Today on indiegamer forums the author of Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa asked about selling games in Europe, the european market, what are best sites, and so on. I want to share my experience since 40% of my sales are from Europe:

• localization was useless. I did german one for my game UBM when was just released, so selling exceptionally well, but basically had NO IMPACT on sales. I still remember a german guy asking me how to play the game in english…! 😮

• direct bank transfer, BMT has this option. Had maybe 2-3 sales with that. Most people in europe have Paypal now. For example, Paypal in Italy grow up to 36% of e-commerce market (means that more than 1/3 of italians use it to buy stuff online)
• what are the best sites? I’m a bit confused here 🙂 internet is global, so I don’t see why someone in europe wouldn’t come to any site on internet to buy. They come to my site, and to the one of many other developers to buy.
• support: rarely you can get emails in french or spanish, but is like 1 out of 100 orders. Anyway not a problem.
• the best print media… well is a long list. The best ones are UK and German mags 😉