Software Channels

Folks, sorry to post it here, but most merchants will see it on the homepage: 1 of our 4 cluster nodes for the web front just died away! We are working on the problem together with the hoster. For 1 hour or less, it could lead to problems in surfing, picture display and sales processes. We hurry up!

The RAM on the server just went out of business!

After we have published our affiliate program last week, we have started to publish some ads in various networks. Among those some ads on Facebook and some on Google Adwords. The click-through rates are really different. While people on facebook are not too heavy clickers and float around at low CTR of 0.1% or even lower, the Google Ads have brought much more traffic - figures of 0.8% or higher were the result of the tests in the last few days.

I have been reading about the low click rates on social networks, but for 1 ad we did not have a single click in over 15,000 impressions on facebook. After that, I guess we have to revisit the whole ads process in the different channels and tweak the texts and banners. These low figures seem to be pretty low for everybody.

Selling online involves a lot of marketing and one powerful aspect of really pushing sales and traffic to a site is the simple and old idea of “having resellers”.

In our online universe, “having resellers” can be replaced in major aspects by “having affiliate partners”.

Tradebit today released the brand new affiliate program for the promotions of downloads: For all merchants, who share their revenue with tradebit this new feature means: you got a fully functional affiliate network in the back of this platform:

1. Partners can pick links to promote your products
2. Simple integration:
   
   This includes Wordpress plugins, MySpace codes and Facebook integration
3. Affiliates are paid weekly, automatically
4. You can use the affiliate links, to promote your own products and raise your payout by 5 or more percent!

This is the beginning of a new era for us and the merchants on the platform. We have tested the new program throughly, but I consider this still BETA! All clicks are counted and the first affiliate payout will take place next week.

Sign up for free: Affiliate Program

Test drive it and let us know, what you think!

Providing a self-service site to upload files and presenting them to the world to buy is one thing. Explaining everything that is involved in running such a site to professional publishers another.

We had several requests in the last years of professional publishers of all sizes. Even BIG names approach us for help in online marketing and sales activities and ask questions. My personal view on this is quite simple: MP3 and the revenue landslide for the music industry is just the beginning of a new era in our digital world. If we talk to people today about tradebit and tell them what we do, they basically understand “oh, you are selling music like itunes” - errrr, no!

It is true, that we RE-sell music for publishers like CDbaby or MTunes just as itunes does, but the big difference is that we do not really care if it is music, a photo or an antivirus tool (we do care technically and in forms of HTML and user interface presentation, but our mindset is quite different).

We believe that a maximum of freedom for the consumer of digital goods is the strongest asset on tradebit.

- No client to install

- No registration needed

- And if you pay with Google Checkout, you can even stay TOTALLY anonymous to us or the publisher.

By following that road, we have a lot of things to explain to larger publishers who consider to jump the wagon. Furthermore we do believe that the freedom for the content owner is also a very important aspect - and this brings us to the second hurdle for classic publishing companies:

We do believe it is the best, if content gets distributed to several outlets. Even to our colleagues at payloadz or other download sites. It is good for your revenue to be out there - not just on your own domain (which even might not be search engine friendly like it should be).

So, the best setup for publishers with HUGE amounts of files (like movies or eBooks) would rather look like that:

So a publisher should maintain a storage system of their own, which they have full control over. We have seen people sending out storage systems of Terabyte sizes to be plugged into other platforms and we also do it ourselves. But sooner or later that gets complicated to handle.

This post does just show you my idea of how it should be… and it is still a long way to go.

Have a nice weekend!

Folks, we have started the bulk payment via paypal for all publishers today. Your revenue from the 1st to (and including) the 7th of April went out. So far the new structure seems to work and I hope you enjoy less support issues and problems.

We are still deep in the new affiliate functionality, which will roll out soon. That will hopefully boost your sales over the long run.

For standard accounts the affiliate rate will be 9% for all resellers by default, by the way. More details on that will follow, when we roll out the features.

All files on sale with a price higher than 4.75 $ are now offered also via Google Checkout. This has a very positive effect on the overall sales figures!

We also do now follow the currency exchange rates by fetching the rates daily from 3 different servers. We then calculate Euros and GBPs automatically into US$ based on these exchange rates.

Additionally did we add a javascript tooltip for the payment buttons on the detail pages to create some credibility for the consumers of the files.

Everything is still too complicated, but we are getting there. The dust slowly settles, people cope with the changes and tomorrow the first payout is scheduled. I hope then everybody will be happy!