Hey Python experts!

I have been working for months on a python script for Poser that I hope to sell, and I would like to get some advice from my more experienced fellow programming merchants.  I know that PhilC and yarp have experience with this.

1. What is the best way to sell your plugin? Content paradise? Rendo? Your own site?

2. How do you prevent others from sharing your code without paying for it?  Do you even try to prevent this or just rely on the honor system?

I'm sure I will have more questions later, but these questions are really on my mind now.

Thanks so much for any advice or experience you can share.

Hi.

Although Reality is mostly C++ it has a bit of Poser Python in it and I thought to give you my humble opinion.

Quote - 1) What is the best way to sell your plugin? Content paradise? Rendo? Your own site?

My experience is that it's best to no put all your eggs in one nest. It's good to retain control and have your site. Upgrades are something that are best managed by yourself. On the other hand Rendo and other sites have a great reach and they are good places to be. It's well worth giving them the brokerage fees to reach a larger public. 

Quote - 2) How do you prevent others from sharing your code without paying for it?  Do you even try to prevent this or just rely on the honor system?

There is no honor among a certain group of netizens. People will pirate your software no matter what you do, no matter how cheap it is. I have seen content that literally sold for $2 being pirated. There is no such thing as honor on the Net. Some people steal because they simply don't want to pay anything.

So, my advice is to put a pyracy deterrent in the software but do not lose your sleep trying to prevent people from stealing from you. I saw cracks of Reality done by dissassembling the binary. It would take much less money, in time, to simply buy the software but somebody went to the length of disassembling a $29.95 plugin. o figure. There are all kind of vermins out there but there are also great people who understand the value of software and who will support you in the long run. Give them great support and you will gain loyal users for years to come.

Cheers.

While it may not be easy to prevent piracy by 100%, you can and do have the power to persue some action by filing DMCA claim if you find that it has been shared or stolen. If you have questions about copyright infringment and steps you can take as a vendor don't be afraid to contact copyrights@renderosity.com (if you sell it here on Renderosity).

You might drop colorcurvature a note by sitemail, as he started selling a script here last year...

You rely on honesty.

Over the years my losses to illegally downloaded content exceeds $1,000,000

Good luck.

Thank you all so much for your responses!

Pret-a-3D, what kind of deterrent do you use for Reality?

PhilC, I know that in reality this is the only choice, but does this mean that I should not even put in the effort to have an activiation code or something?

A lot of my scripts have the users real name, address and email address encoded into the activation code. I can visit pirate sites, download my files and read the address in the code. However taking that information to law enforcement and obtaining any satisfactory redress is incredibly difficult, stressful and expensive.

I wrote a hierarchy file creator script. It sat on my hard drive for three months before I ever placed it into a store. I delayed because I knew what would happen. Sure enough before it had sold 10 copies it was on the sharing sites. Legitimate sales collapsed.

I've not put anything new in a store for a very long time. I feel that it is simply not worth it. I prefer to do freebies, that way folks at least say thank you.

Wow, that is really discouraging.  Are there really so few people honest enough to pay for a plugin that its not even worth selling one?

It kind of makes me want to try to make it as hard as possible.

Does anyone have an opinion on activation keys?  That seems to be the most common approach in regular software.

What about the script validating itself against a web service everytime it runs?

For that matter, what about just implementing the code as a web service that requires the activation key  to access?

I wouldnt buy a script that phones home.  A lot of people don't even connect their render machines to the Internet...

distribute your script as a pyc version {compiled} it will help a bit from someone copying something clever.

I'm honestly not sure that piracy = lost sales. It certainly is theft, in that people are benefiting without paying. But those people would not have bought the software anyway, they just wouldn't have it to use. So the question is do you worry about the unpaid benefits they get, or do you instead invest your time and energy in making actual paying customers happy.

Note: I'm not a script vendor, but I do sell digital products.

"But those people would not have bought the software anyway"

Then why do my sales stop or are reduced to a trickle the moment my files start to be shared?

I frequently get enquires from folks running my scripts. I'm always happy to answer their questions but when I ask for their sales verification the email conversation sometimes mysteriously goes cold.

By all means wrap yourself in the warm fuzzy security blanket of the idea that it is not really a loss. Me? I'm standing here in the cold light of reality.

Lightwave ,Max had a dongle .
others had alot of hoopes to jump threw.drove me nuts.
did not stop the pirates at all.
it just agravates ya paying customers.

PhilC : Think posative. if they cost you a million ,but you made 10 million.
Ya still better off then being broke ;)

The Gov could shut pirates sites down in a day or two easy.
not like they half to go threw a foreign jungle looking.
it's right there and if they still can't find it just ask any kid in any school.
wounder why they don't

As a merchant selling Digital products here at Renderosity
I have long since accepted the reality that
This is not a viable way(IMHO) to make a primary living which is why I still rely on custom character animation,3D motion graphics and good old fashioned 2D graphic design for print.

I recently read a very interesting book
on my Kindle called "The second Machine Age"

This book was very blunt in clarifying the reality of selling "Data sets" (ie digital products) as a business model.

In Short our business model CANNOT be compared to a craftsman selling, Maintaining an inventory of and shipping&delivering of even the most generic physical product that he created/manufactured because our only real cost is the purchase price of whatever development software we used and our own subjective opinion of what our expert labor costs to produce ONE original copy.

After that, the "shelf life" & dollar value of your product is severely limited by many factors
,not the least of which, is the ability by you, ( and others),to instantly "manufacture" store and distribute unlimited copies at a cost of ZERO dollars.

