Dirty secret: technical problems!

> This is one of the dirty little secrets of
> the Internet. Hardly anyone talks about it.

You know every day, even though I don't post a lot, I see complaints on boards about third party providers and how glitches in the system created angry and frustrated customers. I've seen complaints about Revcom, PayPal, iBill, ClickBank, you name it, someone has complained about it... almost.

I have rarely seen any complaints about authorize.net or itransact.com, both of which I consider professional solutions. There are over 130 shopping carts designed to work with authorize.net, many which are free, and iTransact offers the Redicart Shopping cart which can be installed on your server. I've re-programmed it, tweaked it, and added to it so many times that the shopping cart I install for customers using iTransact can hardly be recognized as the Redicart. This isn't said to boast -- it is to show that there is a lot of flexibility when working with this program.

Dr. Paul Hartunian gave me resale rights to his new eBook this weekend. My site isn't really set-up for selling digital products, so I wondered what I could do... Quite frankly all of the complaints I have been hearing about some of these third party providers bother me. I am only selling a $20 eBook, and I don't want angry customers demanding my time fixing technical glitches that are out of my control. So I decided to look after it myself.

I will manually process credit card orders as they come in. Using Pegasus I can create distribution lists which I add the email of those who bought, and once their credit information validates, they get sent the URL for the download.

Checks, no way! Since the start of this year I've lost over $3500 because of bad checks. So folks will have to pay by money order or credit card. Since I created all the backend programming and it operates on my server, I am hoping I will have a whole lot less trouble this way. And this is what I often recommend to other people...

If you can't get a reliable third party provider that can process your orders in "real time" then you're better off processing the orders yourself using SSL for orders on your website. You will have a LOT less technical glitches, and in the event you do, the problem can be easily tracked and fixed.

One other thing I did. I offer NO GUARANTEE. For a $20 eBook full of Dr. Paul Hartunian's advice, you can bet it is worth the $20. So for those who are intimidated to spend their $20 because there isn't any guarantee, that's fine -- they can go without. But, the point is -- I've eliminated refunds.

Maybe I have a whole lot to learn about selling digital products. I don't know. But I am planning on writing special reports on web development issues and offering them to my subscribers at a discount. I'm thinking I won't offer any refunds there either. Here is why...

Suppose I write a technical article on using Cron and Crontabs to automate programs on your server. Once you have downloaded the "white paper" for $20, one could print it off, and then email me and ask for their money back....

You know when I was looking for a database solution to install on the computer in my office that contains all of our customer data, I went to a off-line store that sold software. They told me, that if I installed it and didn't like it I COULD NOT have my money back, and was not welcome to bring the software back. The reasoning behind this is obvious.

I thought this was a good idea for "technical papers" as well. I think there is enough information and articles on my site so a person can accurately gauge the quality of the "technical article" they might receive when they buy.

(he-he)

Most likely I've got this all backwards, but sometimes programmers brains get stuck in a loop and things just keep going round and round. Your advice, comments, or any thoughts you want to share with me will be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan




The Secret Weapons of Success