I use Stripe for payment processing with a custom in-app UI for buying the app. Stripe has been great — they charge 50c+2.9%, so I lose about 44c per copy of DragonDrop sold (versus losing about $1.50 to Apple in the App Store).
I suggest releasing in the App Store if possible, but selling independently, too. The whole thing took about a day to set up and has been totally automatic since then.
As of August 21st, I've sold 5.9% of my copies through my independent store. This includes a few weeks at the beginning where the app wasn't available on the App Store at all.
The App Store utterly dominates.
However, I still think it's good to have your own release path as well, because it gives you a bit more courage to argue with Apple when you need to. :)
You're thinking of iOS. On the Mac, you can distribute apps out-of-band, although you still need to pay Apple for the digital signature, or else your app won't run on a default Mountain Lion installation.
I use Stripe for payment processing with a custom in-app UI for buying the app. Stripe has been great — they charge 50c+2.9%, so I lose about 44c per copy of DragonDrop sold (versus losing about $1.50 to Apple in the App Store).
I suggest releasing in the App Store if possible, but selling independently, too. The whole thing took about a day to set up and has been totally automatic since then.