How to monetize custom apps in make with a bit of code

Once you spend some time building a custom app, you might want to sell it by subscription or by fixed price.

The first option that comes to mind is building an external API that will track each app request and authenticate the user. That’s exactly what we did at makeitfuture with all makemarket apps.

However that requires a lot of development so we came up with a better solution when we developed formsformake which we call Local Authentication, and by local we refer to “make”.

Step 1: Include OrgID and Zone inside your mappable parameters:

{
        "name": "orgid",
        "type": "hidden",
        "label": "Organisation ID",
        "required": false,
        "default": "{{var.organization.id}}"
    },
    {
        "name": "zone",
        "type": "hidden",
        "label": "Zone Make",
        "required": false,
        "default": "{{var.organization.zoneDomain}}"
    }

Step 2.
Create a common array lAuth which will include all organizations that should have access to the apps:

{
  "lAuth": [
    "eu1.make.celonis.com-1111",
    "us1.make.com-222"
}

Step 3:
Add a condition on each module:

{
        "response": {
            "valid":{
            "condition": "{{if(contains(common.lAuth,parameters.zone+'-'+parameters.orgid)=true,true)}}",
            "message": "Your organisation is not authorised. In order to be able to use it, please make an account on Forms for Make - `https://formsformake.com/login_signup`"
            }
        }
    }

Step 4:
Create a payment link, subscription link on stripe or other service where you collect the user organization id once subscribed. Check also Forms for Make Register Module for inspiration :slightly_smiling_face:

Step 5:
Trigger a scenario for each new subscription to update the App Common lAuth array for each new subscriber and for each cancelation if needed.

Thats it!
Do you need any help implementing it? DM me.

You want to send a thank you coffee, just test and subscribe formsformake.com

6 Likes

Hi @makeitfuture,

Thank you for sharing this with other Makers. This approach is wonderful if you don’t want to set up a full back-end.

In step 5, you seem to be doing an API Call to get and update the Common Data of the App. These endpoints are (not yet) documented in the Make API documentation.

Can you share with us the setup of these API calls?

Cheers,
Henk

1 Like

Hi @Henk-Operative

The endpoint for common is:
/v2/sdk/apps/{app-id}/{version}/common example: /v2/sdk/apps/make-forms-12312/1/common

Just add the body that you want to update inside the common. I use a create JSON module for it.

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