Ok, how in the heck would I go about this? I thought about it pretty hard last night. Basically, I have another app I want to make for Central. However, it would require Flashcom. I thought of 2 ideas:
– either I have a demo server I purchase from <a href=”http://www.mediatemple.net”>Media Temple</a> which supports about 50 connections. This allows an average of 5 instances of the app to be live since I’ll allocate 5 connections max per app. That means 5 people can demo the application for a month. I’d either have to sell 1 app per month for $70 to recoup my investment. I don’t think the market is that big.
– setup a monthly fee, factoring in the Flashcom account into the price. I’d charge a $30 setup fee, and then $15 a month (which pays for the Flashcom account). I wouldn’t have to sell any to recoupe my investment.
The problem with the above is that Ultima Online, Everquest, and a few other games cost $10 a month while mine is simply a prog to allow you to play a game with 1 to 5 other people. Most people wouldn’t play more than 4 times a month, and then only for one long day or night.
I don’t see how this could work. Unless there is cheaper Flashcom hosting out there, it seems my only option is XMLSocket, but I have no clue how much hosting for that is, and I’d lose a lot of the features I want in my app.
*sigh*
I feel like I’m aiming for a niche market. I don’t know if that’s bad or what. I mean, my goal isn’t to make money, but enable people to play D&D with people on the internet. I’ve seen a few products out there, and need to research more, but it just doesn’t seem cost effective. Hrm… business stuff is hard.
I know what you mean – flashComm is still pretty pricey. It’s hard to justify spending the money just for experimentation or small applications, which is too bad because I’d really like to get some familiarity with it…
Well, you can download the <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flashcom”>Developer Edition</a>, which is free and I use all the time. However, for real stuff, I have to use my <a href=”http://www.mediatemple.net”>Media Temple</a> account because of bandwidth constraints.
Hey Jesse… The folks at ElectroTank.com will soon have a new version of their XMLSocket server. I saw a beta running, and it looks pretty cool (and stable)… Jobe Makar posted a message at Flashcoders about it. Maybe you’d enjoy participating of the beta… =)
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?1:mss:74876
Well Jesse,
At least you’re not like me in the sense that I’ve had several ‘ideas’ for using flashcom, went out and got the Media Temple account and now haven’t been able to find the time to put the idea to work. It’s always nice to justify the cost before spending the cash. Ah who am I kidding, I seem to do that everytime I have an idea… so now with all the domains/hosting costs created by my ‘ideas’ it costs me about $150/month.
Dang! I need to get working on some of these things!!
Peace.
Well, unlike some people, your moving ahead with your ideas, in some fashion anyway. That is fantastic. There are a lot of people who have great ideas, but never act on them. Have you ever considered that maybe that price is your subconcious way of motivating yourself, hehe?