Plimus Starter Guide for Sellers

Overview

Welcome to Plimus!
The following step-by-step lessons will get you started with driving your e-Business through the Plimus e-Commerce platform.
You will need to perform each of the steps below. It only takes a few minutes and missing any of the steps could make your experience less than perfect. So, follow the steps and start driving your e‐Business forward.
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Lesson 1:
a. How to set up a Product and a Contract
b. How to set up the “BuyNow” Settings
Lesson 2:
a. Different ways to deliver your product
b. Modifying the confirmation email
c. Testing and adding the “BuyNow” URLs to your website

We have some unique terminology in Plimus:
Product: The general product that you will be selling - e.g. 'My Office Organizer.'
Contract: The specific product that Customers actually buy - e.g. 'Home and Student Edition' of My Office Organizer. Customers always buy contracts which include the price, subscription period and other conditions relating to the item sold.

Note: In the Plimus control panel you will see a blue information icon alongside many fields. We recommend you to mouse over it and read what is written there. It can save you some time and ease your learning curve.

We thank you for joining us, The Plimus Web Team

LESSON 1: How to set up a Product and a Contract. BuyNow Settings

Setting up a Product consists of five steps set out below. From the home page of the control panel click on new Product.

1. Setting up a Product

This is the Product wizard page. Simply fill the fields as we did. The website we will use on this guide is www.sharewaredotcom.com
Press Submit to save your settings.

2. Your First Product

You have created a basic contract with a default name “Full Version.” In order to complete the setup, you will need to modify this Contract. Click on Full Version to access the Contract Setup page. Here you add all the relevant data related to your Contract.

3. Setting up a Contract - Name, BuyNow Link, Category, Price

The long Contract set up page can be divided into 3 main parts. Let's review the first part.

(1) The first screenshot shows the Contract name - here we'll rename the contract Home Version instead of the default Full Version.
(2) Note how the Plimus system automatically creates a secure BuyNow order page URL for this contract. Underneath the URL is a handy link to create a formatted BuyNow button link to this page. You can already click the Test button to quickly view this.
(3) These drop-down menus enable you to create main and sub-categories for your products to be indexed by in the Plimus Marketplace so that they can be found easily by potential affiliate marketers.
(4) Set your price for this item in the Pricing section. The default pricing is in US Dollars. Ignore the other options for now.
Enter a One Time charge of $39. Keep in mind that you can also set up free trial periods and subscription-type offers using other selections in the Plan Type drop-down menu.

4. Setting up a Contract - Marketing, Notifications

(1) A huge advantage of selling through Plimus is the access it gives you to sell through affiliates and other fellow product vendors. We advise users to select 'Available to Partners' to make this item available to such partners, and run with the other default options so that you take advantage of having your product added to the Plimus Marketplace and be included in other marketing channels such as the Plimus Store.
(2) As you are most likely to be selling a product that is delivered electronically you will normally accept this default option. Most Sellers prefer to have VAT paid by their customers when required so leave the Include VAT in Price option deselected.
(3) The Notifications section is for advanced users and is covered by separate tutorials. These settings allow information concerning sales to be sent automatically to a Seller's backend system or database.

5. Setting Up a Contract - Save Settings

Leave the rest of the page with the selected defaults.
(1) If you are providing a product that needs to be downloaded you would set it up using the additional link provided at the bottom of the page. We explore this option in the second lesson.
(2) Now press Submit to save your settings.

Congratulations! You have set up your first product and contract! Have more contracts? You can easily use the "duplicate" button at the top of the page to create them.

7. Summary

When a customer places an order using the BuyNow order page that has been created, the following events will take place:
You will receive a Sales notification email with the customer's details and order information indicating we have processed an order for the contract.
The customer will receive a receipt email from Plimus plus a generic email (which you will probably want to customize as you will see in the next lesson).

You are now ready to continue onto Lesson 2.

LESSON 2: Different ways to Deliver your Product

If you are delivering a service or plan on delivering an electronic product on your own, you may proceed to the next step now (Modifying the confirmation email), otherwise you can use Plimus to help you deliver the product using one or more of the following options:
Delivering the downloadable product to the customer using Plimus:
If you want Plimus to host the full version of your software, game or digital product and deliver a unique URL to each of your customers for them to download the item, you will need to upload the file to our system, and modify the confirmation email to include the relevant file link (see: Modifying the confirmation email).
In order to protect your product, access to the unique download link will normally be available to the customer for 24 hours from the purchase time or a maximum of 3 download attempts without the need for the customer to contact us to allow additional download attempts.

Uploading the full version of your product to the Plimus system:
Scroll down to the bottom of the Contract Settings page and 'click here' at the bottom of the page (same screen as shown in step 6 in the previous lesson).

1. Setting up Customer Download file

This resulting screen gives you a choice of the following:
a) Upload a file from your computer
b) Upload a file from the Web (best choice for very large files)
c) Select a file that has already been added to the Plimus system

Just follow the instructions for the option you wish to use. All submitted files are automatically screened by McAfee.

Note: If there is no downloadable product to be provided just go straight on to the Step 4 'Modifying the confirmation email'.

