware releases for it and for this, Im being curious on the way to release it. (Releasing a Payware is not the same as a freeware lol)

At Best, I would love to have a website (like HPG or EmeraldScenery), after some research I saw that some are proposing Free Website Hosting, (not sure about File hosting) but it looks too good to be true... https://freewebstore.com/plans.html if any of you even tried it?
Or a Website with a separate FileHost way? (WIX, Odoo, Weebly?) Why not using a Market or a publisher? because I want to keep control on it

I am all new in this, so if some with experience could enlight me, it would be amazing ;)

Regards, Marc L.
 
The main issue is going to be bandwidth -- even if you get a cheap or free host with plenty of disc space and bandwidth, you may find that customer downloads are going to be slow enough to cause problems. Cheap hosting tends to be shared servers, so your customers will just have to wait their turn to access your site. I'd suggest using a cloud service, for the downloads and maybe hosting.

However there will be a cost, so maybe stick with one of the existing marketplaces. I've always had my own website, with downloads via the AWS cloud, but I've also used SimMarket, which has a huge reach into Europe, and I've always been very happy with the results. Sure, I pay them a commission, but their customer base means that I can reach a lot more customers than through my own website. Because my website is mainly aimed at locals, I found that I'd get about an equal number of sales from my own site and SimMarket.

EDIT: just a comment on the issues I had trying to host my own scenery files on a shared server -- although my website had 'unlimited' bandwidth, most customers had trouble downloading large files, especially on the other side of the world, where most people live. Using AWS Cloud for the files fixed this, but at a price.
 
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Hi @toprob Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Well, for Website, I guess I can use a free service like WIX or Weebly. However for the selling part, you got a point! Bandwith and Hosting is my main concern, not even mentionning the addon's securization (Only accessible by Buyer, Email link. Or an Install App like FBW but with InApp purchase) I found some free File Host like mediaFire (50Gb for Free User), now will it be possible to make the files to be downloaded through an Installer App... Yep Ill have to dive deper into my research, but if I can't figure out anything, I guess I redirect the purshed to Simmarket ;)

If anyone else with their own website got any thoughts and advices, it'll be verry welcome ;)

Regards, Marc
 
toprob said:
EDIT: just a comment on the issues I had trying to host my own scenery files on a shared server -- although my website had 'unlimited' bandwidth, most customers had trouble downloading large files, especially on the other side of the world, where most people live. Using AWS Cloud for the files fixed this, but at a price.
Click to expand...
I ran like this for a long time. It's ok with low volume, as long as you don't get a big rush, but it also depends on file sizes and how you serve the files. 1GB+ files may time out if serving through PHP, though direct links usually wont. How you serve the files will be determined by your store plugin/software though. Some hosts do say its outside of their TOS to host files this way, but in all the time I had it set up that way (unknowingly) I never got slapped for it. Only when the site became bloated, broken, and a resource hog did I start getting notices. A fresh build and an actual good host solved that though.

I'm still on shared hosting to this day, though a more beefy plan through A2 running on a Litespeed server. Not had any issues with traffic. I also offset some of that load by using Cloudflare as a CDN for the static website content, as well as switched over to using bunny.net as a CDN for payware file delivery (I use mega.nz for freeware because I don't want to pay for that bandwidth). So far it's been cheaper than hosting all my files on a paid dropbox or drive plan.
 
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