One of the seamless pieces of functionality that SpringBoard provides is transparent to your customers. This is automatic language and currency selection & display through IP address identification.

FastSpring uses IP address detection combined with web browser locale to automatically detect each customer’s country, language, and currency preferences.

In your SpringBoard store, you can set your own foreign currency prices; for currencies for which you do not specify pricing, the prices will be displayed to customers using real-time foreign exchange rates.

Currency exhange rates, including those for cross-sells, can also be calculated with +5% or +10% conversions, to account for market fluctuations. This aids you in controlling sales in foreign countries and can be a great help in calculating product discounts, with a safe margin built in.

FastSpring order pages also allow on-the-fly altering of languages and currencies via the built-in drop-down menu. Here are some examples of a particular portion of an order page - the main product and pricing information - in a sampling of languages:

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FastSpring has many European clients and offers support for all major European languages, currencies and taxes. We are looking forward to meeting clients, learning more about the specific e-commerce needs of clients in the EU, and establishing new relationships. “Connected Worlds” is the overall theme of the conference this year, and one we find appropriate to our presence here.

For more information on CeBIT, go to www.cebit.de.

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While Apple itself and, significantly, Adobe, are not exhibiting, Macworld continues to be the destination of choice for Mac developers and a long-standing tradition that set the bar for many other technology conferences since 1985(!).

This year, there is even an iPhone App called iMacworld that presents a handy way to explore and navigate the conference, with detailed entries for each exhibitor. The days of the Steve Jobs’ keynotes – a trademark of the show since 1997 – are over (as are the short-lived East Coast conferences), but the show goes on.

FastSpring has had the pleasure over the past few years to get to know some of the finest Mac developers of the latest generation, and we look forward to touching base with them and, in general, learning more about the e-commerce needs of the thriving Mac development community.

Best of Show winners this year at Macworld include Canson Papershow, Carina Software SkyFi, FastMac U-Socket, Frolicware Autopark, Inrix Traffic Pro, Marketcircle’s Billings Touch and more. There is also a special iPad event scheduled on Sat. Feb. 13 hosted by Macworld VP and Editorial Director Jason Snell. For more information, you can visit www.macworldexpo.com.

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FastSpring is the most awesome E-commerce platform I have ever encountered, and trust me I looked at many before finding you. I absolutely love it. I am COMPLETELY impressed with the platform, the interface design, the performance and the features. It does everything I need, perfectly. To top it all off, the customer service has been absolutely phenomenal. You guys are the best, thanks for providing such a GREAT platform.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at our Testimonials page. For images of SpringBoard showing various aspects of the interface, you can view our Screenshots page.

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In an exciting new development on the Haiti relief front - and right on the heels of our post yesterday - FastSpring has learned that several of its clients have committed to donating all proceeds received from sales tomorrow to the charity of their choice bringing aid to Haiti. Such charities include Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and the Red Cross.

The program is called Indie+Relief, and features an wide range of interesting contributions. It’s great to see the software development community getting involved in this program. The array of companies and products is truly astounding, as is the spirit behind this highly collaborative effort.

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This moment gives us a valuable opportunity to reflect on the pervasive need for corporations of all sizes worldwide to practice some form of social responsibility, to preserve the common good and to give back to those in need — both in general and in direct response to crises such as so evident in Haiti currently.

The WFP’s web site, www.wfp.org, has detailed reports on its actions to help in Haiti.

The UN food agency started distributing food within 24 hours of the earthquake striking and plans to reach 2 million with weekly rations as part of its emergency operation over the next month. In the week since the quake, more than 250,000 ready-to-eat food rations have been distributed by WFP and the U.S. military in and around Port-au-Prince. [Source: wfp.org]

These days making a donation to aid in a cause is easier than ever.  Right now, for example, if you text the word HAITI from your mobile phone to the number 90999, $10 will be seamlessly donated to the Red Cross in its efforts to aid the victims of the earthquake.

As the new year unfolds, we at FastSpring hold a place in our hearts for those who remain in need.  Let’s all do our part to work toward an improved world in 2010.

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FastSpring revenue soars on e-commerce

by Stephen Nellis
Pacific Coast Business Times
Monday, 11 January 2010

Dan Engel had to learn the lessons that helped him build Santa Barbara-based FastSpring the hard way, but those lessons have paid off with 550 percent revenue growth over the past year.

The 15-employee firm makes an e-commerce backend for companies that sell downloadable products such as software, e-books and video games. Companies who sell files face some special challenges, such as matching up serial numbers and authorization codes for digital rights management and distributing back-up discs.

Those go along with the usual e-commerce tasks of handling payments, collecting state and foreign taxes and dealing with coupons, rebates and price testing. But when Engel was building a photo software company, he couldn’t find an off-the-shelf product to meet his needs.

“There are a host of other services we’re providing along with just the payment processing that if vendors try to accomplish themselves, they’ll spend a year or two. Pretty soon you’re in the e-commerce business rather than in the software business,” Engel said. “Part of how I know that is that I did build an e-commerce system specific to one software company, and it took me about two years.”

That company was Morpheus, another of Engel’s companies that makes software for blending and morphing photographs together in digital animations. He gained some experience in photo software heading market development at Picasa, a photo-sharing site acquired by Google. Before Engel struck out on his own, he had also headed online sales for Google and left shortly after its initial public offering, and then worked online sales for what later became Citrix Online in Goleta…

…With FastSpring, Engel is working to smooth the path for sellers of downloadable products, and has seen his firm catch on with everything from videogame and e-book sellers to financial researchers selling PDF reports. Part of the hook is offering ways to make life easier for the sellers, such as handling foreign payments through FastSpring’s own merchant accounts to avoid extra fees and handling the increasingly complex collection of taxes. Software products permeate borders much more readily than physical products, and California and New York have approved online sales taxes, as have many countries in Europe.

“All the money needs to be sent to the tax collection folks in the European Union, who need to be told which counties get money and how much money each gets,” Engel said. “It gets pretty complicated. We went through it all ourselves [with Morpheus].”

But Engel said the key to FastSpring’s success hasn’t been its technical tricks, but rather its old-fashioned customer support. When a client or a client’s customer has a problem, a human being at FastSrping responds within 12 hours and more often with one or two hours — even on nights and weekends.

“We’re kind of nuts about customer support. We’re the kind of geeks who vendors want supporting them,” Engel said. FastSpring’s customer support specialists “work in the night time. They don’t sleep much,” he said.

E-commerce has proved a resilient place to be, even during the recession. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2009 were $34 billion, up 1.8 percent from the year before even as total retail sales decreased 7.5 percent over the same period.

“Online retail sales have been until recently growing in the range of 20 percent,” said Jeffrey Grau, an senior analyst with New York-based eMarketer, a firm that studies e-commerce. “The recession knocked that down quite a bit, but it also knocked down total retail sales.”

Though big, consumer-facing e-commerce names such as e-Bay and Amazon may have become household names, Grau said there’s still room for market-share battles and revenue snatching in narrower parts of the industry.

“The low-hanging fruit are the ideas that appeal to a lot of people. Once those are covered, the thing to look for is specialties and niches,” Grau said. “It takes more research to understand the particular business model.”

In both business-to-consumer and business-to-business e-commerce, mobile phones are a growing target. FastSpring has been taking advantage of that – after all, its e-commerce back-end is basically an app store. Some of its clients are already selling mobile apps, such as Moonrug, a company that makes an app to link a Google-powered Android phone into a Microsoft Exchange e-mail server.

As for FastSpring’s growth and long-term plans, Engel said an acquisition or IPO is in the future – but not anytime soon. “We’ll be much more valuable in the future,” Engel said. “We don’t expect to grow 550 percent every year. But we’re really at a place where, while we’re doing a lot of active sales, we don’t have to to get new clients, because our existing clients are generating enough buzz.”

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"I’ve been wanting to switch my online store away from PayPal for quite a while now. Although there are a bunch of PayPal horror stories floating around the web, my main reason is to make my life simpler. As much as I like rolling my own solutions, it’s too complicated to offer quantity discounts, coupon codes, and multiple currencies on top of the PayPal API alone. After a lot of investigation and much urging from friends, I made the switch Sunday night to FastSpring.

I couldn’t be happier.

In addition to what is quickly becoming legendary customer support, their e-commerce platform is a dream to work with. Without even reading the documentation, I was able to setup my store and fully integrate it with my backend license fulfillment system (Shine) in under two hours. And that’s doing things the complicated way. If I weren’t such a control freak, I could have handed over the license generation and email confirmation responsibilities to their system as well…

…Update: Did I say legendary customer support? I mean it. It’s a little after 1am here, and FastSpring just emailed me a quick thank you along with their official default theme. Awesome work guys (and gals)."

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“I log into my PayPal account and what do I see? ‘For my protection’ they have limited the ability of my account to withdraw or send money but most severely, they also disallowed the account to receive payments! Frantically, I go to MacGraPhoto’s buy page, click buy and see a message ‘The seller can’t receive payments at this time’. At about the same time I get an email from a potential customer that says that he can’t buy the bundle. In the server log I see other people trying buy the bundle and leaving. Lost sales. Not good. Not good at all. My PayPal’s page lists lots of things that I need to provide to PayPal regarding my personal identity and regarding the sales. Some requests are totally not relevant to the case or to our business. And, it’s totally impossible to directly talk to the people who actually decide… I receive another email from PayPal. The subject was new: ‘PayPal appeal denied’. So, now the money (most of which is not even ours but of our bundle members) is held for 6 months. Sure, they are ‘making every effort to minimize any disruption to your business’. Sure, no disruption at all… Needless to say, I didn’t get any response: not after 72 hours, and not after a week. I called support again and was told that they won’t respond me because my appeal was denied and they don’t reopen cases. I won’t be using PayPal to sell anything from now. They have grown too big to be efficient and caring for their customers. [They are] quick to make totally disruptive decisions and to dismiss legitimate businesses without really taking a look at what it is.They took the liberty to totally halt our business, to cause lots of lost sales and a major cash flow blow only because we got successful with one promotion, after being their customers for a long time. Right, they ‘regret any inconvenience this may cause’. They are ‘making every effort to minimize any disruption to your business’. If you’re selling anything and use PayPal as your only payment option, I urge you to reconsider. They can cut your oxygen supply right at peak of your success, of course ‘for your own protection’. We decided to leave PayPal as our payment processor at Apparent Software and moved to FastSpring.”

We did an earlier post that covered some other complaints we’ve heard about, which you can view here: http://tinyurl.com/oxbs9r

With that said, I’m sure there are plenty of satisfied PayPal clients out there as well. This is just info on some of the unsatisfied ones that help you have a better idea of what potential pitfalls to watch out for if you do use PayPal, and of course it helps explain how FastSpring can be a tremendous alternative for PayPal vendors who sell digital products. As it is, we do support customers paying for vendors’ products via PayPal in addition to our other payment methods, but through FastSpring you don’t have to deal directly with PayPal and expose yourself to these types of potential issues.

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Santa Barbara-based FastSpring, a firm which provides e-commerce services and payment processing for online software sellers, claims that the firm had 500% growth in its revenues in 2009. According to CEO Dan Engel, the growth was driven by new clients such as AteBits (makers of Tweetie), Mailplane, BreezeTree Software, and Moonrug (makers of Moonrug Mobile for Android). Engel did not disclose actual financials related to the firm. Engel was an executive at Picasa at the time of its acquisition by Google, and has also served at such firms as GoToMyPC, Morpheus Software, Google, and Sanity Software.

