Hey Frank,

I just got around to testing the free SmartDD. I'm impressed…great piece of software and I plan to get the full version…except I found what I think is a small problem.

On the thank you page for the buyer in the first sentence it says " We really appreciate your custom." What the heck is "custom" there for? Shouldn't it say "order" or "business" or something that makes sense?

Unless I'm mistaken, there's no way for a user to change the thank you php file or use a custom thank you page, correct?

Thanks in advance for lookig into this.

Bob

PS-Any further info about when you may release a version that works with CB too?

Hi Bob,

I think that's a "British-ism" that doesn't translate as well as I thought it would!

In the UK, custom is synonymous for order or business, so it reads the same.

With the free version of SmartDD, everything is encoded so yes, there's no way of amending the thankyou.php, but we're going to change that in the next release by adding full and separate templating. (We'll also be adding item specific thank you pages in with that version.)

In the full version, 99%+ of SmartDD is unencoded and you can amend just about everything, so it isn't a big issue.

The next version will also include ClickBank support.

Realistically, we're at least 8 weeks away from the next version. I know that's not great news, but we have some other things we're doing that complements SmartDD to some extent, and we want to get those out first before we complete the next release of SmartDD.

Cheers,

Frank.

HI Frank,

Its been a while since we spoke Hope all is well:)

Just a thought to BOB above this is a fantastic Program ( especially if using it will Ebay) and as i have the full version it is very easy to change wordings in the script as i have done on a few ( not much as its pretty well all very good.)

Just on another note Frank I am try to incorparate smartdd with a Give away site and free squeeze page ( for those that dont know to create my optin list its #1)

and basically i want to offer free products to sign ups they then goto my own server multi-autoresponder where i can send them to any other page after they sign up.

how ever i dont want to show a static page for free downloads as we know it will get linked for others to get free with out putting there emails in to my optin list.
so Can smart dd then have a link to a secure download say Limited) just as if they had bought the download?

sorry to go on but would like to use smartdd for most of my business as its KOOOOOLLLLL
Best regards
Craig

Hi Craig,

We'll be adding free sign up code to SmartDD as it doesn't do it at the moment.

It's one of the most asked-fors.

But… We're working on something at the moment that's like SmartDD, but it's just for web sites, and we're not far off completion.

You'll be able to do one time offers (OTOs), free sign ups, etc., and it will have a nice little promo tools section for your affiliates - I just decided to add that this morning.

So what you'll be able to do is get traffic via eBay, then send your customers to a free sign up using the new tool, and capture them on Aweber or whatever.

We'll be putting in Aweber support out of the box (as it's most-used), but we'll also try to make it flexible so you can add your own autoresponder service. As long as your autoresponder accepts POSTs, you should be okay.

So the flow would be:-

eBay -> SmartDD email and follow-up -> New Tool sales page -> free sign up -> autoresponder -> OTO1 + (OTO1 backup) + (OTO2) + (OTO2 backup) -> thank you page (+ "please whitelist me and check your bulk folder" message) -> confirm autoresponder -> secure free product delivery on download page.

Seems a little complicated maybe, but I know for a FACT this works every day, and not just for me.

Bear in mind the new tool will be flexible, so you don't have to follow every step, but you can do if you want to.

It also has 7 dollar script functionality built in. Oh, and the admin panel is the same styling as SmartDD so you'll be right at home with it.

Like anything worth it, it will take a little bit of attention to detail to set it all up, but then it just runs on autopilot. Then all you need to do is get eBay or PPC or SEO or affiliate traffic and send prospects to the "New Tool" sales page for their free product.

When we launch it, all SmartDD full owners will get it for peanuts, and even then we'll be offering it at a low price initially for all list members, followed by a couple of other promotions, and then we'll settle at a tentative $67 with 50% commission for affiliates.

You won't need to buy any big expensive scripts to run your mini-sites off, this is going to ROCK.

As soon as SmartLinkCloaker is launched in a couple of weeks (using the new tool), I'll make an announcement and start the countdown.

Cheers,

Frank.

Hello Frank,

I downloaded the SmartDD zip file, unzipped it and attempted to upload and install.

No chance - it just crashes my computer. Please do NOT panic as I'm sure the culprit is WinIE. and until I can afford to buy new equipment I have to soldier on.

Question: Is it possible to upload the zipped file to my website and install direct?
I'm not a techie but I,m not stupid either. I can follow instructions (simple of course).

