yes, Legally I cant sell without a bussines license according to USA laws, I am in Costa Rica, what stops me from doing so? I can sell what I want to who I want where I want, being a small bussines even the government has social programs to help me export and make more money for my country.
the US postal service has signed an agreement with our postal system so sending packages to USA costs the same from here than doing it from inside USA.

of course if you buy me a whole 100 lot of disks, then the price a piece goes down like say fom $20 to $15, maybe even less because it will cost me $5 a piece to get them produced (nice cd booklet and some 2 color design on the cd Face), if I sell them all 100 at once for $10 a piece is an instant profit of $500, as opposed to maybe keep the lot in your room and lose $500 or getting $1500 profit in payments of $20 a day, a week, a month, a year?

--------------------------------------------------------
"When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows',
people just stare at you blankly and say
'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'."

Linus Torvalds.

Edited by - kwizatz on July 18, 2001 1:19:06 PM

Positivity people! KalvinB''s not trying to establish an empire here - he''s not promising massive publicity or demanding exclusive rights. He''s providing an infrastructure for those who don''t have their own (or don''t want to bother) and community-based advertising. Say I buy one game from his site; I''ll probably see tons of other games there as well - all at bargain prices. Given a couple of demos, trailers, screenshots... I might be convinced to buy another.

It''s sound business logic. And he''s been a member of the community for a good while, so isn''t some "new face" trying to "rip people off" (though I can''t see how anybody can rip you off with this scheme - except by not forwarding returns). This idea is a proven one, that "insider" and "word of mouth" marketing can amount to a potent revenue base.

At the very least critique (a constructive activity) rather than criddicizin'' (akin to defamation). Word!

Cha-ching!

I see then, but say I want to do bussines with you, I will have my own online store (I will when I finish my product), I can sell you 100 CD''s for $15 each (I would take care of shipping costs), I can make a net profit of $1000 from selling to you, so I am able to invest $500 on making another 100 disks that I would keep on my store, or sell to another reseller, I would sell for $20 + S & H in my store, you can sell the copies you bought from me at $20 + S & H so the $5 is your profit and you sell for the same price, would you agree in such a deal? the risk of not selling some or all (very bad case) the merchandise is passed on to you. The problem to me would be that if you buy 10 units, or 5 or such a small quantity I might as well sell those 5 or 10 and get the whole $20 bucks in my pocket.

This business model does have it''s place. You can never have too many distrubtion points. But you should be careful on stating the author won''t have to worry about business license or sales tax.

I don''t see that it matters wether he sells to your site or to end users wether he needs a business license or not. For sure the author will have to pay income tax. If the author is full time working for himself he will need a tax id for income tax and self employment tax. Possibly if they are still working full time for some one else then they don''t need to pay self employment tax and just add the income to the 1040.

Sales tax is different for every state, and in some states they require the tax to be paid to shiping point not the purchase point.

I guess the moral is that if you''re going to go into business selling your own software wether it is to the end user or a distributor you need to be aware of your own tax and legal requirements. The "I didn''t know" defense just doesn''t work with the IRS.

I still dont have to worry about the IRS, I am not a US citizen, I am truly free.

hmmm actualy I think at some point I have to pay sales tax, oh well, when the time comes I will.

Edited by - kwizatz on July 18, 2001 2:53:22 PM

sounds good, keep me informed, I have a deadline to have something working by february next year, so I can''t say I will be one of your first users, but the deal of getting the $1500 sounds good, burning as needed I dont like as much, because of my copyright, and well, you could just sell 100 copies and report only 75 to me, and the user might feel ripped off when he gets a home burned CD, and might get the feeling that since he got a home burned cd, he can make copies and give it to their friends, yes, yes, I know this is for people that dont want to mess with marketing, or dont have the money, etc, dont need to remind me, but I am not rich eigher, I would pay the initial $500 for producing the CD''s out of my pocket, from the money I make from my actual job, I dont think that someone that does get something finished is unable do such an investment, maybe it is just me.