I have an application for windows phone and its free. I want it to stay free and without ads. But sometimes i need motivation. What i need to do is to add some "buy a pint of beer to the author" button in my application (something like donation button). Sure i can create 2 versions: paid and free that are completely identical in functions just the paid with some "thanks" words, but that will be 2 completely different applications and i'll need to support them both. So..Is it possible to implement some donation payment in the application?
I think an in-app purchase would be your best route. Here's the MSDN article describing the in-app mechanism.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206949(v=vs.105).aspx
Another option is use trial API.
Trial licenses don't expire. It's up to you to define the differences between trial and non-trial modes.
In the marketplace description, you can write that trial and full modes are identical. And, in the about page inside your app, place either "if you like it buy it" button that opens a marketplace task, or big "thanks for your support!" textblock.
Related
I'm making a utility application for a photographer. He is going to (obviously) be taking pictures, but wants to charge people at an event for a handful of digital images emailed or shared on social media. In this situation i would have to use Paypal or Square SDKs and not in app purchasing because he is going to compose the transaction and not the customer buying the pictures. Sort of like a mini POS system. He can't pay himself with another's credentials - so it would have to be a 3rd party solution. right? Is this against Apple's guidelines?
Am I over thinking this?
If the intent is to support in-person / face to face (swipe) credit card or keyed in credit card payments, check out the PayPal Here SDKs for iOS and Android which are now available on the PayPal Developer site:
https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/integration/mobile/pph-sdk-overview/
There is also a version for Windows 8.1+ in Beta, available upon request. You can email DL-PayPal-Here-SDK#ebay.com for help with any of these.
I have a Windows Store app for a newspaper in the Windows Store. Each issue (one per work day) can be bought using in-app purchases. In Windows Store, it looks like i can define only 100 in app purchases. In my case, that is about 4 months of daily issues.
Is 100 really the limit? Has anyone found a way to add more?
I cannot find a way to add more in-app purchases to the app. The milit of 100 would be a really stupid constraint and I would need to remove to ability to buy old issues in order to add new issues.
Windows 8 doesn't support subscription-based purchases but it does support time-limited purchases.
One option is to let the user purchase "credits" that can be applied toward an issue. Similar to how Audible lets you purchase audiobooks with credits.
Here's the thing though. Newspapers make money off advertisements. The purchase price isn't for the content, it's for the materials that it costs to deliver the paper. A digital paper costs nothing to deliver so why are you charging for it?
The store does not support subscriptions. However you can just use a third party provider for this.
As mentioned in the 'Flexible business Model'
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/hh852650.aspx
The Windows Store provides you with the freedom to choose the business
model that’s right for your apps. The Store provides full platform
support for free apps, trials (both time-based and feature-based), and
paid apps, as well as in-app purchases. You’re free to manage customer
transactions directly using your own or third-party services for
in-app purchases and subscriptions, or use the services provided by
the Windows Store. For apps that are supported by ads, you’re free to
choose the ad platform that best meets your goals.
Paypal is accessible via this api:
http://paypal.github.com/Windows8SDK/
or directly via a form post
How to Form POST to Paypal from WinJS iframe Windows 8 App?
Is it possible to sell consumable products via in-app purchase?
This looks to be fixed in Windows 8.1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/bg182887.aspx#two
Just to add my 2 cents to the answers:
There is a limit on the number of IAPs on Windows 8, and it is 200 (but has been removed in Windows 8.1). This might seem like plenty, but an app can easily have 10 or 20 different IAPs, which divides that number down to 10 purchases in 24h, which seems like a limit some users could very likely hit soon. To add two more complex ideas of a solution to this:
You could use analytics to get the maximum number of each in-app item users purchased in a 24h window and adjust the number of each IAP products per in-app item accordingly, i.e. assign more IAP products to most used in-app items, and less to items that are not purchased so many times in 24h.
You could have IAP products assigned to price tiers, i.e. define 50 products for $1.49 priced in-app items, 25 for $1.99 and so on..
For completeness, I'd like to quote #Chris Bowen's link to the workaround debate:
If the games are being XBL enabled they will have to use the built-in
Consumables solution.
The XBox Live, though, in my experience, is a very closed program.
The answer is no, but it is also yes.
Consumables, specifically are not supported. That is any in-app purchase you can make again and again and again and again. They are not supported.
However, durables (that you can purchase one time) can be set to expire in a single day. Many developers have created multiple durables, allowed them to be purchased in a day, kept a central record of their purchase somewhere, and let them expire so the user can purchase them again tomorrow.
So, no, you cannot set consumables.
And, yes, you can set expiring durables and act like daily consumables.
Consumables (e.g. buy a pack of gold coins for your character in the game, and allow the user to buy that pack multiple times) are not directly supported for Windows Store apps (though the Windows Phone SDK has ProductLicense.IsConsumable), but there is a type of workaround that you may find helpful, depending on the specific scenario.
However, support for in-app purchases of multiple different products is relatively simple to implement, shown in this article and sample:
How to support in-app purchases
Trial app and in-app purchase sample
Are there any apps in Windows Store that uses in-app purchase system?
If yes, which ones are that?
Wordastic and Word Recon are two games I've seen with live In-App purchases.
At present, Wacky Wordsearch seems to have made it to the store with simulated IAPs, if you want to see that process.
I've seen different documentation on various forums and site on different ways of using Paypal api, here is a pretty useful link: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECOnMobileDevices&bn_r=o/, My question is a little different i do not want to use any of the Paypal libraries offered to us in my app, this is the link to libraries:https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/documentation-tools/sdk , I also do not want to gather any personal information, I want Paypal to take care of everything. So in other words I want to be able to open up a UIWebview to the Paypal's mobile site if possible (or if not the regular site will work) have to user log in with his credential or he can use the express checkout option and get back the transaction ID, or receipt what ever is available. I'm a little new to iOS and any help is appreciated.
If you don't want to use any libraries or API's, Express Checkout won't work for you.
Which does make it somewhat easier, as you can just use PayPal Website Payments Standard in a UIWebView instead.
For example; just open https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=your#email.tld&amount=1.99¤cy_code=GBP
This will start a 1.99 GBP payment to email#here.tld via PayPal, and automatically use a mobile layout.
If you subsequently want to receive transaction information; set up PayPal IPN on your account and use that to receive transaction-related events. This can be handled outside your app, and thus take away precious processing power to the server.
For an overview on getting started with PayPal IPN, have a look at https://www.paypal.com/ipn/
I would strongly suggest against trying to do transactions through paypal. If you look at the App Store Review Guidelines it states that
11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected