in-app purchase for platform content

Hello,

we provide a platform app, where content providers can create content to the platform. The users can chose a content and if they like it, it can be bought by in-app payment.

The problem is: If the user has bought the product / recurring subscription defined in the Appstore, he cannot buy another one. He can cancel or renew the in-app product.

We cannot create in-app purchase products for all products in the "marketplace" because these are defined by the content providers dynamically, there will be hundreds or thousands of it.

How can this be solved?

Thanks Chris

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there will be hundreds or thousands of it

I believe you can have up to 10,000 IAPs per app.

The alternative is to sell "tokens" using Apple's IAP, and track actual sales with your own server database. Doing this well is a lot of work, and you really don't want it to go wrong.

  • To create 1 in-app-purchase for every product that a content provider creates, would mean we would have to create each one "by hand" and align it in the programming. That is an effort that we cannot provide and is sure to create many failures.

    The problem with the second suggestion: The customer can buy a subscription for a product only once. So you can align a token to it but the user cannot buy a second one.

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A digital currency approach means you lose out on the recurring revenue and subscription based features.

Another option is to consider is using subscription groups as generic subscriptions. Where you assign a group in real time to a creator for a customer to subscribe to. So max # of concurrent subscriptions x # of creator business plans you want to offer is the number of groups you'd need to create. So your app/system has a mapping of groups to creators per customer. So each creator will have set of generic groups you can use to merchandise to a customer to subscribe, and you dynamically assign/merchandise them.

And in addition you could still create creator-specific subscription products for your high volume/established creators. And this maximizes the volume of subscribes using specific groups and minimize volume on generic groups.

I am having the exact same issue, I want sellers to input their own specific price - not some XX.99 tier prices by interval. Has anyone found a way to do this?

  • That cannot be done with in-app payment at all, sorry to say. Think about the big picture: Apple has created the price categories, that are adopted to all currencies of the world with change rates that are adopted only when the exchange rate has changed strongly. To use other prices ist not possible in that system.

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I want sellers to input their own specific price - not some XX.99 tier prices by interval

You've got the wrong idea. You need to first see what Apple provides, and then develop your business plan around that offering (i.e. xx.99 tier prices in this case).

The alternative, of inventing your own business plan and then trying to fit Apple's offering around it, is doomed.

Thanks to all for the input. It seems, the problem cannot be solved in a generic way. Except for apple would create an API function for it.

The idea how we can solve: create 3 subscription types upgradable: IAProduct for 1 content -> align by internal token to align correctly e.g. $12,99 IAProduct for 2 contents -> align by internal token to align correctly to both contents, e.g. $24,99 IAProduct flat rate for all content -> no token necessary, e.g. $39,99

In that way, we can have

  • as many community content as there is
  • users can buy access to 1, 2 or 3andmore as upgrade function

Disadvantage: All content must be aligned in an internal database that must be kept clear and errorfree. it seems to be necessary to show bought products in the account (new screen for payment transparency).