I have some really exciting news to share.
(Well… I’m excited about it, you may not be.)
First a very public apology.
In the last few weeks and months:-
- I’ve lost some full time staff that are now part time.
- I’ve had to fire someone (which I felt dreadful about) because he was working “full time” for me and also “full time” for one of my friends. Yeah, we both fired him when we realised… I know this must go on a lot with remote workers, and there are some tell-tale signs.
- I’ve had new staff start, do a week or two and leave.
- I’ve advanced money to new staff who begged for it and had them disappear.
- On top of this it’s just plain difficult and time consuming to find *any* staff, let alone good ones.
It’s been a rough ride. But I guess this is something that happens to a lot of people, and always looking for the positive, I’ve learned a lot about hiring good remote workers.
But this bumpy and frustrating journey I’ve been on has meant that a few things have slipped. I’m now TWO months (well, one month and a week) behind releasing the latest PLAhh material.
I sincerely apologise for that, and I WILL fix this.
I have some new staff. I have both June and July’s packages pretty much complete apart from a little bit of crucial work to sweeten them up. I could release June’s as it is and add the extras later, but I’d rather complete the package and then release.
I’m hoping that all the work will be complete by next Friday 15th and with any luck I’ll have already released the packages before then. Thank you for your patience and to the kind words from people I’ve already explained this to.
***
Now the exciting part.
A bit of background first though.
A couple of weeks ago when I ran a pre-order sale for Affiliate Click Pal (ACP – will be released this Monday coming), I had a couple of blog comments and a few emails that all said pretty the same thing…
“Will it be able to do PayPal too?”
Now that would be just great wouldn’t it? It’s certainly something I’d like to see in ACP, so yes I’ll get that done in a later version. It will probably take a couple of months to get there is my guess. We’ll see.
What I *have* done is made sure it has some integration in it for sites that use PayPal scripts and the ?e=PayPalEmailAddress method for affiliates.
This then got me thinking.
Something I’ve wanted to do for several *years* now is release a low cost, easy to use, feature rich PayPal script. The PayPal IPN system is awesome – clearly a lot of thought and planning went into its design to make it so very flexible.
So what I’ve done is I’ve hired a new guy just to work on this project. It’s been incredibly difficult finding the right person to do this for a whole raft of “attention-to-detail” reasons. But after 12 months of searching I found the guy and have him on board.
He believes he’ll have the first prototype for me to play with tomorrow. And phase one will be complete by the end of next week.
There’ll then be another load of work to add in all the “feature rich” parts I mentioned above. But this shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks is my estimate.
Once you find the right people, it’s amazing what you can get done in a very short space of time. Ideas have never been a problem for me, but finding good people to implement them is an ongoing struggle that I’m finally getting the hang of. 😉
This brand new script will use the ?e=PayPalEmailAddress method for affiliates I mentioned above, and be totally focussed on PayPal and the flow of traffic both through your site and onto other sites.
It will make it easy to get a sales page type site up quickly and easily and with a built in affiliate scheme. This is something I’ve struggled with myself, so you’ll probably appreciate this as much as I do!
Amongst many things, it’s been designed in such a way as to make it easy to:-
- Install and setup.
- Promote your other (and other product owners) sites.
- Get traffic for free.
- Get new affiliates on board (every customer automatically becomes an affiliate).
- Build your mailing list.
- Administer your sales.
- Do secure digital delivery.
I’ve seen a number of missed opportunities in some similar scripts over the last few years.
Every time I’ve seen one or realised something that would work really well, I’ve written it down in my notes.
I now have a *lot* of notes…
This new script will perfectly complement ACP. I eventually see the two of them working hand in hand together, with ACP being the “step up” to the next level when someone is ready.
It’s my intention that both scripts should talk to each other with this new PayPal script passing customer, sales and affiliate information back to your central ACP site where you can administer everything if you choose.
So my vision is a low cost entry into the world of product sales with this new PayPal script, and then upgrade to the more expensive ACP when it all starts to take off.
If you’re feeling a little bit excited now, then you should be.
I’m all but doing backflips. 😉
And that’s because I finally have the right people doing the right jobs.
The world has been waiting for this.
***
Okay, that’s enough excitement for today. (Or is it?)
Just a final note to say that tomorrow I’ll be running a couple of low cost sales for a couple of plugins that you may have missed in the last 12 months if you’re new here.
The first is for a plugin I use all the time, in fact I’ll be using it for the sales tomorrow.
It’s called the “Content Replacement” plugin and enables you to schedule small snippets of content in and out of your blog. I use it to display payment buttons at the appropriate time, and then later remove them when the sale is over.
That way I can be out and about and not have to worry about the sale going ahead. It just works.
Very useful.
The second related plugin is called “Subscribers Only” and which allows you to hide content on your blog from non-subscribers.
If a visitor to your blog isn’t a WP blog subscriber, then instead of seeing all of an article, you can withhold small but crucial parts of it. So they don’t see the bit you’ve hidden, instead they see a little padlock symbol and a message saying the content is for subscribers only with link where they can go subscribe.
Cool huh?
