Hello Slipjack,
First off, thank you for your inquiry.
The biggest advantage SolidICE will be able to offer is the flexibility allotted to us due to the unique size of our team. Seeing as we currently are a team of two developers, we are able to operate without a large majority of the overhead other larger options may incure. This also allows us to rapidly prototype and develop features which users and authors request. Many of the current features you will see on SolidICE have been directly implemented due to the requests of users, this same philosophy is applied to any and all addon management features. If something is not working the way the addon development community desires, we are dedicated to making the changes that will best suite those developers.
SolidICE currently offers the basics of addon management, however in the near future we hope to implement GIT version control integration, so authors can commit new versions straight to SolidICE without using a single web form. Along with GIT integration, we aim to allow authors to configure their addons to "watch" themselves on Curse. Should your addon be updated on Curse, and your addon be configured to do so, we would import those changes or versions onto SolidICE. Thus allowing authors to only upload their addons to a single site, yet benefit from the user base and profit sharing of two sites.
Going along with our small size and low overhead, is that we are able to provide a much larger percentage of profit sharing to addon developers than other larger operations can afford. Our current system of profit sharing relies on addon authors registering for, or have a pre-existing Google Adense account, and then providing us with their publisher id.
Once we are provided with an authors publisher id, we will immediately begin displaying Google Adsense ads for that publisher id on the download pages associated with addons authored by that user. This system will allow authors to be directly compensated based on page views and ad clicks, rather than based a arbitrary download count. This also directly increases the level of transparency between the hosting site (SolidICE), and the addon authors as authors are able to see detailed statistics concerning their earnings through their Google Adsense dashboard.
Along with an increase in transparency, all authors whom claim or upload an addon to SolidICE, are able to receive compensation, regardless of the number of downloads their addon has received. Authors also receive 100% of the revenue from the direct download of their addons.
Our current plans are to also increase the number of pages which an authors ads will be displayed, to expand to forums and forum posts related to those addons, as each addon receives its own individual forum, and to the detailed overview page of said addon.
While our profit sharing does not rely on download numbers, we track the download statistics of an addon down to the minute. Authors are easily able to see the popularity of their addons through detailed graphs, which will soon be upgraded to update live. Our experience has been that other hosting options were unable to accurately track the download count of our addons, so in building our solution we took extra time to highlight those statistics.
Along with accurate statistics on your authored addons, and transparent profit sharing for all authors, we are able to offer near immediate approval and availability of newly uploaded addons and versions, both via the website and our icebox download client. Within 30 seconds of your new addon being submitted, or a version being uploaded, we will sanitize and make available that addon or version.
To complement the immediate availability of addons on SolidICE upon submission, Icebox users are able to download any and all addons without restriction. Icebox imposes no download restrictions on its users, where other solutions limit their users to 2 simultaneous downloads, and prompt the users to upgrade to reduce the restriction. The entire SolidICE system is designed to provide functionality to authors and users without imposing limitations and pay walls.
I hope I have answered your inquiry fully.
Please feel free to contact me at any time with any further questions.
-Ron
Author dashboard screenshot examples: