Flowstone Marketplace

[Exo]

I have set up a marketplace to buy and sell Flowstone modules or anything Flowstone related. It is just an experiment for now, I will see how it goes.

Visit it here... Shop is no longer active

Anyone interested in becoming a vendor should PM me. If you are a member of Flowstone guru you are already a member of Flowstone Market as it is just a sub site.

I need to write up a licence but I am thinking for modules people are free to use/modify as they please, but they cannot share the source even if it is heavily modified. No credit to the author is required ect...

Vendors get 80% of the sale price. Prices do not include VAT this is added at checkout if applicable and it will use the correct VAT rate of the buyers location. Vendors don't have to worry about VAT I will take care of this.

If you are registered for VAT, you can enter you VAT number at checkout and avoid paying it.

Let me know your thoughts! Thanks

[Tronic]

The concept of selling the modules is a bad way to handle this now small community,
I think it's better to offer a system with demand and supply,
as Freelancer.com.

[Exo]

The concept of selling the modules is a bad way to handle this now small community,
I think it's better to offer a system with demand and supply,
as Freelancer.com.

Yes I understand it is a small market, still I think there is some demand. Like I said it is just an experiment really. I personally would like to gain access to peoples hard work for use in my projects for a small cost.

Still if I was to charge for my time, it would be way more expensive than offering modules. People can request modules if they like too, these can be made and then offered through the shop for a much lower cost.

Anyway mostly testing the water here, I know the market is small. If there is no interest at all (not just from this community, there is a world of users outside of here) then I will close the shop. I will give it a few months.
But there it is, if anyone is interested in selling modules then they now have an avenue to do so.

[tester]

There was such similar experiment in the SM past as far I remember (some locked modules). Did not worked well.

Besides it will create a real mess. If someone buys a module and needs help on it, then module lands on forum. Or it will create again ambiguity between people.

Better (but still - not the best) idea would be to make a marketplace for end-user software made in SM/FS.

p.s.:

Donation based offering would be more proper. Download for free, but feel free to donate (and support that way) if you like it. Or crowdfunding like - gather enough money to work on proposed/needed idea.

[Nubeat7]

first of all, thank you exo for bringing this up!

Donation based offering would be more proper. Download for free, but feel free to donate (and support that way) if you like it.

do you really beleive that anyone would donate anything, i'm not, and if so you get 5 bugs for 100's of downloads which are shared around the planet...
i have around 13 000 downloads of my free vst plugins on my website and i have not a single request from anyone to donate something for it

the shop is a good idea, and i also like the idea tronic mentioned while for jobs it would be great to have a section here on the forum something like "flowstone jobs"

one the thing with the shop is as mentioned, sharing buyed modules on the forum - this and any other way of sharing and reselling should be forbidden and written down in the terms anyway!
and if i sell modules and get money for it i also will provide support for it like bugfixes or help with implementation, and for further customising i would take just small rates of money...

i know that some people around here will argue against the shop with hundrets of good reasons but please don't start an annoying discussion about it, better create some cool stuff and sell it, or share it for free if you like that more and! thank exo for all the free work he did to bring up flowstone guru and the shop

btw how would it work with the payments for the devs?

[Exo]

btw how would it work with the payments for the devs?

Would have to use paypal, I can store the email used for your paypal with your account. At the end of every month I can send payments. Each account can see their own sales ect, and how much they have earned. I would probably set a minimum payment amount (something like £10) so that I am not just transferring £1 here and there.


I do have serious doubts about this now though. I wanted to do something like this to make Flowstone a bit more of a serious tool and encourage professional content. But I doubt there is much demand I think most people here are just hobbyists that like to tinker and learn rather than create serious products.

[Nubeat7]

thanks for answering the payment question.

I do have serious doubts about this now though. I wanted to do something like this to make Flowstone a bit more of a serious tool and encourage professional content. But I doubt there is much demand I think most people here are just hobbyists that like to tinker and learn rather than create serious products.

i do lots of things just for fun and also pay for it, so i think its no question if someone is doing it as a hobby (also the hobbyists purchased FS), you also should see the educational worth of it, which is great for every hobbyist too

what the future brings is really depending on the development of FS and if it will go to 64 bit (and mac) one day or not - sadly i really see it (specially the vst part) dying if it will not support this in the near future, which would be a big loss but thats another story...

in general it is a good thing for sure and i only can agree with your thoughts about serious tools and professional content.

[Perfect Human Interface]

I do have serious doubts about this now though.

I personally like the idea of the "free for personal use, contact me for commercial use" type of thing right now. The amount of people who are actually active on this forum right now can be counted on both hands.

I don't wan't to repeat everything that was said in the last thread where we discussed this in depth but, for Flowstone stuff specifically, I'm not a fan of the idea of paying up front for any components without being able to examine and test them out first. Experience has shown me it's just not practical to assume anything will do exactly what you need and as well as you need it to based on any description alone. There's too many variables. Sometimes it may be down the line in development that you realize you can't use "component X" after all and need to find another solution.

[tulamide]

I'm disappointed.

Not from the op or what it is about, but from you guys. How come that everything different gets commented so negative? Can't you just say thanks or good luck? Many people around here are talking and talking. But only a few, with Exo being right in the lead, actually do something!
I read about "better ideas". Well, then do so. Exo decided to go this path and not the other. So what? He is willing to offer a service. Some may benefit from it, others may not. That doesn't mean it is to be decried before it even started!

I will take the offer and bring Apex (font to bitmap font conversion) to the store. Why? Because the shop is there now. I participate in something new.

I also have difficulties with some of the arguments. For example, has anyone ever refused to buy a washing machine because he wasn't allowed to disassemble it to make sure the machine works exactly as he wished? And here we have even more service by trying a demo before buying.

Why should offering high quality work, from a guy as experienced as Exo, for money, to compensate for the time invested, be a bad thing? Just because he is not willing to give away his skills for free? Well, if his work is not worth a few bucks in your eyes, you shouldn't get access to it for free anyway!

[tester]

And some legal issue. Can a person, that sells "modules" (makes commercialization on them) - moderate a forum of a company, where such or similar "modules" are placed on that forum (with help requests and so on)? It's a slippy approach with a ricochet option on board.

I'm not against selling whole works made and exported with FS (with some CC-BY compatibility). Selling modules will just limit support for other flowstoners at some point. If you sell a module that does something, and I will ask for help on a similar concept, then what - you redirect me to your e-store? Not to mention (as described earlier) a situation, I post a slightly modified module that is being sold and ask for something on it? What emotions and rections it brings? How many discussions on who is bad and why?

@Nubeat: nowadays, even a donation requires some marketing and strategy around it, otherwise it's a dead button on the website (it worked 10 years ago). Download counters don't matter (how many of them were from robots?).

*

To conclude. Make something that is worth of supporting with large-money scale, and find a business partner (DSP Robotics?) who will have an interest in helping you to get such support. 40 x $5 is much worse than 1 x $200.