Real Money *LIVE* for Everyone

Thanks to SamSyn and all of our intrepid testers, “Real Money” – the way for Developers to get Real Money for their Virtual Goods, is now live for ”everyone”.

Cribbing from SamSyn’s post on Thumdar.com, during the test:

Num Purchases: 632
TotalPriceDollars: $1518.22
TotalMakenaDollars: $568.35
TotalDeveloperDollars: $949.86

Again, to quote SamSyn:

(not counting fees kept by PayPal which can generally be estimated as “5 % and a nickel” (if you are set for micropayments) or “3% and 30 cents” if you’re not.

Waving my hands, I claim the total micropayment fees were about $100, so the real Developer Income was about $850 all told.

This is important. There has set itself to “handle micro-payments”, which means that PayPal takes out less for small transactions like Makena’s ‘cut’ for the sale. That’s good for us.

However, for you (the Developer) to get the best rate, you need to do the same thing:

• Become a PayPal Merchant
• Set your Merchant Account to be eligible for Micropayments
• Use that account for your There Developer Sales

And, boom, you get the Micropayment rate.

Becoming a PayPal Merchant is not hard (some of the Beta Testers have already done it), and does not make you a Bride of Cthulhu, nor expose you to even more NSA spying. But it does let you take advantage of Micro-payments, which is pretty cool.

We’re all very excited by this. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but putting >$750 directly into the hands of developers is a pretty good deal.

As of 12/30.2013, All Developers can use “Real Money” and start earning a little coffee money (or maybe even more) for their work.

So, get on it!

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There’s been some talk of how this would be “better” if we instead introduced another kind of currency for Developer Sales, which in turn could be exchanged for real money.

Thus, converting another kind of virtual money, for real money.

I know that sounds simple, but there are a couple of legal hurdles, which I’ve covered before:

• The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) doesn’t like it.
• There has been another Legal Opinion issued which basically would make There responsible for reports Virtual Currency -> US $ conversions as income to … you guessed it, ”our Developers”. And, well, once we report it..

So while it’s a good idea, it, unfortunately, has serious problems from a legal standpoint.