Imagine if Apple could provision an iPad together with a pre-configured application so that you could get a feel for whether you wanted to buy that app or not…wouldn’t that be a great way to sell an app?  Well, you can do that on the AppExchange.

You can create a trial org, together with your app, together with data for that app, so that if someone signs up for the trial, they’ll get a username and password, and off they go.

There’s an article for that now too – How to Create a Trial on AppExchange.  Go check it out if you’re building apps for AppExchange.

You can see it all in action by watching the vid as well.

PS. I also recommend two peer articles: Releasing an Application on Force.com and Architecting a Commercial Application.