ebay

Nov

2008

Running SmartDD v3 From A Single Site

Going on from my previous post, I realised I had a few things to say about SmartDD that maybe aren’t as obvious as I thought they were from the new videos. Somebody asked me a question the other day that made me wonder and then my memory was jogged while writing that last post.

So here we go.

You’ve always been able to run all your sites from a single installation of SmartDD if you wanted to. But it’s also fine if you want to install it on each site, and that’s what I tended to do myself so I suppose things weren’t quite right for using it on a single site and managing all your other sites through it.

But with v3 we’ve made it so that it’s really to your advantage to do so. Now you can keep all your customer details and all your order details in one big database, and easily export the data into a spreadsheet to do some analysis. (Well, just customers for now, but I’ve made a note to add orders too.)

There’s now not one but FOUR ways to get customers and orders into SmartDD.

#1 – PayPal
#2 – ClickBank
#3 – Free sign up to a mailing list
#4 – Manually

That means you can have one site (or eBay) selling goods by PayPal, another by ClickBank, and another where you can give products away in return for an email address. (You ALWAYS use double opt-in right? Let’s be responsible folks.)

It also means you can easily give your products to your Joint Venture partners *securely* by manually creating an order. It takes about 30 seconds or less to add a customer (depending on how fast you can type or copy and paste), and then a few seconds more to create an order and tell SmartDD to send out an email to them.

You also have a choice of two different affiliate schemes you can run.

#1 – PayPal email address
#2 – ClickBank

Up until the introduction of the PayPal email address method with the release of the 7 Dollar Script, I’d only ever seen something called “split pay” using PayPal. The split pay method is a nightmare and involved your customer making TWO payments, one to your affiliate and one to you before they got your product. There were too many things that could go wrong (refunds – erk!), and needless to say, no-one was happy with that and it wasn’t long before PayPal said no more.

But the 7 Dollar Method was a good ‘un and works on the principle of rotating the full amount of the payment between the site owner and the affiliate. It all averages out over a few sales.

Your affiliates simply create a URL that looks like this:-

http://www.domain.com/?e=PayPalEmailAddress

and then depending on the percentage commission being paid, they get some of the sales paid directly into their PayPal account. If a refund is required and it happens to be the affiliate who received that payment, it’s tough, but they’re the ones who have to refund it – PayPal is quite definite about that. They’re not going to chase someone who hasn’t received any money, they’re going to chase the person who did.

Since then there have been a few scripts that use this method, and we introduced it into SmartDD v3, with a slight modification. Even if the commission payment is set to 100%, the admin gets all of the first payment, and the affiliate gets all the rest. We did that to stop people from getting a product for free by buying from their own business account with their personal account.

Using ClickBank is even easier. First you copy and paste the return code from SmartDD into your ClickBank sellers account(s).

Then all you need do is create the publisher name in SmartDD and add the secret key that ClickBank supply you with. Next, go to the saleable items panel in SmartDD and create or amend an item, select the publisher and enter the number of the product you’re selling via ClickBank – usually number 1.

Lastly, go to the code generator for that item, and generate the code to add to your sales button on your sales page.

Easy.

Your affiliates then use a normal CB hoplink and get paid by ClickBank as usual a couple of weeks after the sale.

At sale time, ClickBank sends SmartDD the transaction details and SmartDD generates an order. On your customers return from ClickBank (via the return code you pasted into your sellers account), SmartDD redirects them to the download page and also sends them an email with the transaction details and a link to the download page for future reference.

Job done.

The download pages in all cases can be on your single site installation of SmartDD, with the payment buttons etc being on all your satellite sites. The download pages themselves are all held within the SmartDD database, and can be created to look just like your original sales page on the satellite site.

All you need to do is create the download page with an HTML editor (I prefer Dreamweaver) using your satellite site template and make sure that all the links to objects such as graphics and CSS files are direct URLs rather than relative one. So you *wouldn’t* use:-

/images/header.jpg

to refer to your header graphic, you’d use:-

http://www.satellite-domain.com/images/header.jpg

That way the main site with SmartDD installed on it would be able to display the graphics correctly from your satellite site. And of course the same applies for the CSS files.

Once that download template is created in SmartDD, it doesn’t matter where the order has come from, the generated download page will work perfectly.

As you can see, we’ve put a lot of thought into making SmartDD as flexible as possible, and we’ve got some more goodies to come.

Let’s not forget the existing eBay functionality too, and of course Kunaki integration.

The next minor release of SmartDD will contain membership abilities and subscriptions support.

Then we’ll be able to truly say that SmartDD is a cross between the Butterfly Marketing script, JV Manager / Fantasos, the 7 Dollar Script, RAPS, Auction Acrobat and Disc Mojo all rolled into one, and all usable from a single site.

Is that good value for money or what?

Is it? Then go promote it as such. 🙂

-Frank Haywood

May

2008

The POD Report

In the wake of the recent eBay slap at ebook sellers, it’s become apparent that us internet business owners now need to either use the eBay suggested classified ad format, or sell our ebooks on CDs and DVDs.

