Distribution: Email vs. Private Webpage

[Matt Machell]

No disrespect meant. It's a common enough error made by many so called web professionals. Thought it best to mention, just in case.


Matt

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I forgot my smiley face - I wasn't offended. I was just ribbing you a bit.

Here it is, belated: :)

- Clinton

[quozl]

With your mentioned space issues, Ron, I am thinking of releasing the sample scenarios and character sheets at a secret URL. That way, if the secret URL gets out, people will see it, see the character sheet, flip through the scenarios and say (ideally), "Holy crap! I want to play this game! I'd better send off my email!"

If people are going to say "Holy crap! I want to play this game! I'd better send off my email!", why are you putting this stuff at a secret URL?  Shouldn't you be putting this stuff on your front page like at Jared's Inspectres page?

---Jon

[Zak Arntson]

Quozl,
Good point. I figured I would give interested people an "in," where they would get privileged access because of their email effort. I do know that I'll put goodies up publicly once the game is actually for sale, but my plans currently just cover the shareware email-to-get rules.

Something to consider, definitely. Thanks!

[Clinton R. Nixon]

If people are finding reliable ways of doing these things by download, why does everyone have to use PayPal, rather than one of the other credit card agents?  

Just about everyone I have mentioned it to says that PayPal is not safe.  I have recommended games to people before, and had them refuse to buy them because they don't want to use PayPal.

Couldn't somebody run a kind of commercial download clearinghouse for Indie games, that might be big enough to get one of the other card agents interested?

There is a commercial download clearinghouse - it's called RPGnow, and I believe it's at RPGnow.com.

On the PayPal thing: you're quoting hearsay. Put up some solid evidence of someone getting screwed with PayPal, or drop it - you're doing one of my least favorite gamer things: spreading unsubstantiated fear.

[Valamir]

There are a couple of sites that list some real old, early days, horror stories, but I've seen nor heard of any issues recently.  Every transaction I've had with them has been exceptionally quick, easy and with no problems whatsoever.  The hurdles they put me through to sign up and verify my account ranked right up with root canals, but essentially were an excellent way of them confirming that I was who I said I was and actually had a real bank account with real money in it.

So Hyphz, if it makes you feel any better, before I signed up for PayPal, I visited a few of the "I hate Pay Pal sites" and came to the conclusion that every bad anecdote there could be categorized in 1 of 3 ways.

1) Stupid things that the user did that they got pissed off about because Pay Pals security measures make it difficult to correct such things quickly.

2) Transactions that quite frankly I'm GLAD Pay Pal rejects or freezes because even though they were probably quite innocent they looked suspicious, and as a banker it reassured me to know that Pay Pal was abiding by federal laws that require putting suspicious activity under a microscope before releasing assets (one story involved a $30,000 purchase from an overseas producer...who'd be placing $30,000 transactions through paypal to begin with, I can't imagine).

3) Legitimate sounding negative experiences.  But most of those I found were pretty dated when PayPal was still trying to figure things out themselves.  As for the rest...nothing that made me think dealing with Pay Pal was any more dangerous or more of a hassle, than dealing with my bank or a credit card company.

So I signed up...haven't regretted it yet.

[Mike Holmes]

2) Transactions that quite frankly I'm GLAD Pay Pal rejects or freezes because even though they were probably quite innocent they looked suspicious, and as a banker it reassured me to know that Pay Pal was abiding by federal laws that require putting suspicious activity under a microscope before releasing assets (one story involved a $30,000 purchase from an overseas producer...who'd be placing $30,000 transactions through paypal to begin with, I can't imagine).

As someone who works in this industry, I can tell you that regulation is tight, federally. And with the passage of the recent Patriot Act, it just got much tighter. That said, I am relatively certain that they aren't looking for RPG transactions, and that such should go smoothly.

Interestingly while scrutiny has been torqued up, so has privacy, simultanously. This sort of schitzo approach to the problem makes this a complicated business. OTOH, such mandates are improving quality of service over time, so you can't really argue with them. Growing pains.

Mike

[xiombarg]

The biggest problems with PayPal I've seen amount less to being screwed and more to very slow customer service and lack of accurate information about company policy and what's going on with one's account. Frex: http://www.goldrushgames.com/paypal.html

[Zak Arntson]

Yoink! The thread's been hijacked! Okay, so PayPal has issues, but wasn't the initial question: "PayPal or mailing a check are probably the most realistic choices, but what are other options?"

[Michael Hopcroft]

How does one go about setting up a private webpage where one can pay by Paypal and download the book immediately? I'd like to make this available to my PDF customers, but I have no idea how to code it.

There's an example of such a page at Gold Rush Games, but obviously they are not going to share their source code with me.