You have a great game made with Construct 2 and you want to make money.
There are multiple ways in which you can monetize your Windows 8 apps. This tutorial is to enumerate the various ways and hopefully help you chose the best option for your case.
1. Free app
User can download and use your app for free for indefinite time. No special handling from Construct 2 wrt licensing is required.
2. Full-featured paid app
When you submit your app through the Windows Dev center, you will get a chance to price your app for $1.49 and above. Such apps MUST be purchased by the customer before they can use it. For this case, from Construct 2 you don't have to check for anything. IMO unless you earn reputation, people might be wary of paying before having a chance to try out your game. For this reason, Windows Store provides the following options as well.
3. Time limited trial-app
You can list an app for a price and specify the expiry date of the trial. After that period, the customer will not be able to launch the app. But during the trial period, the app will be fully featured - remember this is time limited. Like #2 above, here again you as a Construct 2 game dev, do not have to do anything special from within Construct 2. Windows does all the license checking and validation. This is still better than 2 because user gets a chance to play your game.
4. Feature limited trial-app
You can list an app for a price and specify an expiry date. In addition, you can also limit the set of available features during your trial game.If you want to achieve this behavior, you can do so as explained in this plugin.
A few example implementations for this type of strategy:
a. Limit the user to be able to play only a subset of levels in your game.
b. Limit the user to be able use only a subset of power-ups available in your game.
c. Provide an unlimited trial but have advertisements hosted in your game. Remove the advertisements when the user purchases full version of your game.
5. In-app purchases
You can list your game to be free or type 2 or 3 or 4 above and also include in-app-purchase offers. These can be used to unlock more levels, enable virtual points/virtual goods/power-ups etc,. Important thing to note is that In-app-purchases can be offered and available for users only in a full version of app -- either a free or fully-paid version. These are not available when the user is using a trial version of your app. If you want to use In-app purchases, you can do so with this plugin.
A few example implementations for this type of strategy:
a. List the game as free. Add advertisements to the app. Provide an in-app-purchase feature to remove advertisements. (Edit: A game I have in Windows Store - Blast the bricks uses this strategy).
b. List the game as free. Limit the user to play only one level. Request the user to make an in-app-purchase to proceed further (method used by the game Cut The Rope)
c. List the game as paid. After the game is purchased, you can provide further in-app-purchase offers.
6. In-app advertisements
As noted above, you can show advertisements in the following cases. You can add advertisements in combination with the above choices by following this post.
a. Free game with ads
b. Paid game with ads in trial mode; Remove ad in full version.
c. Free game with ads, with an in app purchase option to remove ads (the advantage/the only difference is that your app will be listed in Free section as opposed to the "Paid game with ads in trial mode" which will be listed in paid version)
In all the above options, regarding the pricing information for your app - like how much your game costs, how long is your trial period, what are all the in-app-purchase features that you would like support, what is the price for them, etc.. you will get a chance to fill these details when you upload your app for certification through the Windows Dev center.
Do this at the minimum:
At least support time limited trial mode. Feature limited trial is also very easy. All you have to do is do a "Is in Trial mode" check and limit features. See example.
Important note: You customer's experience is the most important aspect. Make sure to think about the best possible experience for them(eg: don't spoil the game experience with too much ad etc,.) Make sure to mention what is supported in your game in trial mode/ in app purchase features etc,. in the description to avoid surprises and frustrations for your customer.
Refer to this MSDN article if you need more details.