2. Option to offer a Backup CD Rom

Once the file has been successfully uploaded or selected you will receive a confirmation.
For convenience you may also offer a version of the file as a Backup CD Rom. This is a useful service to offer your customers with a fixed cost charged by Plimus of $7.95 + $1.95 for burning, media, package and delivery. You can add an extra surcharge to the basic charge and you can also brand the CD Rom with your own design.
If you are not interested in exploring this option at the present time or are providing a service (versus as product) then we recommend that you move on to Step 4 'Modifying the confirmation email'.

3. Selecting files for Backup CD Rom

You also have the option to include a different product download file to the CD Rom adding, for example, a version that includes bonus software and trials for additional products. Large files can be provided in Zip format.

One you have completed the Product Download and Backup CD process you are ready to modify the confirmation email.

4. Modifying the Confirmation Email

Open the Contract set up page of the relevant contract then click on the top-of-page 'Order Email' navigation link and take a moment to read the information on the resulting page.

If you do not wish to take advantage of Plimus delivering the registration information and product download file to your customer, but prefer to deliver the product to the customer directly or send an email to the customer on your own right after you receive a notification from Plimus of a successful order, then select the “No email should be sent when this contract is purchased” from the "Select template" Dropdown, and press the "Submit" button before skipping the rest of this section.

If you decide to use the Plimus platform (we strongly recommended you do), please follow the next set of instructions.

5. Modifying the Confirmation Email

Open the Order Email link and select 'New' from the Select Template dropdown. A draft email with some default text will appear.
You can amend this text and drag in various tags that will automatically populate the email with relevant links such as the quantity of items orders, your email address and name (Developer tags). You can also add additional tags as needed and freely edit and add new text relating to such tags. Here a couple of examples are shown. Press the Submit button to save your work.

Including the download link: If you have previously uploaded your product, you will need to add the <PRODUCT_DOWNLOAD_URL> tag to the Email body textbox in order for the unique download link to be delivered to the customer in this email. We strongly recommend placing the tag on its own line as some email clients may wrap lines in an email that are too long which may cause the URL to be displayed on two lines rendering it unclickable.
Including the registration information: If you have previously set up a key to be generated using Plimus, you will need to add the <LICENSE_KEYS> tag to the "Email body:"textbox in order for the generated key to be delivered to the customer in this email.
Please delete the words "Licensing information will be sent to you within 48 hours" from the Email body textbox if you do not intend on delivering registration information on your own to the customer within such period.

6. Setting up your Order page (BuyNow page)

From the main page of the control panel click on the name of the product, next on the name of the contract, then click on the BuyNow Template navigation link at the top left of the page.
On this page you will be able to design and modify the order page (generally referred to as the BuyNow page on Plimus).
Click the Customize Style & Settings link as shown above.

7. Design and Test Order page (BuyNow page)

This page is fully customizable but to keep things simple we suggest you initially run with the Modern Template and do not make any changes.
You can view and test the Buynow page pressing the Test BuyNow Flow link.

8. Resulting BuyNow Page

This opens a test version of the BuyNow page with fake customer and credit card credentials.-- Here are a few remarks about the default version:
(1) To boost conversion the BuyNow page lets your customers select from a choice of language and currencies.
(2) The page clearly indicates what they are purchasing and for how much.
(3) The Customer Information section includes the necessary fields for an order to be completed from a selection of payment methods.
(4) The page also includes payment seals to increase buyer comfort and at the bottom of the page are links to the Plimus Privacy Policy to maximize buyer confidence.

Note: Advanced users can customize the page to match their web site design and branding. Plimus Seller Support provides free advice on customization.

9. Setting up the BuyNow Link Manually

Placing the link on your site
The link to the BuyNow page for your contract appears on the Contract set up page as shown.
(1) You can use this link and add it manually to your promotional pages and to BuyNow order buttons as follows:
If you wish to place a link on your site named "Order Now" you will simply need to add the following code to the html page on your site:
<a href="Order'>https://www.plimus.com/jsp/BuyNow.jsp?contractId=xxxxxxx">Order <https://www.plimus.com/jsp/BuyNow.jsp?contractId=xxxxxxx"> Now</a>
The xxxx's should be replaced by your relevant contract id number (in the illustration 226983).

(2) Alternatively you can create an attractive BuyNow button plus link using the automatic BuyNow Link & Button Generator as explained in the next screenshot by clicking on the link "BuyNow Link & Button Generator."

10. Using the BuyNow Link & Button Generator

The Generator page can also be accessed from the link contained in the More drop-down menu.

(1) To create a simple button ignore the Parameter options and press the Generate BuyNow Link button.
(2) This opens up the lower part of the screen which contains the basic link html.
Underneath you will see a preview of the BuyNow button that has been generated. You can use the edit Style button to access different colors and designs.
Once you have the button you need to just cut and paste the relevant Customized Button Code into your web page to display the button which will automatically link to the BuyNow page.

Congratulations! Now you can start selling using Plimus’s platform. If you have further questions, feel free to send us a support ticket using the “Support form” in the control panel, or you can click here to send us an email giving details of your Plimus ID number.

We thank you again for using Plimus,

The Plimus Web Team