In the previous lesson we looked at online payment solutions, so hopefully you’ve chosen at least one method for receiving payments.
Today we’re going to get into the nitty gritty details of exactly how to sell a downloadable product online and deliver it to your customer…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
Some online shopping cart solutions…
– PayPal shopping cart
– Infusionsoft – Integrated solution for marketers
– 1Shoppingcart – Another popular integrated solution.
– OScommerce – free open source solution
– Cubecart – (the older version is free)
– WordPress e-commerce plugin
– Thank them for the purchase, affirm their choice.
– Remind them of the charge on their credit card statement.
– Provide contact/support information.
– Educate them with instructions for downloading and using the product.
– Give the download link… big and bold.
– Advanced tip: Monetize your thank-you page with unadvertised bonuses (Not too many, 1 to 3 is usually ideal).
– Zip files are usually ideal.
– Try to keep zip files under 50MB each.
Three variations…
-Paypal hosted button
-Your own button
-text link
Split testing has shown it’s often best to use a payment button AND text link in your order area.
(See video for ClickBank demo)
1) Leave it unprotected but try to hide it. I often do this for products under $100, because it’s the quickest, and also results in less support requests.
2) Make a password protected area using your hosting control panel. Email the username and password to your customers. Fairly easy, but may delay the product fulfillment.
3) Use a membership site script. See lesson #32 for all the details.
4) Use a specialized download protection script. I recommend DLGuard
Action steps:
1) Make a thank-you page
2) Make a payment button and/or link
In the next lesson, we’ll talk about upsells and how to create a “one time offer”.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below.
Have a great day!
Hi Eric, I’ve learned more about starting my business in the last week by reading through the tips then I got in all my years in college, thanks for posting these! I do have one question, I have the Trading Pro system and I don’t see a Thank You page in the reseller file, do I need one or just put the pay buttons on the sales page? Or did I just miss it in the package? Thanks again, Kathy
Thanks! There is an index.html file in the membership area folder, which you can use as your thank-you page.
Thanks. If you’re using WP, then you would not necessarily use an index.html page. You can create your sales page within WP. Check out the WP sales pages I gave away here:
http://www.ericstips.com/tips/thanksgiving/
If you do decide to use an index.html file, you can upload it directly into your public_html (which will override your WP as the home page), or you could create a new directory for it.
You could name it index.html and index1.html. Sometimes I like to split-test other page name like special.html, limitedsale.html, etc. See lesson #57 for split testing.
If someone types in your domain directly, the sale would not go to an affiliate unless an affiliate had previously referred the customer. Most affiliate programs use cookies (and sometimes additional IP tracking) with will still give the affiliate credit if the prospect returns later.
Two identical sales pages could hurt your SEO. I personally don’t worry much about SEO on sales pages (you can focus your SEO efforts on other pages and then funnel the traffic to your sales page). But if you focus on SEO for your sales page, then yes I would use the PHP method. It’s not too hard, you could probably have it done for about $20 by a coder on http://rentalcoders.com
It’s really the same process as setting up a small download. You just have to make sure your hosting account is big enough. I think the new reseller tutorial that I set up will be helpful for you. Let us know at the helpdesk if you need the link to it. It also lists methods of securing it, via a membership area.
Thanks for the quick reply. are you referring to the sales letter? How do I use it as the thank you page? (incidently, I have been going through the videos in Trading Pro, really good stuff)
thanks again
Thanks. No, not the sales letter. It is in the folder with the “member area”… it’s in the same zip file as the sales letter that you downloaded.
Thank you! it’s download and bonus page itself? It just doesn’t have a thank you area in it.
BTW, SmartFTP is now free for 30 days then you have to purchase it. It’s the full version for the 30 days though. It appears they just changed it over recently.
You’re great, thanks again. Kathy
Yes you can use it as the thank-you page. You may wish to add some additional “thank-you” language to it.
Yeah I still think SmartFTP is a good program, but I have switched over to recommending FileZilla because it’s free and almost as good.
Hi Eric, I did get Filezilla, will go with that for now. For Trading Pro, should I make a download file first then upload the whole thing into it, or just upload the member area file first and send all the videos to that? looks like the links to the videos are in the html code on the download page already (i was looking at the how to videos on your irthelp page.)
You can uplaod the entire member area folder as-is. If you’re not protecting it with a password pretected membership script, then I would recommend changing the name of the folder (to something hard to guess) either before or after uploading it.
Hi Eric
I bought the Trading Pro system a few weeks ago and as initially I had problems with memberfire I got their team to put it on my site thetradingpro.net.
I am still a bit of a newby and although I went through all your lessons before xmas I probably need a refresher.
