I develop metro (windows 8, winrt) application for selling ebooks. I want to use Windows store as the payment processor to support Windows Store in-app purchases.
I am interested in next questions:
Can I add new in-app purchase products after my application will available on Windows Store without updating application?
(Or I will always need to update app when create a new in-app purchase product ?)
Can I add new in-app purchase product programmatically (dynamically) to Windows Store in-app purchase products list?
If I will add 100 new books every day - I will need every day add 100 new in-app purchase products?
Is there limitation to count of in-app purchase products?
You can always add new in-app purchases after your app is approved in the Windows Store; however, for your scenario it sounds like you might be better off rolling your own third-party payment system and using that instead.
That way you aren't bottlenecked by the Windows Store and don't lose a 30% cut (eventually 20% if your app exceeds $20k in lifetime sales, which includes in app purchases.) The trade off is that you have to convince users to provide you with some other form of payment information (PayPal, recurring billing on a credit card, etc...)
If you can tolerate the turn-around time of the Windows Store, that option would probably be easiest for you.
You should always update you app, but:
If you update only products - your app will be reviewed faster than
usualy.
Also, you can list some extra products. To have a some kind of
buffer.
I suggest you to ask your question here
Related
my company wants to distribute out app via redemption codes at an expo. We do not want the app to be public, and we need more than 100 codes. We are enrolled in both programs, and the most recent build is approved on itunes connect but not released. What steps can I take to achieve this? Thank you.
You cannot get more than 100 promo codes for an app's version. You would need to update your app. For each version you get another 100 promo codes.
You can request up to 100 promo codes for every version of each platform of your app, or for your in-app purchases.
With in-app purchase promo codes, users can download your app (if the price of the app set to free) and redeem the code for the in-app purchase item. Codes can even be used before your app is available on the App Store. You can provide up to 100 promo codes for each in-app purchase item, with a limit of 1,000 total in-app purchase codes per app every six months (resetting on January 1 and July 1). These codes are for non-commercial use and expire 28 days after they were requested.
Source: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/ProvidingPromoCodes.html
Follow this link for detail instructions in creating promo codes. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/ProvidingPromoCodes.html
Codes can be used if the version’s status must be Ready for Sale or Pending Developer Release. For in-app purchases, the state must be Approved or it won't appear as an option.
In your case since app is approved by apple but pending developer release, you can use them for selective group.
I am making a game for windows 8 and I am going to have ads in it. I want to offer to remove ads as an in-app purchase but according to the microsoft guides the app has to have been sold to be able to handle in-app purchases. Are there any ways to allow in-app purchases without selling the app? I want it to be free, not sold or trialed.
Yes you can do this. I dont know where you've seen you cant. I do this in two of my apps (Peregrine and "Map Wallpaper")
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.