» View article at www.socaltech.com

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Take a look at BoomerApp.com and contact them if you’d like to be considered for a promotion (not all products will fit the offer profile, but mention you’re a FastSpring client and they will review your product right away for a potential promotion).

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Whether you have your own affiliate program or you use an external affiliate system such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, or countless others, we will review your program and outline how your affiliate revenue can be increased. This audit service, available upon request, is included as part of being a FastSpring client.  (Note: FastSpring does offer its own reseller and affiliate management system, though actual affiliate recruiting is covered through this standalone service.)

For ongoing affiliate program growth management after Affiliate Program Expert Audit, there will be an additional fee, which often can be structured with a performance-based component; once a baseline revenue benchmark is established, the fee can be earned from the incremental revenue which is generated from our efforts. Our leading expert began his affiliate career at Commission Junction in 1999 before managing programs for a number of software companies, and is a highly respected expert in the affiliate marketing industry. Current affiliate program growth management clients include eFax, Savings.com, Angie’s List, Callwave, and Stamps.com. Interested vendors should email us directly to request an Affiliate Program Expert Audit.

Benefits of the affiliate growth management program include the following:

• Ensure your affiliate program is actively managed by an affiliate expert who focuses on nothing but affiliate program growth
• Learn which US, international, and niche affiliate programs are the best for you to work with for your particular products and goals, in addition to your existing program
• Increase the performance of your ads
• Increase your overall website’s conversion rate
• Find out which of the top 1,000 super affiliates are not yet promoting your products and get them recruited
• Increase affiliate outreach and communication
• Increase the number of affiliates that generate sales every month vs. sit idle
• Benefit from the learning gained from managing dozens of other affiliate programs
• Learn how to optimize the program offer you’re making to affiliates so you attract the higher quality affiliates
• Get help with managing any channel conflict between affiliate and reseller channels
• Develop a more effective affiliate incentive program to better motivate your affiliates

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Prices, discounts, and cross-sells can be partner-specific, and each partner can have its own store look and feel. Affiliate recruiting is not included in this service, but we do offer a standalone service for growing affiliate programs. For those who prefer to use an external reseller or affiliate partner management system, FastSpring also supports most major 3rd party affiliate tracking systems, including Commission Junction, LinkShare and ShareASale, among other providers.

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Originally published www.softwareceo.com, 9/29/2009.

Building a website for your software firm is one thing. Developing an entire e-commerce system to sell software over the web is another.

Ask any developer, and he’ll tell you, “Sure! I can do that in a few days.” Ahhhhh… would you believe 18 months?

That’s how long Dan Engel says one of his software companies struggled to build an e-commerce platform.

“I went down that path myself. We spent one and a half years trying to build a system. We wound up having something decent, but it took away from our focus on growing revenues. That’s how I learned the lesson.”

Engel should know what he’s talking about. He’s had a successful career at a number of software companies, including marketing for GoToMyPC (now Citrix) and Picasa (now Google). And he was in charge of online marketing for AdWords and AdSense for Google.

Then he joined Santa Barbara, CA-based e-commerce service provider FastSpring, a company focused on helping software publishers increase sales and save headaches on e-commerce.

“We’re dealing with one pretty large company now and they’re looking at outsourcing e-commerce because they’re losing so many opportunities there,” he says. “They can’t do promotions, they don’t localize their order page, they can’t deal with the VAT and all the taxes.

“They’re a $5-million software company trying to become a $10-million company, and we fully expect that we can grow their bottom line 25 percent over the next year.”

After chatting with Engel, we came away with these seven tips on how to boost profits with e-commerce.

“Each piece adds a few percentage points,” he says. “So if you get two percent here and three percent there, it starts to add up. And it will far exceed the cost of outsourcing this, in terms of slightly higher transaction fees.”

So before you sink another $50,000 into building your own back end, listen to some words of wisdom from an e-commerce specialist.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #1: Focus on developing and marketing your software, not on building e-commerce

Building e-commerce is a lot like any other big project, cautions Engel, say renovating a house.

There are lots of unforeseen complications, and many issues you won’t see going in. It can easily become a major distraction that sucks up resources, but never gets finished.

“It’s a lesson that’s been learned many times over by many developers and business people,” says Engel.

“The best strategy, if you’re interested in generating revenue from software, is to focus on product development and marketing and sales, and completely outsource the e-commerce to a firm that specializes in nothing but e-commerce.

“It’s hard enough growing your software business, without being in charge of your own e-commerce too.”

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #2: Accept multiple forms of payment

Sure you can already accept Visa and PayPal, but how about American Express? A company check? A money order? A purchase order?

How significant are these other forms of payment?

Well, they can certainly add up, says Engel.

“Certain types of customers are more likely to pay with an Amex card. More technical customers are more likely to have a PayPal account. Old school, old-fashioned customers might want to use a check or money order.

“Sometimes schools or corporations order hundreds or thousands of units at once, but they do require a PO. When a school purchaser comes to your site, you have to cater to their needs; the last thing they want is someone who can’t deal with POs.

“At the end of the day, these multiple forms of payment make your sales appealing to a much wider audience. You don’t want to lose 10 percent of potential revenue because you don’t have a payment option for certain people.”

If you’re developing your own e-commerce system and negotiating with every partner, you’ll want to make sure that the demographics of each payment system work for you.

But if you can get one-stop shopping for all these options from a service provider like FastSpring, why not?

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #3: Increase sales with CDs and download protection

Engel says these two simple tactics can help build online sales.

“The variables are, is it opt-in or opt-out? And how complementary to the purchase is it?

“If you’re selling software to the average joe, and you ask if he’d also like it shipped on CD as an opt-out, we’ve seen 80 percent accept that CD for an additional $10.

“Extended download service doesn’t cost anything, but it gives your customer the assurance that they can come back and download in the future, if their computer crashes or whatever, so that’s a nice service that can get you another $5.”

The funny thing is, most companies would do this for free if a customer called in to say they needed to re-download.

So there’s a way to bump up most sales by $15 just for dropping a CD in the mail.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #4: Don’t forget volume discounts and bundles

This one sounds like a no-brainer, but there are lots of sites out there without it.

“You want to give an incentive for a customer to buy five copies, or 10 or 50 or 100, so they make that purchase immediately,” says Engel. This applies equally well to seats for SaaS products.

And you likely want to offer a discount off your other products at the time of sale.

“Software is not like most businesses, you don’t have any physical product in most cases, so when you’re discounting or bundling products together, there isn’t really the same cost of goods sold that you have with something like hardware.

“You want to take advantage of that.”

Don’t overlook discounts and bundles, not to mention bundling third-party products too.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #5: Start using rebates

“Companies are making a lot of money with coupons. But to date, rebates have been too much of a logistical headache for anyone to offer on software,” says Engel.

To overcome this, FastSpring recently partnered with another company to bring the concept of offline rebates to online sales.

Note: A “coupon” is a code a buyer can enter at the time of purchase for an immediate discount, while a “rebate” is an offer to send in for a check by snail mail.

The big difference: Everyone will use a coupon that’s in their hands, but not everyone will use a rebate. In fact, perhaps 60 percent will never get around to mailing in for their rebate… which puts that money back on your bottom line.

FastSpring’s rebate partner has mailboxes all over the world, so a customer in Germany can mail to an address in Germany and get their rebate dropped into their bank account in Euros.

Here’s a flow diagram that shows all this.

But wait, there’s more…

“We just did a study and found that only 20 percent redeemed the rebate: 60 percent never redeemed it in general, and we convinced another 20 percent to use the money on other software, instead of redeeming it for cash,” says Engels.