Do I need to build a wordpress site for a download area or can I just upload all the unzipped files straight into memberfire?
I see most of the files are html but do I need to index them?
Sorry to be such a newby, I hoped with the sales letter etc being included it would just be plug and play.
Wow thank you Eric, you’re teaching me so much. But pls why couldn’t I pause the video? It was all so fast for me… I have no technical experience whatsoever and some of the stuff sounds chinese to me, so will have to go slos and listen to it over and over again, following step by step. I really need to get started with my Trading Pro System but have no clue if I am doing the things right!!!
You should be able to pause the video, but I am aware that there are some issues with the controls on certain browsers and platforms. So I would suggest trying a different internet browser. You may also wish to check out these solutions: http://www.ericstips.com/trouble-viewing-flash-videos/
You do not need to make a wordpress site, you can upload the files directly into memberfire. You can use the index that I already included for the member area. If you’re streaming the videos rather than providing the zip files, then you would just need to adjust the links to point to the respective unzipped folders rather than the zip files (this should be pretty much as easy as just removing the ‘.zip’ from all the hyperlinks. If you were not streaming the videos, it would be plug and play. But if you’re streaming them, you’ll just have to tweak the links.
Thanks Eric… that was a very usefull lesson for me!
Like all the other 🙂
All the best,
Arne
I would also recommend configuring robots.txt file to exclude a 2nd or 3rd level directories (including thank you pages) from being crawled or visited by bots.
i.e.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /videos/
Disallow: /downloads/
Disallow: /other/
and in /other/ you can have /other/thankyoupage
Slava
thanks for the tip!
One of the things I wanted to add about sales pages and payment is to always make it clear before the payment button how much something is. So often ebooks or electronic information requires you to hit the ‘buy now’ button in order to find out how much it is. That’s frustrating for the buyer and often turns them off to buying. Thanks again for the great tips.
Good point. There are two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, forcing a prospect to click the buy button can be a psychological trigger that can help lead to a sale. On the other hand, it can be frustrating, as you mentioned.
For marketers not opposed to the tactic, it’s something that can be split tested.
But it’s also imortant to note that some payment solutions (including clickbank) require the price to be listed on the sales page along with the payment button.
Dear Eric,
You are a blessing to the internet. I love your fortrightness and candor. I was confused with the information overload on Internet Marketing. But you have opened my eyes to many hidden facts and i have had many reasons to accept you as my authority and mentor. Thank you so much
I am a Nigerian who has been following all your lessons. Currently working for a bank (United Bank for Africa PLC). I however want to break free from the work bondage, join online marketing and make honest money from it.
Please i like to know which Affiliate solution is good for me. I also like to know which payment solution i should adopt. As you are aware, Nigeria is not on the Paypal list.
Hoping to hera from you
Eric,
I’m brand new to internet marketing, and am learning gradually – I was just laid off, and there is a lot of confusion with setting up this system.
Please keep in touch.
– David Bishop
hi Erick, I hope you always exist! I’ve read this post and video, Now I make good blog improvement, especially about navigation button and also thank you page that is important at all.
I know I have many readers from Nigeria, so perhaps one of them could let you know what they use?
I believe 2checkout accepts Nigeria, and with them you could set up your own affilate program.
hi,
great lesson. I always wait for your new lesson. thank again eric.
One thing i want to know that do you have any alternate of google adsense.That provide add for my site.
Yes there are some other ad networks that can display ads on your site on a PPC or CPM basis, such as Chitika, Microsoft adCenter, and Adbrite.
Hi Eric, thanks for all the great info. You have a great site…..love all the lessons….excellent material. Hope i can make a few bucks on my first product.
Thanks again..
Brad
Brilliant! I bought your Push Button stuff. Thank you.
mmm…interesting, thanks for info
Hey Eric,
I love having your older posts available to go back to and look at when I’m unsure. This site is like an encyclopedia.
Thanks again
Thanks Eric – this lesson is so appropriate for where I am right now – have been so focused on building my site that I kinda forgot about this very important step – LOL!! (Red faced) Your lessons are soooo sooo thorough, it is so much to take in all at once, but good we can go back to them later on.
Cheers and thanks
Murray J Greene
Cairns
Australia
Eric, what product or method do you use to allow clickbank to support multiple products in one account?
Clickbank automatically lets you have many products in one account. However, your clickbank “hoplink” can only go to one URL. However, there is a way for you to send your hoplink to multiple URL’s by using a PHP script and an extra variable at the end of the hoplink. I’ve done it a few times and it works well. The downside is that only the affiliates who are in relationship with you will know your special hoplink system. Those who find your product on the CB marketplace would only know about your main hoplink. Robert Plank explains how to do it here
Hi Eric,
Now that is bringin’ good knowledge. I especially liked the tip about creating a thank you page with numbers– very cool. Question- how would you accomplish such a task using wordpress? I’m assuming you can copy the meta tags into the acutal WP page– my question is how to not “publish” the WP page at all… follow?
I guess the “long-way” would be to create a separate HTML page (non-wordpress page), upload it to a separate folder, then make that page folder/ html page the thank you page…
You can create the page in WordPress like usual, but set it to “private”. The page will still be accessible via its URL, but will not show up in your WP navigation, etc. (Note: this is different from setting it to “password protected”).
As I understand it, if you buy a working version of WinZip, you can assign a password to open the file. If the file is downloaded from a semi-secure thank you page, and the password immediately emailed to the customer would that work? Have you ever tried that?
Yes that would work. It’s not a bad idea, but it will result in a few frustrated customers due to not receiving the email, etc. So it just depends on how secure you want to make your product vs. making it easy for your customers to access. Also some old people may be confused about a zip password.
Well we now have Rapbank, which is like a PayPal version of Clickbank. Free for affiliates to join and use, and monthly subs for product owners.
I think the self-hosted RAP script may be officialy partnered with Rapbank.
Hi Eric,
I just wanted to congratulate you because you are one of the very few, if not the only one that gives good information for free to your subscribers and this comes down to one thing, the law of giving and receiving and I know you will be remunerated many times fold one way or another, so keep up the good work!
Hey Eric, thanks again for all of this great information! Your lessons rock. I have a question regarding adding paypal pay buttons to your website. I can’t remember if I posted this elsewhere on your blog, but I purchased some reseller products that came with an OTO page, but am not really sure how to set up the pay structure with paypal. I want to direct the customer to the oto page after a successful purchase, I know how to do this part, but then if they purchase the oto, do I need to redirect them back to paypal by adding another pay now button? If they don’t take the offer, I would direct them to the regular thank you page? Do you have any suggestions or recommendations? Thanks.
Bret
Actually it sounds like you’ve got it figured out 🙂
Yes put another Paypal button on the OTO.
If they buy that, send them to a 2nd thank you page, which includes their first purchase AND the OTO.
If they say no to the OTO, they click a link which takes them to the regular thank-you page.
Hey Eric, just noticed that the reseller package I was talking about was one that you were promoting a while back. I have a question regarding the unadvertised bonuses page. Can I add/remove or edit any of the items in this document? Can I add my own affiliate links to this page? Can you recommend a good pdf to word converter so I can edit these pages? Thanks for all of your help.
Bret
Yes, you may edit all of those items, unless your license explicitly forbids it.
We recommend that you highlight the entire PDF, copy, and save into a Word document, as you may freely edit within Microsoft Word. If you don’t have Microsoft Word, you may download similar software for free at:
http://openoffice.org/
Eric,
Hello all the way from Malaysia 🙂
Thank you very much for your generosity on providing this valuable information for free!!!!
It really save my a lot of time searching/reading on the net.
God bless you Eric.
Wilson
Hi Eric,
I put up a ebook using wordpress following your instructions and would appreciate your feeback on what I have done. However, I’m still working on the thank you page my main problem is when someone pays by Paypal through my homepage wordpress site I can’t figure out how to send the pdf to them automatically.Consequently, until I have figured this I am asking for an email address so I can email it to them. Can you help me please?
It looks like you’re off to a good start. You’re a good writer, but your COPYwriting needs some improvement for this to sell. Is the product for everyone, or only Irish? The page gives mixed messages in that regard. Also try to avoid long paragraphs with lots of facts. Keep the facts for the book, and use more mystery and intrigue to get people salivating FOR the facts. Did you create a download page and follow the example in this video? If so, your customers can download the PDF from your download page.
Hi Eric,
My question is along this line. If you change the name of the folder, can you still use the index.html page within that folder as the Thank You page? All the hyperlinks link back to the index page. If you change the index page name, it would have to be changed in the code of all the other pages leading back to the Thank You (index.html) page. I hope this is clear enough.
Thanks!
Karen M.
Hello Karen,
I don’t have the files in front of me at the moment, but most of Eric’s PLR products use relative links:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html
That would let you change the folder name without links in the files inside getting broken.
However, if they aren’t relative links, there shouldn’t be that many to update!
Hey Erick! Thanks a lot for the fantastic FREE lessons! This is rare on the internet. God Bless you and I am praying for your Health!
Thank so much for all the tips,
this is really interesting.
But, i want to ask if make these video tip downloadable so that one can still go through off line.
Moreover, i want to plead if you can combine all the video tips together for one to download them. Thanks.