Digitalquill

I have made great progress with my new software for selling digital goods online. I have now finished the development process and am starting testing it before I launch it. I am therefore looking for volunteers to try the software and give me feedback. If you are willing to do this for me you will get a free copy of the software and both my wordpress plugins.

I have also created a basic site for the new software and bought two domain names selldownloads.co.uk which will be the main one and selldigitaldownloads.co.uk which points to the main site. I am in the process of creating a site on there to demo the software and show what it does. Time is very limited at present due to some DIY work at home, but I hope to be able to sit down for a few hours this weekend to get some testing done and some content written for the website.

I am in the process of creating another WordPress plugin. I am in the very early stages of the development process so I will not say too much about the details of the plugin, however, I believe that it will be revolutionary for bloggers who wish to sell advertising space on their blogs in that it fully automates the process. It will use paypal to create subscriptions and manage the display and rotation of adverts.

I am hoping that it will allow non-technical bloggers to be able to manage and sell advertising space on their blogs without the need to employ web developers to create themes or add in advertising.

I also intend to write it in such a way that the owner of the blog can in addition to selling advertising space, use it to show affiliate adverts and control what is shown and when.

There are some plugins available that do some of what I am planning, but I have been looking for one that is all singing and all dancing, that will manage the process from start to finish without needing the blogger to continually monitor or provide administration for their advertising slots.

As I am already in the WordPress plugin market, I decided that I would make an attempt to design a plugin that meets all of my needs, as with all these projects as soon as I had the specification written I have had many more ideas and features that I would like to see, however I will get the base software written on which I can build over time.

I strongly believe that WordPress is a platform that can be used for many applications, not least blogging for which it is intended. Regular readers will know that I use wordpress as a basis for many of my sites, especially affiliates  sites using my other two wordpress plugins, Datafeed Import plugn for WordPress and Amazon Import Pluign for wordpress. 

The improvements that are set to be released with version 3.0 of WordPress will improve the already sophisticated platform making it more and more versatile for many more applications, making it more of a content management system (CMS) as well as a blogging platform.

This new plugin will extend my range of plugins to people who are not affiliate marketers but still want to be able to sell advertising space on their sites as well as affiliate bloggers who wish to add affiliate adverts.

I have bought two domain names and will be creating a website for the plugin at wordpressadvertiser.com (and .co.uk). I will add more information there when I get closer to having a product that I can release, and will post more blog posts here where there are more updates.

Over the last few weeks I have been working on some exciting new software to add to my portfolio, it is slightly different to the other two products I have as it is not a WordPress plugin but it is a stand alone piece of software.

During the time that i have been selling the datafeed import and amazon import plugins for WordPress I have been using some software that I bought to manage the sale of those digital download products. Although good, this did not do exactly what I wanted.

The main problem with the software I use is that it only managed digital downloads automatically via Paypal, I wanted software that would use both Paypal and Google checkout. In addition the interface for this software was not ideal, and managing updates to products was a little tricky.

I have therefore designed a product that does everything I require. It is currently in development and following that I will be testing it myself for my own products, however, I hope to get it launched as a product soon after that.

What will the new product do?

In simple terms it will manage the process of selling digital downloads via paypal or google checkout. It will allow you to create a product, upload the digital download and automatically create buy now buttons for paypal and google checkout.

When someone buys your product it will automatically check that the sale has been completed before emailing the buyer login details to download the digital download that they have purchased.

It will ensure that the correct downloads are given tot he correct people and that they have paid the correct amount for that product.

It will also give you statistics on the sales of your products so that you can monitor their performance.

When you update a product, rather than having to FTP that file to your server like the software that I use, all you need to do is upload a new file via the interface.

Also if you change a product price or description, rather than having the manually change the code for the buy now buttons like you do with the software I use, which becomes a real pain when you have buy now buttons on many different pages on your site, all you need to do is change the details in the interface and the software will update the buttons automatically its self.

There is still allot of work that I need to do on the software, and indeed there is allot of testing that I need to do. I will also be looking for some other people to test it, so if you are involved with selling digital downloads please do contact me telling me what you do and what software you currently use, in return for your testing I will give you a free copy of my software including free updates to new features when I create them.

I hope that I will be launching the new software within the next month, but I will keep you updated on its progress.

As a little side, if you have any ideas for a name for the product please do post a comment, if I choose your name for my product I will give you a free copy of either this software or one of my plugins.

I also intend to change my Digitalquill site to reflect more the work I am doing now which is more Internet software rather than websites and multimedia. Not that I will not do that work but the website has not been updated for over 5 years and as such it really does need an overhaul and quite possibly a website redesign.

In the lead up to Christmas I have been bidding on a number of items on Ebay. I have been frustrated by the number of canceled bids and ending of auctions early. It seems that if the seller is not happy with the value that the item is selling for that they think they have the right to cancel the item and re-list it int he hope it will make more the next time round.

I thought that bid on an item constituted a legal contract between the buyer and seller. If the seller wants to ensure that they get a certain amount for an item then they should enter a reserve price at the outset of the auction.

It seems that you can no longer pick up bargains on Ebay as sellers simply cancel auctions if they do not archive a large enough sale price.

I suspect that this is due to Ebays affiliation with Paypal that relies on a percentage commission of the sale price, meaning that if items achieve a higher price, Ebay makes more money.

Frustrated…