“Say on your home page, you have a product for $50. Now you can say it’s only $30 with a $20 rebate, knowing that 80 percent are never going to use the rebate.

“What I love about this is that you can reduce the price you present to the customer up-front, from $50 to $30 with a $20 rebate, and that’s really compelling. Imagine how many more units you can sell if you reduce your selling price by 40 or 50 percent?”

And to reduce your costs even more, you can offer to redeem the rebate for software instead of cash, bundling in another $30 program that you’ve discounted down to $20.

“Our clients are very excited to start testing this out, and we think it’s going to be a very big success,” says Engel.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #6: Automatically localize language and currency for each visitor

Imagine your order pages being so “smart” that they automatically reconfigure to match the language and currency of your visitors.

Ideally your e-commerce system would analyze the IP address, mailing address, and browser settings of each visitor, and change to accommodate them. So if they speak Spanish and come from Spain, they see the European Spanish version of your order pages with the prices in € (euros).

That’s another development challenge that’s already been solved by FastSpring. Prices can be given in euros, pounds, yen, or Australian, Canadian, or American dollars, and the order pages support something like 14 different languages.

“On most sites, when you see a converted price, instead of $60, you see $59.23 or something. So we let our publishers determine what the price will be in each currency as a nice round number.

“And there are no currency exchange fees like those charged by banks; no one wants that extra $3 to end up on their credit card bill.”

FastSpring will also match the branding and look and feel of your original site to avoid turning off shoppers.

“If you don’t do that, people are more likely to abandon the shopping cart,” says Engel.

Boost profits with e-commerce tip #7: To optimize results, test and re-test your order pages

We’ve heard this advice before. But with all of Engel’s experience on so many sites, aren’t there some rules of thumb for what works best?

“I really wish there were,” chuckles Engel. “Then I could write a book and make a lot of money.”

But like most things, it all depends.

“It really depends on the type of product and the type of customer, whether they’re corporate, or consumers, or my parents’ generation. It’s foolish to assume that you know all this without testing.”

He suggests that software firms should run through between 25 and 75 orders for each variable being tested.

With FastSpring, you can re-test the whole order flow, the number of pages, the buttons, the cross-sells, anything.

“You can try a single-page order flow or three pages; you can try the credit card on the first page or on the third page. And all that stuff should be re-tested at least once a year,” he says.

“There is always something out there that you haven’t tried, some little tweak that makes a difference.”

We could go with the other features of FastSpring:

• Collecting sales taxes and VAT
• Eliminating chargebacks, with a rate below 0.5 percent
• Minimizing fraud, with a 12-point self-correcting algorithm
• Multiple merchant accounts, so you’re never frozen out due to a sudden spike in ordering activity or fraud
• A blog with lots of marketing tips and ideas.

So what does all this cost an ISV?

FastSpring charges either 5.9 percent plus 95 cents per transaction, or a flat 8.9 percent, with a minimum of 75 cents per transaction. You take your pick.

“Most companies think they’re paying 2 percent because that’s what gets quoted,” says Engel. “But they’re really paying between 3 and 4 percent. If they have transactions in AMEX or Paypal, or overseas, or anything other than the standard transactions, all of those cost significantly more.”

You can be up and running in as little as one day, with no setup or cancellation fees, and a lot of advice on tweaks you could make to increase sales.

We think that’s reasonable, and moving to a service like FastSpring makes a lot of sense.

About the author: Gordon Graham is an award-winning journalist with 30 years in the software industry. And as That White Paper Guy, he helps B2B software firms tell their stories with crisp, compelling white papers.

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Some highlights from the forum post:

“I just got to use this thread to say how happy I am with FastSpring…Switch to them…Right now…After all of these months now I can’t tell you how good they have been - at helping with custom settings, getting my order template changed when I need it  - blocking fraud (They are really good at this..very few false positives). They always answer your questions within 24 hours…but usually within moments. They will work for every penny you send to them.”

