Chapter 12
Selling Stuff

It has been said that if you have a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And certainly developing skills for Alexa is so incredibly fun that it doesn’t seem like work. Even so, it never hurts if you can make a little money while having fun developing Alexa skills.

Many skills are completely free to use, no string attached. But some skills offer their initial experience for free, then offer additional content or features for a small up-charge. Because these add-ons can be offered, purchased, and used, all within the course of using the skill, they are called In-Skill Purchases or ISPs for short.

Believe it or not, the money you can potentially make from ISPs can range from a little extra spending money up to an incredibly lucrative side income.^[40] The good news is that no matter how you decide to monetize your skills, defining and offering ISPs is rather straightforward, which you’ll see in this chapter as we offer an upgrade to the Star Port 75 Travel skill as an ISP. We’ll start by defining the product.