Idea: A Modern Potion Store

Have you heard of Potion Store? No? It was made by Potion Factory. Still no? How about The Hit List? That’s also by them. Still no? Oh gosh, now I feel old.

Potion Store was a web app that let developers sell their apps online. It was built with Ruby on Rails. You could download the code and set it up on your server. It supported PayPal and Google Checkout. It was discontinued 11 years ago.

And here’s a free idea for you: make a modern version of Potion Store. Make it work with FastSpring, Paddle, and Stripe. Maybe include features for license validation and app updates via Sparkle.

I’ve thought about this for a while and see 3 ways to do it:

1. Make it open source.
2. Sell it as a one-time purchase, like how 37signals sells their ONCE apps.
3. Sell it as a SaaS. If you’re greedy, charge a percentage of the revenue. If you’re not, charge a flat fee.

Option 1 is tough because you probably don’t want to work for free. Option 3 might not work because your target audience is developers, they’ll think your price is too high and make their own solution over a weekend. So, option 2 seems like the best.

If you go with option 2, make sure the setup process is easy¹ and that the software can auto-update. (I thought about doing this myself, but I don’t have the ops skills.)

I think many developers want to sell their apps outside the App Store, but setting up an online store can be difficult, especially if they don’t know web development. I think they would love to buy something like this.