Month: March 2008

I’m Back In The Chair

After a little over a week of not feeling so good, and after having to withdraw a little from the hurly burly that’s become my life, I’m back.

I’ve not been out of it altogether, I’ve been answering a few support questions using my new support desk software (Ticket Desk Pro) just to keep my mind active and my finger on the pulse.

I’m not yet quite raring to go, but instead I’m slowly picking through the all the stuff I’ve let slip, including Ticket Desk Pro.  And there are a few important emails I’ve let slide that I just felt I couldn’t give decent answers to there and then.

You know what I mean?  Sometimes when you’re not feeling so good, you say to yourself, “I can’t deal with this properly right now, I’ll just make a pig’s ear out of it.”  Long experience has taught me not to even try as I will make a mess.
So if you’re one of those a reply is imminent.  Thanks for your patience and the more than kind words I’ve received.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

I’m Going To Come Clean About Ticket Desk Pro

I know you’re going to think this is a repeat of the SmartDD LITE nickel sale a couple of weeks ago, but I’m putting back the Ticket Desk Pro launch until Wednesday.

And… I’m going to come clean about the background of Ticket Desk Pro.

Don’t worry it has an excellent pedigree, but it has been released before under a different name. Now it’s been re-written, bought up to date, had several bugs squashed, had new features added and generally just shined up.

The original will be taken off the market shortly after Ticket Desk Pro goes on sale, but why worry about it? You’re getting in effect a new item of software at a rock bottom price.

Starting at $5 for an ultimately $97 item of software, it’s what I call a no-brainer.

More detail tomorrow.

-Frank Haywood.

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

“Since Saturday I’ve had 113 subscribers…”

“Is that good or bad?”

Was the question I was asked tonight.

At the moment, I can’t tell you who said that, but he took my advice and started insisting on a name and email address before letting people download his free products.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag in a password protected post later this week.

Only my blog subscribers will get the password, and I’ll only issue it once . You can subscribe by going to the home page of this site and entering your name and email address in the boxes near the top right and clicking the button.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

Nickel Sale Warning – Ticket Desk Pro

On Tuesday 18th March, it’s my intention to pre-launch my help desk software Ticket Desk Pro.

There have been various changes to it made along the way.  I’ve been using it to handle support this last three weeks, and it’s now at a point where it can be released.

David (the developer) has been working on it for 2+ years on and off, and has recently added all the new features I’ve requested – he’s been working on the new bits since November 2007.  After the first release, there will be other releases every so often as we add requested features.

But right now, it’s really nice.

In fact it’s better than nice, it’s excellent.

The features are:-

  • Multiple departments and multiple users.
  • Multiple departments (CTRL-click selectable) per user.
  • Multiple users per department.
  • Moderators, Super Moderators and Administrators.
  • Allowed attachments which you can specify e.g. .jpg|.gif|.doc|.txt.
  • Auto zip attachments.
  • Open tickets which can be filtered in real time.
  • Filters for department, priority and awaiting response by.
  • Search tickets by key word, department, priority, status and date.
  • Multiple standard responses which can be selected, added and edited.
  • Merge similar tickets.
  • Frequently Asked Questions by department.
  • System tools function to purge old tickets and attachments.
  • Ability to contact other help desk staff by email.
  • Ban filters by email address, IP address and key words plus wild card support.
  • Email notifications to both customers and support staff.
  • Choice of PHP mail or SMTP to send emails.
  • Signatures for staff replies to customers.
  • Captcha codes.
  • Auto close tickets.
  • Time offset where the server is not in your time zone.
  • Multiple languages via language files (only English initially).
  • Last but not least, LIVE SUPPORT (operator – customer chat) with optional captcha codes.

I’ll be launching it as a nickel sale because I want as many people to start using it as possible in as short a time as possible.  And most importantly, I’ll be looking for affiliates.

The nickel sale will start at $5, increase by 5 cents with each sale, run for a week or two and then be removed and the real site will go live.

After the nickel sale is over, the initial price will be $47 and it will be promoted via ClickBank with a restricted free version on the front end, and the purchase of the full script offered to those that take the free version.  After a month the price will go up to $97, which reflects its true worth.

When we set it up through ClickBank, the affiliate commission will be 50%.

Like all scripts you can expect to be released by me, this is premium quality software.

So you’ll be getting 5 star software for under ten dollars if you’re quick.

THIS IS A PRE-LAUNCH.  Maybe not everything in the sales process will be perfect, but it will be good enough.  The software is complete and fully functioning.

When the nickel sale starts, the first people to be notified will be those that bought resale rights to SmartDD LITE.  They’ll get an hours start.

The next group that will be notified will be subscribers to this blog.  You can subscribe on the home page at the top right by entering your name and email address.  Blog subscribers will get 3 hours start on everyone else.

Finally, 4 hours from launch I’ll send out an email to my remaining lists.

So I’m rewarding buyers first, then subscribers to this blog, then everyone else gets told afterwards.

The start time will be at some point on Tuesday 18th March.  I can’t give you an exact time yet due to circumstances beyond my control, but Tuesday will definitely be the pre-launch day.

I’ll be doing the pre-launch using the newly updated nickel script, which is also developed by David.

In fact, he’s just making some changes now as I type this, to finish an admin panel to search orders, re-send links and ban customers who you don’t want to deal with, such as serial refunders.

More on that software when we’ve battle tested it next week, but you can be sure we’ll be releasing that too, likely in a nickel sale, and likely within a month.

Again, it’s premium quality 5 star software.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

Script Disappointment

There’s software, and there’s software.  There’s coders and there’s coders.

I’ve just had the misfortune to buy a complete piece of junk in the shape of a PHP script.

I’m so annoyed I’ve asked for a refund, which I think I’ve done maybe 4 times ever including this one.

The reason I’m so annoyed is because there’s a guy out there who I respect for what he does, and he’s had a brilliant idea – this is new.  The idea is so good I bought resale rights to the script and took out a domain to re-sell it through.

It’s that good an idea, and I wish I’d thought of it myself.

The script though, is pure junk.

After spending 5 or 6 hours trying to get it to work, I took a look at the site I’d bought it from which was supposed to be (or so I thought) an example of the script in action.

When I viewed the source of the page, I found that instead of the site using the script it was selling, it was actually using Sid Hale’s RAPS to accept PayPal payments and do the upsell.

I was both disappointed and angry.  Hence the refund request just to express my disapproval really.

(RAPS is great BTW.)

Now if I feel like that, what are other people going to think about it?  Not good news at all.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and I’ve been having a chat with David, one of my developers and his reaction was “I’ll do that” and I know he will.

So he’s going to write a usable version of the script some time in the next month or so.

No, I don’t think it’s fair or appropriate to say what it is, but you may realise at some point in the future when I announce it.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business