Types of In-App Billing

If you try to buy a book on Aldiko Book Reader, you will be taken to the mobile version of feedbooks.com. This book reader application made a deal with Feedbooks so it could have a virtual book store. In the same manner, you can make your own store or try to partner with an online store.

There are many ways to set up in-app billing, but the one that I will talk about most prominently is Google’s own in-app billing process. If you use Google’s method, Google is going to take 30 percent of whatever you earn from your in-app purchases, which is pretty much what they take from the price of the application. There are others that you can find online that can do the same, with less of a take.

You can sell more on your application than just virtual goods. You can sell physical goods as well if you set up an online market to ship goods to your users. Take a look at part of the opening screen for Rovio’s Angry Birds Seasons in Figure 7-3.

Figure 7-3. What you will see on the opening screen for Rovio’s Angry Birds Seasons. Touch this and you’ll be led to the online store.

You can get more than just Angry Birds plush toys there. You can get flip-flops, backpacks, socks, neckties, and much more. I could probably cover a chapter or two talking about merchandise, as it is a serious money maker for companies like Lucasfilm and Pixar. However, merchandising really isn’t worth discussing unless you have a demand for it. In the case of Angry Birds, there are players who want this merchandise, and it is enough for Rovio to justify making it. I’ll let you decide whether or not you want to spend the money to create merchandise for your application, but only after you have several million downloads.

For now, you can program your online store to go to any web site, and I have the code for that in Chapter 12. You are going to have to make some sort of partnership with an online store if you want to go that route, or get into the online store business.