Both sales will start the same time tomorrow at 6.00pm and will continue over the weekend until Monday morning when the Content Replacement plugin will automatically remove the buy buttons. 😉
More info about the sale tomorrow.
-Frank Haywood
Hi Frank,
Just got your email and I’m glad you’re not letting a few bumps in the road stop the show.
But, I’m a little confused about the “Paypal” script you mentioned and what its going to do.
If I’ve got this right the first release of ACP will work only with getting paid using Clickbank, but will integrate with scripts that use the ?e=PayPalEmailAddress method, like the Nickel Script, and I think SmartDD.. Then a later version of ACP will allow you to get paid to both Clickbank, or Paypal.
If I’ve got that right so far then if someone makes a purchase from the Nickel Script, or is handled by SmartDD will you get paid using Paypal, and ACP will handle the affiliate commission?
So, if all that is right (big if), where will the Paypal Script fit in, or is it too early to say.
And, if all that is wrong please let me know
Thanks Frank.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for the kinds words. Sometimes I sit here and shake my head as it all seems uphill somedays…
Anyway…
Yes you’re absolutely right with everything you’ve said, you’ve got it nailed down. The bit that I think that’s missing is the relationship between ACP and other PayPal scripts? So I’ll answer that as best I can. It might be one of those things you have to see to understand completely, or maybe I’ll come up with a better way of explaining it when I’ve been through it a few times. 🙂
#1 – The first release of ACP (I’m waiting for an update tomorrow with more features is why I’ve delayed releasing it) will only work at unifying ClickBank (CB) accounts and allow you to use one CB account with multiple sites.
#2 – As a multi site owner, you may decide on one or more of your sites to use a script that supports the ?e=PayPalEmailAddress method and pay instant 100% commissions in order to build your mailing list.
#3 – By doing #2 you would be giving your affiliates a choice of either promoting your 100% commission sites, or promoting your unified network of CB sites. So ACP isn’t unifying ALL of your sites like it’s supposed to. This was the dilemma I faced myself.
#4 – To fix this, we added the ability for affiliates to enter their PayPal email address (which will later be used in other features too, shhh) into their ACP affiliate centers. Let’s assume it’s ppea@affdomain.dom. The affiliates PayPal email address is then stored in the database and can be referenced in the script with a [short-code-tag].
#5 – An ACP admin can then use the [short-code-tag] to create a link to the sales page of the 100%-commission-PayPal-only product site like this:-
http://domain.dom/?e= [short-code-tag]
#6 – In the affiliate center, the affiliate will see the 100% commission product with a link to the sales page that actually looks like this:-
http://domain.dom/?e=ppea@affdomain.dom
And on the same line they’ll get an ACP link with their unique GUID that might look like this:-
http://acpdomain.dom/?aff=4df527acda15d
#7 – Now the affiliate can use the ACP link which will first cookie their prospect with the vendor account CB hoplink, then route back to ACP, and finally send the prospect to the 100% commission site with the affiliate’s PayPal email address tagged on the end. 😉
#8 – After the prospect has purchased (or not) the 100% commission item, then if they later buy from ANY of the CB sites in your network, they will earn a commission from CB.
***
Okay? 🙂
That’s the level of integration that ACP will *initially* have with scripts that use the 100% PayPal commission method.
Later versions will make that integration much tighter. In order to do that, both scripts need to be aware of each other and chat back and forth. And some other stuff I don’t want to disclose just yet. 😉
The only guaranteed way of making that happen is for me to build something I’ve wanted for a long time now and that’s an easy to use but very flexible PayPal script that’s intended to be used on a single site. And I see that script as a starting place and stepping stone up to ACP.
*phew* 🙄
I hope with that description I’ve made things clearer and not made it worse.
-Frank
Thanks for the explanation. I’ve got it now.
I was thinking I’d have to wait until a later version of ACP to make use of it, but that’s not the case. I use JVManager and with some pages setting up the java script to handle the affiliate stuff was a problem. I’m not a java expert, but I think its when it conflicts with other java for tracking or something else.
So, I’ve been looking for something to replace just the affiliate stuff and ACP should do what I need right out of the box.
I saw in one of the comments about Paypal closing down a lot of account and I think they are up to something.
Out of the clear blue they decided to placed all my payments on a 21 day hold. When I called and asked why because I haven’t had any refunds, complaints, or claims against my account they couldn’t give me any specific actions that prompted the hold other than “their software identified my account as having a higher risk level than normal”.
I still don’t know what risk they are talking about and neither did the paypal person I spoke to. Checking in ebay’s forums a lot of people are being hit with this. The consensus is that its random.
Thanks again for the explanation. And, if you do release it Monday it will be a great early birthday present. I was born on the 12th. we won’t go into what decade.
Hi Gary,
That’s… Bizarre.
The only thing I’m aware of that their algorithms look for is in the money laundering arena. This is where large payments are made into a PayPal account directly from another PayPal account, and there’s no purchase involved.
But of course, that does happen because people use PayPal to accept payments for offline services like consultancy.
