Digital Workshop

I am looking for advice on taking payments and software delivery on-line. PayPals seems to be an option, but what about shopping carts and what is the best way of delivering the software once payment is made?? Any advice would be appreciated.

Have a look at Serif software's WebPlus ver10, it has a function that allows you to construct an e-commerce page (pages) into your website and it is hosted via Serif themselves. I have the software at home but have no yet used that feature (as I maintain a church website and we don't sell anything!)
Regards

Hi Sandy

I've used PayPal, and it works smoothly. Why not use an evaluation feature for your pub (5-days, 10-days, or whatever number of days or view times you prefer)? The pub can be uploaded to your web site available for download as a trial. You can set up a web page to collect the registration ID number generated by the pub on the user's computer.

The user would need to enter this in the web page's text input box which then can generate an email to you. Then when payment is confirmed by PayPal (by separate automated email in PayPal), you can generate the unlock code and return it to the user via the email address they have provided. Voila: sale completed and pub unlocked.

I would suspect that other Forum colleagues may have other experiences to share, other means of facilitating payment.

Kind Regards,

For payment, PayPal, Anandale (bought out by ??), and Google checkout are options.

I have not used the following, but may be worth exploring.
Joomla silver... or similar http://www.joomlearn.com/joomlearn-lms- ... ition.html

If I were trying to reach a broad audience with a "low" priced product, I'd use a software distribution middleman... there are many... who take care of marketing, registration, and payments.

If you're looking for a shopping cart from your own website, check with your web host to see if they give you access to Soholaunch Pro.

This is one of the most comprehensive website buildres I have ever come across and it requires absolutely no html coding. Soho also includes an integrated shopping cart with supports PayPal and many other payment gateways.

Some web hosts provide Soholaunch standard while others provide Soholaunch Pro -- and you need Pro for some of the advanced features. My host provides me with Pro at no extra charge. If you need to buy Pro, it is US$99 -- a once only charge with regular free upgrades. The support is great, and the user forums are fantastic.

I've not yet finished my site (still some way off, and it will probably change several times before I'm satisfied) but if you want to have a look at what I've done so far: www.jeelan.com.au.

Previously, without success, I've tried: Dreamweaver, Namo, Frontpage, direct hard-coded html, and a few other packages I can't remember.

I use "Softwarepassport" (formerly know as Armadillo) and Digital River. THe easiest way to sale online because they take care of all the registration codes, complains, etc.
Software Passport is free if you want to use Digital River. It will let you encode your exe so when users installed, it read a hardware fingerprint and produce a code that is sent to you (Digital River). IF the code and payment are correct they Digital River sent the permanent unlock code.
Pretty neat and easy.
If you want to have the power of selling yourself via your website then you'll have to purchase the software, which is around US$250.00 for 32 applications.
German

thank you to everyone for some great information.


Sandy

I was interested in Stephen's response to Sandy's query - re setting up an e-commerce facility via Paypal. Can you let me know how this works in Opus Flex, Stephen, bearing in mind that Paypal generates code which is normally placed within an HTML page?

In other words, how can I insert Paypal buttons into a Flex publication? Or do I need to link an Flex-built site to an HTML page that sits on the same server?

Regards

Roger

Hi Roger

I'm afraid it's only by chance that I was looking through the postings this evening and came across this. It seems that I am not getting email notifications on this (or any?) topic.

What I did was set up a website using FrontPage that has a buy page with the HTML code generated by PayPal. These can include buy buttons. You can create the HTML code on their site from inside your account, cut and paste it to your page's code view.

It's been a while, but I recall that you can further edit your code in your HTML editor. In my Pro pubs (not Flex), only the URL to the buy page is hyperlinked to take a potential buyer to that external page, which can be summoned in a separate window or probably doc-viewed (though I suspect not in Flex).

PayPal is adequate to the task. I probably could use one of the shopping cart options available through my website ISP, though I'm not sure this would add anything. But compare what's available to you. PayPal has no upfront costs, but takes a fee for each sale. So far, security has not been a problem for me, though online rumors sometimes circulate about security gaps in these type of shopping accounts.

Other than setting up the PayPal account in terms of time, and securely sharing some financial info to establish bonafides, there seems no obligation. My guess is that you can cancel it whenever you wish. Do read the agreement and guidelines, though.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

Thanks for your response, Stephen. In fact, I have inserted Paypal buttons into html pages on a number of occasions and agree that these work very well. However, I thought that you had done the same thing with a site built by Opus Flex - which roused my interest!

I'm in the process of building a site which needs to include an e-commerce facility, and I was hoping to use Flex (for the first time). However, it seems that I'll have to go back to Dreamweaver (with Flash inserts).

Once again, thanks for taking the time to come back to me.

Regards

Roger