Thinking of getting into selling scripts

need your experience, tips and advice

[axgrindr]

I have an ecommerce site that has been doing well for the last five years or so. I recently hired a programmer to help me with some custom scripts for different aspects of the site. The scripts are pretty cool and I was thinking they might do well if I sold them on our site.
The programmer and I will go in 50/50 (I am paying him to do the up front work). He will take care of updates, custom installs and support. I will market and sell.
I was hoping there might be other people out there who are selling scripts that might have some advice or tips.

Basically is it worth it?

Any success/horror stories from anyone selling webmaster type scripts?

Any pitfalls, things to look out for?

Any legalites we should consider?

Thanks.

[chrisranjana]

The major thing to look out for is security.

The scripts which you sell must not have any kind of security hole whatsover.

[axgrindr]

Thanks. I never even considered that. I'll discuss that with my programmer.

[Corey Bryant]

One thing that happened to one client - the programmer installed a backdoor on the shopping cart. When the programmer was let he, he hacked into the cart and nearly broke the business.

I am not trying to scare you - but make sure you trust the developer. You might even consider having another one take a look at the code in the beginning to make sure everything looks ok

-Corey

[axgrindr]

Is there a service out there somewhere that would take a script and check it for any possible security issues?

[Corey Bryant]

Not that I know of - since each script is different - the outcome is different etc. Sometimes, some programmers do not even know - like SQL injection is very bad and some do not understand that.

Plus hackers just enjoy finding script vulnerabilities so a lot of times one might not even know until it is too late

-Corey