“FastSpring is the best payment processor I’ve ever tried.”

“btw… now that’s a great comment on the FastSpring service, Ken was able to clear this up for me within about an hour of my initial request & that’s including me going back several times with supplemental questions.”

“Another +1 for FastSpring…. their support is astounding, both at setup & in use.”

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“Not everyone will like this idea, but with my product line, which actually cost me something because of some 3rd party royalties, I sell the software products with a 30 day money back guarantee.  BUT, when I get a refund request, I first ask if there was any particular problem or something we can help with.  Then I tell them if they would like to proceed with a refund, visit our refund page.

That page describes that while we are happy to offer a 30 day guarantee and offer refunds, because of some licensing issues and the fact that some buyers in the past have purchased, downloaded, then asked for refund just to get the products free, we require that they print, sign, and mail the attached form to receive the refund.

What I’ve found in about 5 years of doing this is:

1) The ones who were just trying to steal get really upset about the whole process, yell, scream, etc.  I’ve pretty much decided the ones in this group were never going to be profitable for me, and even if somehow they were to eventually become customers, they would be the high-maintenance types that would cost us more than we’d make.  About 50% of these will actually send the form and eventually get a refund.

2) About 50% of the normal people who wanted a refund will end up engaging me more about their problems before jumping to the refund form, and with many of those I can help them work through the issue that made them want the refund to start with.

3) About 5% of the refund requesters will get angry and impatient and initiate a chargeback.  This is an acceptable level of that given that I’ve cut out about half the returns with the form.”

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Customers will no longer need to check their email program; they will remain on your site after purchasing, potentially exploring an additional purchase. Eliminate emails from upset or angry customers who need to start using your product instantly but who can’t afford to wait for a few minutes as they wonder whether they will in fact receive an email. No more customers who complain they never received an email from you for one reason or another and are quite dissatisfied because they haven’t been able to use the product they paid for. You will reap the benefits of the improved level of customer satisfaction. In addition, you can customize the content your customers will see on the order confirmation page in case you want to communicate something specific after they complete their initial purchase.

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While customers redeem coupons nearly 100% of the time, typically less than 40% of rebates get redeemed, so the difference gets added to your profit instead.  Run these numbers on your own coupon promotions and you’ll quickly see how much you can potentially increase your profit in short order by replacing some coupon promotions with mail-in rebate promotions.  Through the service’s global mail-in locations and payment options, customers mail a form in to an in-country address and get paid in the default currency for that country.  For example, a customer in Germany would be provided with an address in Germany to mail their rebate to and would subsequently be paid via an EFT in Euros.

While some rebate companies try to disqualify consumers, hold consumers’ money for a long time for no other reason than the float, or send the consumer something other than what you promise them, we take the exact opposite approach and make the experience fast and easy for the consumer so that they are kept fully satisfied at all times.  Since the rebate form is simple and the payment is done quickly and efficiently, it’s a positive experience for both you and your customer.

You also have the option to offer a complementary product (already at a special discounted price) to which the consumer can apply their rebate, instead of having to mail in the rebate and wait for weeks to get reimbursed.  This will further decrease the number of actual rebates fulfilled, constituting additional savings for you (and more new customers who will potentially purchase upgrades).

You can view a diagram that illustrates the flow here:
http://www.fastspring.com/features_rebate.php

I hope you enjoy the financial benefits of this innovative new feature we’re introducing as a new merchandising opportunity for FastSpring vendors.  If you’d like to learn more about setting this up, please contact your FastSpring Dedicated Account Manager.