Our "loss" thus is not literal as in the case of the literal open sea "pirate" stealing a shipping container of Ipads at gun point,that Apple Paid to manufacture, and yet can NEVER be sold  (By Apple) for a profit as they have been "Pirated"or physically removed from apple's inventory in a Zero Sum Fashion.

Our "loss"can only be a theoretical estimate of what all those unlimited copies would have sold forat our retail price.

But alas our scenario then becomes a sort of "Schrödinger's cat" paradox wrapped in endlessly debatable semantics.

whereby I am enjoying the benefit of being able to "manufacture" one million copies of my $10 dollar python script at a cost of Zero while simultaneously asserting I have suffered a $10 Million Dollar "loss" when  disparate users worldwide collectively create one million copies of this same script via unauthorized digital downloads.

"The Gov could shut pirates sites down in a day or two easy.
not like they half to go threw a foreign jungle looking."

Actually a "foreign jungle" ,or more accurately a "global jungle" is exactly where on has to look  due to Bittorent.
Once the cooperative global network of torrent users collectively "seed" your product file
The person downloading it only needs a tiny hash coded,numbered text or .torrent file
and a freely available torrent client application and he begins the process of downloading Maxon Cinema4D R15 Studio in tiny "bits" from far flung personal hard drives all over the terran surface.

The only way U.S. government to stop bittorrent is to literally segregate the  continental United States from the rest of mankind via some Ultra Draconian, Faraday Cage, type of firewall that would defeat even satelite communications.

...not a likely scenario.

"Then why do my sales stop or are reduced to a trickle the moment my files start to be shared?......
By all means wrap yourself in the warm fuzzy security blanket of the idea that it is not really a loss. Me? I'm standing here in the cold light of reality."

Hi Phil
This drop off is because the market value of your product is largely dictated
by the any inherently difficulty encountered by other parties in obtaining it or reasonably reproducing something that performs an equivalent function.
( Like a Herman Miller office chair for example)

The digital ,easily copied and distributed product COMPLETELY REMOVES nearly ALL inherently difficulty by other parties in obtaining it.

This Appeals to the" path of least resistance" nature of most humans and couple this with the Instant Gratification  provided by the "Digital Age"
and any quaint notions we may still  harbor about "social contracts" between producers& consumersare reduced to vestigial relics from a long gone era

..this is the cold light of reality we have to acknowledge.
 

Quote -

"The Gov could shut pirates sites down in a day or two easy.
not like they half to go threw a foreign jungle looking."

Actually a "foreign jungle" ,or more accurately a "global jungle" is exactly where on has to look  due to Bittorent.
Once the cooperative global network of torrent users collectively "seed" your product file
The person downloading it only needs a tiny hash coded,numbered text or .torrent file
and a freely available torrent client application and he begins the process of downloading Maxon Cinema4D R15 Studio in tiny "bits" from far flung personal hard drives all over the terran surface.

The only way U.S. government to stop bittorrent is to literally segregate the  continental United States from the rest of mankind via some Ultra Draconian, Faraday Cage, type of firewall that would defeat even satelite communications.

...not a likely scenario.

Well when you put it that way.

Instead of Max,LW putting dongles on there app ,That the pirates broke in a day.
So the only purpose the dongles served was to aggravate there paying customers.
It would have been more productive for Max,LW to shut the pirates web sites down.
not all out WW4 but Just shut the pirates web sites down .
and let there paying customers live in peace.

What aggravates me the most is app's having anti pirates crap that's worthless.
so they in up going to war with there paying customers.
fxrealms treated me like dirt,God forgives I don't.
Had some other plugs aggratave me to the point ,that I never upgraded.
but fxrealms are buy far the most self destructive %&*@! I've ever seen.

just ignore the people stealing the script, why even bother. if its really useful and people like it I think many enough will happily purchase rather than risking to have their systems infected by virus from warez site

Hey PhilC,

What kind of sales verification do you look for?  That sounds like a good idea, but I don't know what I would ask for.

Also, does anyone have suggestions for how to price your plugin?  I don't want to go too high and loose sales, but I can't go too low either, because I need to make a certain amount to compensate the time I spent working on it.

Quote - Hey PhilC,

What kind of sales verification do you look for?  That sounds like a good idea, but I don't know what I would ask for.

Also, does anyone have suggestions for how to price your plugin?  I don't want to go too high and loose sales, but I can't go too low either, because I need to make a certain amount to compensate the time I spent working on it.

See what other sell there's for .

"Over the years my losses to illegally downloaded content exceeds $1,000,000"

i agree - some of those people would have bought the script but a lot of them wouldn't if they couldn't pirate it.  You can only guess at your losses but I would say that figure above is an overestimate.

Love esther

PS I hate pirates!

Digitani, I am not an expert in Python but I suggest compiled python this way you will at least save your original work. As PhilC pointed out piracy is a great concern. P3dO has a key system and this prove to be a rather safe system - but it cost 300$. This also rely on honesty because people may share the keys but they generally don't. Once a key is on pirates site however you've got a problem, then frequent updates is a workaround.

For those reasons I prefer doing programs than Python scripts. The drawback is that you only have one way communication with Poser but for P3dO this is not a great concern.

btw Artists have the same problem with 3D content.

Yarp

So yarp, your experience with a key system has been good?  Which one do you use?

SoftwarePassport from Digital River but I can't find the link anywhere. I didn't update since last 5 years so maybe is the software down.

However I wouldn't recommend SoftwarePassport. It is safe for sure but we don't really have problems with hackers you know. The drawback with SP is that it runs its own DLL in memory and is unstable on some systems - very few indeed. A more simple key system would do, and an online registration would be a plus (this would allow to disable some keys).