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ServiceBefore You Begin:
What You Will Need to Do:
- Using SoftSeller requires a PayPal Business or Premier account or an AlertPay Business account. (PayPal also offers Personal accounts, but those accounts do not allow you to accept credit card payments for products ordered online from your Web site. If you have a Personal account, you can upgrade it to a Business or Premier account; see the PayPal site.)
- Please read our Terms of Service before registering. Registering for the SoftSeller service implies acceptance of these terms.
- Open a SoftSeller account and define your digital products and delivery methods.
- Add "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart" buttons to your site, if you don't already have them. You can use the buttons created by the PayPal or AlertPay "button factory" if you also add an "Instant Payment Notification" (IPN) URL to your PayPal or AlertPay account profile. PayPal users can also use buttons created by SoftSeller's button factory, and you will not need to modify your PayPal profile (because the links to SoftSeller to process the downloads will be automatically included in the buttons). If you already have PayPal buttons, you can either add the SoftSeller IPN URL to your PayPal profile, or you can add some HTML code to your existing buttons that will link to SoftSeller.
- For PayPal users, you can optionally add a "Return page" URL so customers can download or receive registration keys immediately after payment, without waiting for the e-mail message. (If you use buttons created by SoftSeller, the "Return page" URL will be included automatically.)
How Our Service Works:
- SoftSeller works by receiving Instant Payment Notifications from PayPal or AlertPay following each successful payment. These IPNs will identify your customers and the items sold. SoftSeller will log this info from each order and then send an e-mail message to the customer, providing either a link back to SoftSeller to download the products, or registration keys (depending on the delivery method you have chosen for each item). For PayPal users, if you want to give your customers truly immediate delivery, without waiting for the e-mail message, you can also define a SoftSeller "Successful Payment" page that will allow customers to receive download links or registration keys immediately after payment. Both of these PayPal processes verify each order with a validation request back to PayPal, to insure that only legitimate paid orders are processed. AlertPay transactions are verified by an encrypted security code.
- If you are using PayPal, after setting up your PayPal or Business account, you can either use PayPal's Merchant Tools to generate the HTML for ordering buttons, or you can use our button generator. These buttons can be copied and pasted into your own Web site pages. The buttons can either be "Buy Now" buttons for ordering a single item and checking out immediately, or they can be "Add to Cart" buttons that allow selecting several items before checking out. If you already have PayPal buttons on your site, you can simply add some HTML input fields to those buttons to define the links to SoftSeller, or you can set the SoftSeller IPN URL directly in your PayPal account profile. If you are using AlertPay, the you must use the standard ordering buttons generated in AlertPay. (SoftSeller does not yet support creating AlertPay buttons, but that feature will be added soon.)
SoftSeller also works with items sold on eBay if they are paid through PayPal. For this feature to work, you must:
- set the SoftSeller IPN in your PayPal account profile;
- when you enter your eBay listing, set the payment option to require PayPal payment;
- set the PayPal payment e-mail address to be the same as your SoftSeller account e-mail;
- use an eBay auction item title that exactly matches the Item Name in your SoftSeller product definition.
You may also be able to use other third-party PayPal- or AlertPay-enabled carts or purchase interfaces, provided that they use PayPal's standard "Item ID/Number" field (HTML input name="item_number" in PayPal or name="ap_itemcode" in AlertPay) to identify your products, so they can be found in your SoftSeller account setup when the IPN is received.
Defining Your Products and Delivery Methods:
- After registering for the SoftSeller service, you can set up the download or registration key specifications for each of your items. There is no limit on the number of items you may offer for sale, and each can have it's own download URL or registration key method.
Important Note: Downloadable products must be stored on your own site. (If you need hosting services, limited space is available for product hosting on our server by subscription, or if you are ready to create your own site please check this great deal for inexpensive and reliable hosting.)
- We offer three methods of product delivery:
- Download. You provide the URL of the downloadable product on your site, and the URL will be encrypted and stored in our database. This URL can be to an "authentication" protected directory, which requires a user name and password to download (and in fact, we strongly recommend that you put your products on protected directories). This user name and password can be stored with the URL in our encrypted database.
The order message sent to each customer will contain a link to a download login page on the SoftSeller site. That page requires the payment transaction ID (which is included in the link in the e-mail so the customer doesn't need to enter that), but for added security, the login also requires that the customer enter the same e-mail address that was used to make the payment in PayPal or AlertPay. This address is checked against the address that was sent to SoftSeller in the original IPN message. After providing the proper e-mail address, the customer will then see a list of all downloadable products that were bought, with a "Download" button for each.
These download links are encrypted in such a way that they will only work for that logged-in browser, so customers cannot successfully distribute those links to anyone else.) Each link will actually be to a script on the SoftSeller site, and that script will load the file from your specified URL and pass it through to the customer's browser. Therefore, the customer's browser never sees the URL (or the user name and password, if you're using authentication), so the customer can't redistribute that URL. (This is not true of systems that simply redirect the user's browser to the download file.)
- Registration keys stored in our database. You can store a list of product registration keys in our database, which will be issued one at a time as products are sold. These keys will be sent directly in the e-mailed order message sent to the customer, so no further action is required. Each key is used only once, then removed from our database. (Exception: the last available key will not be removed.) You can replenish the list of keys at any time. These keys are encrypted in our database to prevent unauthorized distribution.
- Registration keys provided by your online script. You can provide the URL of a script on your site that will be called with an HTTP POST method, optionally passing any purchase or customer data you want from the PayPal or AlertPay IPN message. This script should return a plain text message with any registration information or instructions that you want inserted into the order e-mail sent to the customer. For example, if your registration key depends on a specific user name, you can have the customer's name passed in the HTTP request, then return some text instructing the customer to enter that registered name along with the provided key. Whatever text is returned by the script is inserted, "as is", into the customer's e-mailed order message. Like the download URLs, the URLs to registration scripts are stored in our encrypted database, and my include authentication user name and password.
- You can customize the order messages that are e-mailed to your customers by providing any text that you want shown at the top of the message. This custom text message will be followed by either a link to the SoftSeller download page or by a list of products ordered with the registration key for each product.
- The login page and download page can also be customized by providing us with the URL of your own HTML page. In that page, you can insert a special HTML comment marker at the location that you want the customer to see the login form and then the download list. The SoftSeller script will display your page, but it will replace the comment marker, first with the login form and then with the download list.
Fees:
- There are no monthly SoftSeller fees. You pay only 25¢ ($0.25) for each order processed (plus the PayPal or AlertPay transaction fee, of course). You can try our service FREE for your first 5 orders. If you wish to continue using the service, you can purchase a block of 50 additional order processes for $12.50. There is no time limit for completing these sales.
- After selling your first 50 orders, you can buy additional order processes, in advance, at the rate of $6.25 for a block of 25, $12.50 for a block of 50, etc.
- You will be notified in advance when you need to prepay for more order processes. (If you should run out before you have the opportunity to buy more, you will have a ten-day grace period to renew your account with no loss of service.)
- An "order" may contain multiple items if PayPal's shopping cart is used. The SoftSeller fee is still only 25¢ for the entire order, not each item. (AlertPay does not currently provide a shopping cart feature, so those are single-item orders.)