God bless you for what appears to be great software.

Regards

Frank.

Hi Frank,

(Nice name BTW)

There are some instructions to manually upload SmartDD here:-

http://www.smartdd.com/help/digital-delivery/tips-and-troubleshooting/#comment-121

Cheers,

Frank.

Frank

I'm interested in the paid version of SmartDD, but I want my customers redirected to the download page immediately, rather than the thank you page.

The download email can then act as a back up.

Is this possible currently?

If it is, you'll have my custom (!)

Hi Amin,

The thank you page is a security feature and isn't always shown.

This is how it works. Because SmartDD uses PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification), and IPN works asynchronously in the background to normal page flow, it can sometimes be delayed.

So when a customer buys, and either PayPal is running a little slowly, or the customer clicks the "Return to merchant" button a little quickly, the payment notification may not make it back to your SmartDD installation as fast as your customer.

In that case, the "thank you" page is shown.

If not, *that's* when your customer goes direct to the download page.

Now, just think about this for a moment. Ideally, you *would* want a thank you page to be shown rather than a download page.

Why? Because if your customer knows that she should be expecting an email from you, she'll go looking for it and may find it in her bulk email folder and will probably white list your email address in the process.

You *want* that as you also want her to join your mailing list. Yes?

If she joins your mailing list but doesn't white list you, she won't receive your messages, they'll end up in her bulk folder and she'll never go looking for them.

And…

If she doesn't white list you, she won't receive your SmartDD automated follow up email message 24 hours later.

Okay, that said and done what we'll do is this.

In the next version (v2) due out late August 2007, we'll add in the option to go straight to the download page.

To make that work, what we might have to do is show a message that refreshes every 5 seconds saying something like "please wait while your transaction data from PayPal is processed" until the order has been created in SmartDD.

This is because until the IPN data is passed across, no order exists in SmartDD.

If you don't care about that, and just want your customer to go to a download page regardless (you're list building rather than selling for profit), we'll be adding in separate download pages for every item in the next version.

That means on return from their purchase, you could just send them to an insecure download page.

Cheers,

Frank.

hi,
I want to track my conversations using adwords, and I need to insert code into the thank you page. I have the full version. which page would I insert this code? Also , I've noticed that the thank you page doesn't show up all the time. if that is the case, how do you properly track conversations. BTW, how do you personally track conversations yourself ?
thanks
adam

Hi Adam,

The best place to put your tracking code would be in download.php between lines 50 and 80 which is where the HTML is. Alternatively, you could place it in body_top.php or body_bottom.php.

The thankyou.php page only shows when the IPN message from PayPal is delayed for some reason, or your customer is a bit quick on pressing the "Return to merchant" button. This is because IPN posts are done asynchronously in the background to the normal web flow.

If the IPN message makes it back to your SmartDD installation before your customer, then your customer will be instantly re-directed to download.php.

For tracking, I use either Statcounter (a service) or Logaholic (installed on your server).

Cheers,

Frank.

I am having a terrible time in getting my emails amended.

Should I put the complete URL in my location, such as:

home/www.suchandsuch.com/files/thisisit.zip

or :

home/suchandsuch/files/thisisit.zip

I have all my zips in "files" in the root directory and not in public_html.

Thanks for any comments,
Silvertop

Hi Silvertop,

You don't need to amend your emails with the file locations, SmartDD will put the right location in for you as long as you have your product set up correctly.

In the pre-loaded examples, if you look at the default "success email to customer", you'll see there are a number of tags. One of these is:-

%FILE_LOCATION%

So what happens is when SmartDD sends out the email to your customer, it replaces the above tag with a download link.

As long as the inventory product has the download link as:-

home/suchandsuch/files/thisisit.zip

SmartDD will replace the tag with a unique download link.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Frank.

Hi there Frank,

I have the full version of this script and I think it is wonderful, but I have just got 1 small query, when a customer downloads a file, say it's called ebook.zip, well when it is downloaded it is only named ebook, so the customer has to add the .zip extention to the file. How can this issue be resolved. It is the same with all file types.

Thanks
Adam

Hi Adam,

It's the "Display name" security feature that's doing that.

Just delete the contents of the display name and it will work.

You can read more about it here:-

http://www.smartdd.com/help/digital-delivery/digital-delivery-the-long-version-part-2/

-Frank