Author Tier

The ComponentSource Author Tier is our entry-level tier with online marketing & a multi-lingual customer service sales team.

Author Tier Logo

The ComponentSource Author Tier provides a comprehensive global online marketing vehicle for products. This entry level tier also includes your very own online ESD store service - for use inside your own Web site for a very low transaction fee.

For a one-time joining fee of $500, a marketing fee of $1,000 a year - or for an easy to pay - $100 per month fee - and 60% of your SRP (Suggested Retail Price) back to you for every sale, you get access to the following marketing benefits:


ComponentSource provides you with a worldwide marketing channel for your products. Here are the services we provide:

  • For all current and future products you release through ComponentSource we will clean install, test, de-install and comprehensive virus check and feedback, ensuring customers have the best experience when they download and use your product. You will be assigned a Technical Account Manager to carry out these tests for all your products and new releases
  • Receive ComponentSource consultancy on your product positioning and product pricing based on our experience of the component and tools market
  • Receive continuing feedback when you release new products and versions
  • Your products will be listed 24x7 on the ComponentSource Worldwide Web site, the most visited software component and development tools Web store in the world, with over 920,000 users in over 110 countries. Your products will be listed by category, by company name, and by product name
  • Where your products have been created and tested to prove that they can work on the Japanese edition of Windows and to support the display of Kanji (Japanese characters) via UNICODE or the Double-Byte character set - your products will also be eligible to be selected to appear on our ComponentSource Web site in Japan: http://www.componentsource.co.jp
  • ComponentSource provides 43 toll-free telephone numbers in 41 countries for customers to contact Customer Services so we can talk to them about your products
  • ComponentSource provides Customer Services and first-line Technical Support for your products in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese
  • You can reference ComponentSource toll-free numbers, multi-lingual customer service, and multi-currency purchasing on your Web site to make it easier for your international customers to buy your products
  • Our high-bandwidth download centers around the world mean customers receive your software products fast
  • Your products are submitted to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN and AOL
  • Your products are listed in all relevant ComponentSource high-traffic Community Partner Web sites, such as DevPia in South Korea, who have integrated with the ComponentSource Web store
  • Your new products and versions are listed in the ComponentSource New Releases areas of our Web Site, which tens of thousands of developers refer to every week
  • Your product details can include a 75-word description of your company's credentials so customers know exactly who has developed the product
  • You can purchase additional marketing opportunities with ComponentSource at a 10% discount off the normal fees, such as sponsoring a Web advert for your product in a relevant business category on the ComponentSource Web site
  • ComponentSource provides multiple purchasing facilities enabling customers to purchase your products by credit card, bank/wire transfers or on account, using US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), Pounds Sterling (GBP) and Japanese Yen (JPY) + 16 other currencies including Korean Won and Australian Dollars
  • ComponentSource manages fraud using a proven commerce engine developed and enhanced over the years. If any fraud does occur and a user successfully downloads your product, ComponentSource is liable for the fraud and will still remit your sales payment to you
  • ComponentSource pays you on time, for all sales, in USD, Euros, GBP or JPY. Your sales are reported in real time via your own secure section of the ComponentSource Web site and via email
  • You can associate yourself with the ComponentSource global brand by using the "ComponentSource Author" logo on your Web site and marketing materials

ComponentSource enables you to use our technology to set up your own global Electronic Software Download (ESD) store on your own Web site, just by providing a frame and a URL link:

  • ComponentSource can create for free, at your option, an Electronic Commerce Web store, so customers can also purchase and download your products from within your own Web site using ComponentSource bandwidth and toll free telephone numbers for customer service. There are no setup fees, monthly recurring fees or bandwidth fees for this service. All we charge you is a 10% transaction fee for any product sold via your Web store. The 10% transaction fee can be reduced to 8% or even lower to 6% - based on the value of $ sales flowing through the store each month - contact us for more details. (Note: ComponentSource is not liable for any fraud for these transactions. For transactions directly via the ComponentSource store normal discount and fraud management applies)
  • Check out our ESD Service Special Offer - only a 6% fee!

ComponentSource enables your products to be considered for large-scale development projects:

  • The optional, free, ComponentSource Escrow Service lodges your source code in secure locations in North America and Europe, thus giving corporate and enterprise customers peace of mind about purchasing and using your products should you be unable to continue supporting them
  • The new 'Asset Value' section in the ComponentSource online product catalog pages enables us to publish reuse and value data that our Corporate and Enterprise customers have been asking for, such as 'Number of lines of code in your product' and 'Number of man months to research and develop your product'. ComponentSource customers such as EDS are making this a requirement to consider purchasing a product:

    "When we evaluate any off-the-shelf software product for inclusion into an EDS project our assessment is not just a technical one, the other key selection criteria are based on the cost-avoidance value and time to market advantage to EDS and their client. We compare the total cost and time it would take EDS to create a similar piece of software with the total cost and time to evaluate, license and integrate the product. The difference is the cost-avoided and the time to market advantage. Knowing the number of lines of code and the man month's development time for a specific product allows us to more quickly make this buy vs. build decision. We have therefore asked ComponentSource to gather this for each of their publicly available software components. Commercial off-the-shelf components promise a great return on investment - but we need your help justifying it."

    Patrick Urkens, Component Reuse Program Director, EDS

ComponentSource will enable you to keep up with the fast moving component market and the business opportunities it presents:

  • You can keep up to date with the latest market developments by reading our regular monthly Publisher Newsletter. This email newsletter covers topics such as: new technologies, useful new products and suggests new ideas for marketing and pricing to help grow your sales
  • You can use our white papers and other information to help you build commercial, reusable software components
  • You can participate in our product comparison charts that we create and publish on our Web site as PDF documents to allow customers to easily see and understand the functionality and capabilities of your products. Your involvement in this creation exercise helps you clearly define what your products do and also helps keep you up to date with all the new products, editions and versions that have been released into the market by existing and new competitors. As such it is an invaluable research and comparison tool for each of your products

Download Author Tier Agreement - Zip file (311k)

Join our Publisher Program or for further information or assistance, please email us: publishers@componentsource.com

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