It would also appear from some reports that you need to make sure you don’t mention ebooks when selling your CDs and DVDs, or the eBay darlings will give you a more personal slap. It seems that “ebook” is a bit of a taboo word on eBay at the moment until the staff get more understanding of what the new rule actually means.

Unblocking The Flow

What do comedy improvisation and a successful internet business have in common?

Well…Â As unlikely as it may seem, quite a bit.

This is more of what you might think is “semi-religious self-improvement psycho babble” (let’s call it SSPB) – it definitely isn’t junk.

One of the things I was taught early on is that it’s important not to “block the flow” in order to be successful.

What the heck does that mean?

It all boils down to not being negative, and accepting whatever comes your way and using it to further your business or your career or whatever it is you’re pursuing.

I like to think of it as “every cloud has a silver lining”.

Example.Â The recent eBay slap.Â To read what some people were saying you’d think the sky was falling – what a load of old fuss about nothing.

I read the new rule, chuckled and thought “yee-haa!”

See, I knew it would get rid of all the junk on eBay and also get rid of a lot of people who were selling ebooks etc. without understanding what they were doing.Â Those people were just making it difficult for the real marketers.Â You couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

I sincerely hope you weren’t one of those people who didn’t know what they were doing…

eBay knows that people like to market on their site (and not just sell), and it seems that for now they’re okay about it, which is a refreshingly enlightened attitude for a corporation their size to take.

They’re not blocking the flow.

So eBay have now disallowed the selling of digital products as digital downloads.Â And what they’ve done is suggested that marketers use the classified ad format instead.Â That’s really cool of them and it opens up a whole wealth of opportunities.

But if you listen to the doomsayers, the golden age is over.

What nonsense.Â Things are just different.Â And better.Â Less competition for starters.

Let’s get back to the original thread.Â What about comedy improvisation?

If you’ve ever seen a group of comedians improvise, it can be something magical to watch.

You know how they keep it all going?Â They don’t block the flow.

They accept whatever premise the other comedians give them and they just add to it and pass it back.Â And forth.Â And so on…

The kiss of death to their act is to say no, or refuse to accept the current idea.Â They all know that if that happens, they will falter and stop.Â So all of them accept what they’re given and use it to their advantage.

It’s a simple rule to follow, and works just as well in business, in relationships, or whatever else you care to think of.

Accept what you’re given.Â Make it better.Â Put it out there.Â And keep the flow moving.

-Frank Haywood

Apr

2008

The eBay Slap – Step 2

A couple of weeks ago, I told you I had a plan to help you after eBay slapped all digital goods sellers from the 1st April.

Since then, there’s been a lot going on.

If you bought Dave Lovelace’s special offer, you’ll now know how to create your own CDs and DVDs to sell on eBay. You’ll also know where you can get an international dropshipper that will do Print On Demand (POD) for your CDs and DVDs and then send them directly to your customers.

That still leaves the problem of automating the delivery process.

Well, I now have that solved for you.

My SmartDD developer (Paul) has been working on the solution that will allow you to automatically let that international dropshipper know when you’ve made a sale via SmartDD.

The dropshipper will then send your customer their goods, completely hands off from you.

It’s just like selling digital goods again.

Only this time, you can actually earn more money.

Think about it, the perception of most people is that a physical product has much more value than a digital product.

So instead of charging a dollar or two for a download and building your list in that way, now you can charge $15-$25 for a CD, and still build your mailing lists at the same time.

Plus you get all the benefits of having emails automatically sent out to your customers, including the follow up 24 hours later, and you can even supply them the goods as a download too if you want to.

And the beautiful thing is, you remain within eBay’s new rules.

We’ll be releasing it later this week as SmartDD v2.1 – we’re just doing some final tests to make sure the process works perfectly, and then I’ll make the announcement.

I told you I had a plan.

The good news is, this Step 2 is just the first part… 😉

-Frank Haywood

Mar

2008

The eBay Restriction – Here’s The Good News

Okay, lots of speculation, lots of answers (some GOOD answers), and a few good guesses on my last post.

Don’t despair.

This is just a blip on the screen.Â All you need to do is arm yourself with the right information and the right tools.

Here’s the TWO steps you need to take.

Step 1

Go here and get Dave Lovelaces special offer.Â It’s just $10.Â You can afford $10, but you can’t afford to be without this information.

Dave normally does this for $27 and he’s just emailed me after my last post to let me know he’s running the special.Â Just go and get it now, don’t even think about it, just get it.

Step 2

While you’re getting to grips with Step 1, wait for my announcement in the next week, and you’ll realise that what eBay have done is the BEST thing they could have done for you as a marketer.

Trust me.Â I know what I’m talking about, and I have a plan.

When you combine Step 1 and Step 2 together, it’s dynamite.

The people that get in on this first will make a killing, heck you’ll make a killing anyway if you already market on eBay, but if you’re sharpish using this method you’ll get first movers advantage.

-Frank Haywood