Digital Delivery - The Long Version - Part 3
3) Create a Saleable Item / Auction and link the inventory product to it.
Go to the Item Manager, where you can create an item or auction that you will be protecting and delivering with SmartDD.
Here you can either enter an item number (that you can make up there and then), or an auction number from eBay, into the "Item / Auction number" field.
However, if you're using eBay, then I recommend you enter the auction title into the "Item / Auction title" field. Copy it from eBay and paste it into this field.
In order for SmartDD to work correctly, the auction title must be EXACTLY IDENTICAL to the eBay title. Don't even get one full stop / period wrong as it will be seen as a different item to SmartDD!
Also, try not to use special characters such as $*?/@"£ if possible, as these may be seen by the software as wildcards or other special meanings. See the tips and troubleshooting section for more on this.
At any rate, it's good practice to only use key WORDS in your eBay titles in order to get maximum results when people do a search. e.g., how many people do you think would do a search for a word like "L@@K"? Zero maybe? 
Next, select the product you're selling from the "Product" drop down box, which in our example would be the one you just created in step 2.
Then select a currency, and type in the minimum price you're willing to accept for this item in this format - n.nn - e.g. 2.50, 23.75, 0.99, etc.
When SmartDD receives the payment notification from PayPal, it will only deliver the item if the price is met or bettered at the correct currency.
Finally, select the emails to be associated with the saleable item you're creating in SmartDD. You can choose to leave them at the defaults, or if you've created custom emails to upsell to a similar more expensive product, then use those.
Click "Add item / auction" and your new saleable item will be added to the database.
4) Repeat steps 1-3 as necessary until you've loaded all your items.
***
So, you've now learned how to quickly get yourself up and runing with SmartDD.
You've been to the emails section and edited them to your personal taste.
You've uploaded a product file by FTP to your server e.g. valuable_ebook.zip. and then created the product in the inventory section that's linked to that file.
You've created a saleable item in the items section, and linked it to the inventory product you created.
***
Now it's time to look closely at the Email Manager and also to cover some of the other features in SmartDD.
6 Comments »
June 10, 2007
John Rourke :
Frank,
I had a terrible time trying to get smartdd to work (not your fault!), and finally figured it out - apparently Auctiva reformats the message title so that smartdd does not recognize it. Are you aware of this problem? Is there any plan to allow for Auctiva's checkout form?
Honestly, I wouldn't bother. Auctiva has many other problems - repeated invoices apparently being sent after the customer has paid, and a sticky ebay 'token' that lives on even after you have disabled auctiva checkout, even after you have created a brand-new auction, even after you have revoked the token in ebay itself. The only way I can get smartdd to recognize a sale from paypal, is to pay it directly in paypal, not through checkout. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually (probably a hidden ebay setting, somewhere in the bowels of ebay), but it is quite frustrating.
Incidentally, I think your software is great! As soon as I get these last bugs ironed out, you can be sure I'll be buying the full version! You have done a great job with the software, and all the instructions are there… although it is somewhat confusing given the interplay of smartdd, ebay, paypal, cpanel etc (not to mention auctiva!). I'm thinking of making an ebook or mentoring service to either provide or guide a customer step-by-step through a turnkey operation - you've got it most of the way but one little thing out of whack keeps the whole thing from working.
I do have one comment/question… it is probably answered somewhere I haven't read yet, but where can I modify the download instructions page? Specifically, the text:
"Thank you for your purchase, your download is ready.
We really appreciate your custom. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us."
isn't quite right, at least for our purposes. I'd prefer to say "Congratulations on winning the auction!" for the first part, and "We really appreciate your custom" seems a rather quaint expression, that I'd like to change… can you give me a pointer on where that is done?
Anyway, thanks for a great product, and especially for a free trial that is useful while still leading directly to a full sale… otherwise I wouldn't know how much better your software is than anyone else's, before buying!
-John
Frank Haywood :
Hi John,
Thanks for that, and I'm sorry you've had problems.
You're right about the Auctiva bit though, we hadn't even considered that a 3rd party service might mangle the title. To be fair to us, it would be a nightmare to try to foresee all possible uses and combinations outside of what SmartDD was designed for.
It's worth remembering not to use special characters though as these are the ones that normally get broken. e.g.*&^%£"@~ although the $ symbol is okay.
This is for a number of technical reasons, but the best non-techy reason is that people don't search for any of those characters when they're looking for things on eBay, they only search for numbers and letters.
In the full version of SmartDD you can amend download.php which contains the message you mentioned, and even make the download page look completely different. In the free version, the file is encoded so I'm afraid you can't alter it.
In the next version, we'll add templating to make it much easier to do.
All the best,
Frank.
October 16, 2007
Preben :
Hi Frank
I bought SmartDD both to work woth auctions, and then to sell stuff directly from my websites.
BUT I can't choose my currency, even though PayPal accepts it. How can I make SmartDD accept my currency? (NOK - Norwegian Krone)
Thanks
Preben :
Ok. I did a change to the database, changing the "tblddcurrency" table in it to reflect NOK in stead of CAD or another currency I don't need. Works perfect!
Only bad this is that in "Orders" window inside SmartDD it now shows NOK an all orders my test customer has bought, yet 2 of them is done with USD. However in the "Orders" window it shows correct currency on each order…
October 17, 2007
Frank Haywood :
Hi Preben,
Hmm, strange. Did you remove the other currencies or just add NOK to the list?
Without asking Paul (my developer partner), my guess is SmartDD is trying to look up the currency in the currency table and can't find it so is displaying the only one it can find which is NOK.
Is that it?
Cheers,
Frank.
March 24, 2008
Roger Gustavsen :
Hi!
Thanks for a really great product! Been looking for something like this since mid2007
You said:
n order for SmartDD to work correctly, the auction title must be EXACTLY IDENTICAL to the eBay title.
Does this apply to when using ordinary website "one-produkt-page" as well?
I'm testing my buttons with paypal sandbox, but my "customer" me.. doesn't get the product download link to the email I used in the system tab, inside the /admin area…
Please respond to the email I entered…
Best regards,
Roger Gustavsen