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Click the image to see a sample report

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CPC Search is offering a free, no-strings attached Google AdWords Account Audit to any FastSpring vendor who would like to obtain free expert feedback on their AdWords campaigns including how to increase their results. In addition, CPC Search will waive the regular $1k minimum PPC management fee for those FastSpring vendors who work with CPC Search to manage their search campaigns. Vendors can contact Terry directly at terry at cpcsearch.com

KEYWORD DEVELOPMENT

I think people sometimes try to over-think keywords for their PPC campaigns. The truth is that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a great starting point for keyword (kw) discovery. In my view, there is really no need to use outside third-party keyword tools. Since a majority of searchers use Google and its partner network, the idea is to ‘go to the source’ for kw lists based on actual user search queries. Simply input a few initial kw’s and Google will spit out additional relevant kw ideas. Access the Google Keyword Tool at the top of the kw list in any ad group.

Use Google’s Search Query report to further expand and refine your kw lists. This report has been much improved since April 2009, and now displays more granular data. Users of the new AdWords web interface will have noticed that Google now shows search queries within the management interface. For better efficiency, however, I still recommend pulling the data all at once from the reports section. Focus on search queries that have received conversions, rather than just impressions or clicks. Filter for queries with match type showing as ‘broad’ or ‘phrase’ and then add these as keywords into appropriate ad groups. Bid according to search query CPA (cost per acquisition) and average CPCs (cost-per-click).

Additionally, mine Google Analytics, Omniture, or other web analytics reporting systems for keyword ideas. Just as with using Search Query reports, focus on (organic) kw’s that have resulted not only in clicks, but in conversions, goals, and measurable value. In Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then Keywords, then click on non-paid, and lastly select the Goal Conversion tab.

Lastly, use all 3 kw match types: broad, phrase, and exact. Using all 3 match types gives you, as the advertiser, greater visibility and control into campaigns. Add phrase and exact match versions for kw’s that show a high volume of impressions, clicks, cost or conversions – or for kw’s that are core to the products that you sell.

PPC AD CREATION & TESTING

Test Keyword Insertion (KWI) in your text ads. KWI automatically inserts the user’s search query into the text of the ad. KWI can be used in headlines or in lines 1-2. Test KWI cautiously, and only in ad groups that exclude high-volume, broad match keywords. Example headline: {KeyWord:MP3 Software}.

An often-overlooked detail is to set ad-serving to rotate. Ads must be rotated evenly in order to be tested properly against each other. AdWords defaults to serve higher-CTR ads more often than lower-CTR ads; this makes more money for Google at the expense of the advertiser. This option is found in Campaign Settings.

Remember ad text basics: highlight the advertiser value proposition; incorporate relevant ad group kw’s within ad text; use a compelling offer (e.g. Free 30-day Trial) and include a call-to-action or implied call-to-action (e.g. Learn how to improve your PPC campaigns – Free white paper).

Remember - the higher the average CTR, the higher the quality score, and this will translate into lower CPC’s and potentially lower CPA’s.

PPC CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE

A simple PPC account structure benefits day-to-day navigation, management and bid optimization. Consider separate campaigns for breaking out geo-targets, differentiating between different target metrics, or for reporting purposes. Always run Content campaigns separately. This is acknowledged best practices, since Content is an altogether different medium vs. Search.

ADWORDS EDITOR

Download and use AdWords Editor (AE) for: bid optimization; ad creation and optimization; creating new campaigns; adding kw’s in bulk to multiple campaigns and ad groups; modifying destination URLs for conversion tracking, and much more. Download AdWords Editor.

AdWords Editor will make account management and optimization much more efficient, saving you time and therefore money.

GENERAL APPROACH FOR EFFECTIVE PPC MANAGEMENT

Start simple and small, and go where the resulting data takes you. PPC is an iterative activity. The data determines next steps. If you started with one campaign composed of five ad groups, expand the ad groups that show click and conversion activity and leave the others for later. Over time, advance to complex and large. Expand kw’s, ad groups and campaigns based on what has worked. In terms of time and effort, feed the winners and starve the losers. This approach will help you best focus your time and make your company more money!

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