Selling games/Keygenerators?

So, I want to sell a game.
How do you people solve it when it comes to demos and unlocking demos to the fullversion, giving out keys etc.
Have you created a keygenerator or are you sending passwords/keys by mail manually etc.

Do you even bother?

Get Armadillo Pro and lock your full-version to a 60-minute demo. Then use someone like BMTMicro.com or Plimus who will auto-email the key to the customer after they've paid for it. Works for me, deters casual pirates and makes you money. Only bummer is Pro costs a little bit, BUT it's an investment.

Don't forget selling to the portals as well. If the the portals don't want it, it's *probably* not going to sell on your own site either...

Just a quick question. When you send your game to portals, what do they do with it? ie. Do they add their own DRM protection and then put it up for sale?

Do you give them the source to the project including all media so that they can add their copy protection?

Or, do you have to code the copy protection they provide in your game yourself?

Portals require you to send the unprotected games files, they will then wrap and package.

If you are wanting to sell on your own site then use the Software Passport Pro package that Jake mentions, it's worth the $400 or whatever it now costs.

yeah as Indiepath says you sent them the unprotected version (with no URLS in it etc) and they wrap it for you. It's all designed to be quick and easy for all parties, otherwise it would be a nightmare.

Thanks guys. Yes, if I ever get to the point of selling I probably will aim towards the portals. Seems like it's a huge amount of work just to keep it going yourself.

Do you guys have any approx figures inhow your selling on site contra selling on portals looks like?
Is it worth the advertising, managing, site-building, protecting etc?

heh, well I'd say that if you get a good number of portals selling your game and you don't do any/much advertising for your site, you could get between 20-100(or more) times the sales on portals. So even if they only pay you 35%, it's still worth it. However, if you can build up your own site nicely and make sales direct yourself, it feels great - my first direct sale was cool :-) Now I'm aiming for 100...