That’s all I can think of – do you think that might be what’s happened in your case? I know it’s not a nice thing to happen, but I’d feel more comfortable if you thought that was what maybe happened as at least then we can see an explanation of it.
The PayPal rep not knowing what was going on with auto-suspended accounts is I think about par for the course from what I’ve read. 🙄
-Frank
Hi Frank!
A couple of weeks ago you ran a pre-order sale for Affiliate Click Pal (ACP – will be released this Monday coming), You had a couple of blog comments and a few emails that all said pretty the same thing…
#1 “Will it be able to do PayPal too?”
(and + can this option be implemented too do PaySpree)
# 2 “Will it do PaySpree too?”
It looks like PayPal is closing accounts left and right?
Thanks
Petur Thorvaldsson
Hi Peter,
I’ve just had a look at PaySpree and as they have a closed system without an API, there’s no way of integrating what they do with any other script or service. An affiliate gets an affiliate link from them, and a vendor gets a payment link from them and that’s as far as it goes.
(There’s actually some quite important things NOT explained on their site, such as how do they make any money? Ah! Found it in the FAQs on their support desk.)
I haven’t read anything about PayPal closing any more accounts than they usually do, and as PaySpree use PayPal for everything, it wouldn’t help to use them…
-Frank
Frank,
This sounds really exciting and I am sure it will be the thing I am looking for to break the log-jam that I presently experiencing.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Jim
Hi Jim,
You’re welcome, and thank you.
I’m still thinking this out, but I believe I’ve got most of it settled in my head now. What I don’t want to do is let anything out of the bag too early. There’s some terrific stuff coming, and if I get it all just right it will blow away a few cobwebs and shake things up a bit for the good of us all.
I want to enthuse both vendors and affiliates and then keep that enthusiasm going. That’s all I’m prepared to say right now. 😉
-Frank
Hey Frank.
Are you incorporating the PayPal Adaptive Payments methodology into the PayPal system? If not yet, you may want to take a look at it. I’m working on something for a client right now (for launch in a couple of months) that could really use that capability. There is only ONE WP Plug-in that I’ve found that handles PayPal Adaptive Payments. I went through their purchase process all the way up to confirm and it’s pretty slick how it breaks the purchase out into two different lines for you (don’t know if that’s an option or what), but it handles the affiliate commissions, refunds, all through the PayPal system so the person setting up the affiliate program doesn’t have to deal with getting affiliates paid or getting their money back for refunds.
I’m excited for what you’re bringing out – I think this may be very good for this project I’m working on, but the AP would make it over the top.
James
Hi James,
Holy moley! I had no idea that PayPal could do that yet I see it came in some time last year by the looks of it. Hopefully they’ll have removed any bugs by now. 😉
There’s an overview here:-
https://www.x.com/community/ppx/adaptive_payments
Now just *briefly* looking at it, I’m not sure yet if it meets the criteria for this new script of being simple to set up and use, but I absolutely guarantee we’ll make use of this somehow. It’s too damn “on the ball” of PayPal for me to ignore it. It looks like they’ve pushed all the developers green buttons with this one.
And… I *think* those plugin developers have missed a big trick with Adaptive Payments too. 🙄
Thanks for letting me know about this, you can be sure I’ll be using it, right now I’m not sure when and how though. 😉
-Frank
Hey Frank,
oh this sounds not nice from the last parts about you, but now i think it will be run faster than before 😉 , sometime it must happen something to go stronger, i now it from my own,
—————————————————————————————————————–
but now i have some quetion for you, will the new affiliate parts work also withe the DLGuard? because i us this for the download parts, because it is very safty for the delivery of the products, when you need some parts for this i will give you my loggin data of my account so that you can play and test it when you want,
give e only one sighn and i will sent it to you
best regards
Olaf
Hi Olaf,
Thank you, and yes I think experience does make us better. Some experiences I’d rather not have though. 😉
ACP should work fine with DLGuard, allowing you to ignore the digital delivery aspect of ACP and instead use DLGuard for the ordering and product delivery process. In my own case I’d intended to use SmartDD to handle the orders, and let ACP handle the unified affiliate part of it.
But as simple unprotected digital delivery is there for v1.0, and with secure protected digital delivery coming as soon as we can write it, I’ll now be using ACP for the whole of the process. This will mean I’ll likely be using SmartDD less and less.
And some of the things that have come out in the comments in this post have made me re-think a few other things on the PayPal front too…
Watch this space. 😉
-Frank
Hi there Frank, congrats on your WSO over the weekend.
Is there any news of the Plahh membership and the contents for the members area for June and July?
Hi Valda,
Yep, I’m sorry for the delay in replying to this, I’ve been running around like a crazy thing and I’m just catching up now. Because of staff problems, I’ve decided I’m going to give you some of my own personal plugins. I’ve done some of the work to convert them to PLR, and just today I’ve been sent the sales page PSD designs that I thought had disappeared forever (it’s a little miracle).
Give me another day or so and I’ll have the first one up, and then the second the day after.
Again I’m really sorry about the delay, it’s been a disaster. 🙁
I’ll explain more about all of this soon.
-Frank