Black On Stuff » Just Avangate

How to sell Gift Certificates using Avangate

Black — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:29:13 +0000

Gift certificates are good when you want to give discounts to your products. It’s a nice way to give presents around Xmas or other holidays. You can call this concept Gift certificate or Discount card or Discount coupon or whatever you want, but the idea behind it is that someone buys one certificate and gives it to someone else to get a partial or total discount for one or more of your software products. It is a great way to let the end user of the product choose and not spend the money on a gift nobody will use. The concept works not only in classic retail with real cards but also in software sales, where the products are usually delivered electronically.

The process to set up such a system with Avangate is quite easy:

1. build your discount coupons list (or Avangate can generate one list for you)
2. add your Gift Certificate product, with the price you want it
3. add a Static Electronic Delivery List and add to this list the discount coupons from step 1. Add the Gift Certificate product to this list, to enable code delivery when buying this product
4. generate a link to your product and you’re ready to add it to your website
5. add a Promotion and set it up to have multiple discount coupons. Add to the promotion coupon list the coupons from step 1 above. Don’t forget to add your regular products to this list.
6. you’re done

At this stage, everyone who’s buying the Gift Certificate product will receive the discount coupon by email. The discount coupon can be used by anyone else to get a discount for the list of products you’ve specified in Step 5.

Is that easy. Of course, this is just a base scenario that works. From here we can start playing with various things like email customization, combination of the Buy as a Gift option with the Gift Certificate buying etc. Any sugestions are welcomed any time.

ISDEF Spring conference in Moscow

Black — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:37:29 +0000

This year conference is not only one day as the ones last years. It’s for almost three days, from Friday evening to Sunday noon. It’s the third time we’re sponsoring the conference. Friday was just a networking party, a so called “barbeque party” although there was no barbeque but normal catering, but inside a big tent in a park near the hotel. The usual drinks were there: wine and vodka (Russian Standard Vodka), orange and tomato juice and still water. Not too many people, but a great live band.

I was expecting more people this year but until now (Saturday evening) I guess there weren’t more than 150 people (optimistically speaking). The location of the conference (Holiday Inn, Vinogradovo) is not very accessible because it is outside Moscow, there is no direct subway from/to town center. I spoke with someone from the organizers and he told me the reason this hotel was chosen: the participants will not leave early after and during the conference, because they cannot physically do it (or it is very inconvenient).

Anyway, I cannot tell anything about the presentations, because they’re all in Russian. Our presentation is scheduled for tomorrow at 10am and it will present a perspective of automatization in software sales, with a touch of our new product, myAvangate. And it will be in English. Probably the only one in the conference.

I will also post some pictures after the event, cause I don’t have a way to download it to a computer (no cable available).

Business networking is good at these kind of events and after being here twice last year, I get to know most of the participants. After each conference we end up with a few new shareware authors which are using Avangate services and it is a good time to make live presentations of our system.

Of course, DR is sponsoring today’s banquet, as they usually do. A good time to “steal” another one of their clients …

Did I mentioned we have a special offer for all ISDEF participants, including free myAvangate for one year and a special rate for Avangate eCommerce Platform? Now I did it!

Avangate article in French

Black — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:51:28 +0000

Just found out that some of our online articles are translated and published in different languages. For instance, the article Optimizing for MSN? Is It Worth the Effort? has a french version: L’Optimisation pour MSN est-elle Nécessaire ?

Nice. It even looks good in french. Well done! Just in time to fit my new website panorama from Paris

And not only that, but I found an .edu website today quoting Avangate as a reference for writing good software documentation. So after all, the effort starts to pay off. We are investing a lot in quality content for software publishers mostly, putting in words and sentences what seems very natural for everyone. We’re also always recruiting smart people for our web-marketing department.