Think about this scenario - would you ever shop at a mall where every store sold only a single brand of a single item? You walk into a clothing store, and all you see are rows and rows of exactly the same suit? Want to look at a different suit and compare styles and prices? Go across the hall, to another suit store, and look at that suit. Pretty ridiculous concept, isn't it? Yet, if you're not taking advantage of network sales, and only offering your product for sale through your website, that's exactly how you're selling your software application.

The core idea behind network sales is not new - you are a part of it every time you go to the supermarket, for example. Go into the snack aisle, and you'll find several tempting varieties of potato chips, pretzels, corn chips - you came for one thing, but you'll likely load up your shopping cart with two or three other items that you would not have considered had they not shared the same space. Network sales affords exactly the same benefits to your software, by allowing you to have your application marketed and sold by other developers on their own sites in exchange for revenue share and reciprocity on your own site for their products. The immediate result - increased product inventory on your own portal, wider distribution channels, and access to a vastly larger number of points of sale for your product. You'll also be receiving revenue from each sale of every item in your expanded inventory. In the end, all developers benefit from participating in network sales.

Network sales also ease the burdens for applications that are trying to forge new ground in unfamiliar markets. By participating in network sales, your software application can be promoted and marketed by partner developers that have already established a reputation of trust in their area, giving you valuable credibility that would otherwise have taken months to build on your own. Every site that features your product immediately expands the number of potential customers; instead of limiting your app's visibility to those who visit your website, your app is instead cross-marketed to thousands of people through multiple websites, every day. Some network sales partners may even promote your software products in blog posts, newsletters, and on social networking sites, in addition to their product website, giving you access to an even more diverse customer base.

E-Commerce providers, such as Plimus, have already begun to capitalize on the strength of network sales, giving you the ability to choose from thousands of products from participating vendors to offer on your site. Adding new items, or even entire categories of items, is easily accomplished with a few clicks. Registering to have your own product offered for sale by other vendors is even easier. Yet, for so little effort, you'll be opening the door to a whole new form of revenue that can have wide-ranging benefits for your own business!