Wow! I’m feeling so many things right now. Tired, stressed, elated, challenged, technically handicapped, excited, and victorious. How’s that for a week!?
When Tiffany put a post on her site about my Niche Research PLR Pack, I was wondering what sort of response I’d get from people. Especially since they follow Tiffany! After all, how the heck am “I” supposed to live up to doing stuff as well as she does? Relax Deb. There’s no way you’re going to. You’re new. You’ve got a lot more learning to do…so get out there and trip if you have to.
So it started out great. The first few comments were encouraging. They like it Mikey! Awesome!
Then I got some feedback about some issues that I’d thought about when putting the pack together. An email I got from someone with the concern that the .com/.net/.org choices would eventually not be valid so maybe I’ll have to figure out how to keep the packs updated on occasion. That’s true. My original thoughts were that if I could find at least 20 possible domain name options, plus add some suggestions about possible ending add-ons if the exact match wasn’t available anymore, that it would be good.
Why 20? Because I’m figuring that people buying PLR to build a website are like people doing anything else and the 80/20 rule will apply. If I sell 100 packs, chances are that only 20 people who buy it are ever going to do anything with it. If you have stats that say different I’d love to see them and may have to retract that statement. 🙂
Other feedback let me know that the keywords were going to be tough to rank for so there should be some sort of explanation for newer folks about the data they’re looking at. That’s true as well. But the initial pack used “eating healthy” as the keyword because I wanted it to be very broad. The fact that I’m going to keep it on the site as a free example for anyone to download and use if they want means it’s going to be “exposed” more than my typical pack is going to be. So for future packs, I’d planned to narrow it down a bit more for a list of keywords that will be more easily ranked.
Maybe I should have done that for the example to begin with?
Then there was the glitch that sucked. Someone pointed out that I used Broad matched keywords which caused the search numbers to be way over-inflated. OMGosh! What the hell did I do? I NEVER use Broad match on my searches!
Best guess? There was some research I was doing shortly before I finished the pack and my computer was bogging down. I rebooted so I had to go back to my raw data and grab some of it again. Somewhere I grabbed the wrong column from my file and used the Broad instead of Exact. Ok, not a problem Deb. I re-edited the file, grabbed the right column, re-did the link, and posted the info back up that the new file was now available. Then I emailed everyone who had signed up to my list and downloaded the first one to let them know to download an updated version.
Ok. Crisis averted. Moving on…
I got a few more comments about how they liked it, some private emails with some kudos as well as some suggestions, likes, dislikes, etc. Cool. All great feedback!
So I’ve been getting everything ready to roll out so I can have a complete product ready to go. And it sounds so simple to do right?
Wrong!
Let’s see. Once my packs are done, I’m gonna want to run a WSO probably right? So the goal is 3-5 packs. Fine. But then what?
Well, I’ll want the products on my site so they’re available to people who want them. Oh. But you mean you want to be able to allow people to purchase them right? Right. Well then where’s your shopping cart?
Hmmmm. Bought DLGuard a year and a half ago when I started on this journey and Tiffany let me know about Sam and his product. Cool. Sam installed it (twice actually) so it’s “out there”. Even cooler.
But how do I use it? No FREAKIN’ clue! Hmmmm….. where’s that email I got that told me where to find the instructions? Got it!
Oh dear Lord help me please. What the heck does this mean!? They want me to connect what database with whose files?
Three days later and I still don’t have a functional shopping cart. Hell, I don’t even have a link to a page that will DISPLAY a shopping cart!
So let’s see. A quick note to Tiff…realizing she’s less technical than me but that she’s also been using DLGuard for a while so maybe she can at least point me down a path. Yes. A little information is better than where I started. Thanks Tiffany… just one more reason I love you!
Eight hours later. Still no luck and getting more and more frustrated. Looked online to see where I can find technical geeks who can do this for me. Hmmm…if I want to wait a week or let’s see…THREE! Nope. So it was off to the DLGuard forums. Posted messages in two different places on the forum and then went for a short walk to take a break. Maybe someone will respond who knows what to do. Another 2 hours and still no cart.
At this point, I’m ready to load my gun and shoot either my computer or myself…I hadn’t decided which one was going to make the headache stop faster. 🙂
So who else do I know that uses DLGuard as their cart? Peggy! Would she know the technical stuff? I’m thinking yes since she put together a manual for the rest of us non-technical people to hook up JRox to DLGuard. She’ll know what to do! But I know she’s busy with family. Do I send a note? Hmmm… well, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? She doesn’t have time to answer and I’m no worse off (and I’ll be busy typing so I won’t have time to load my weapon…cool).
When I got the response from Peg, I couldn’t help but laugh. She said she’s “been on that throne of frustration more times than I can tell you”. So I read thru her notes… Then I read them again… And then I read them again. Realized that at this point I was just so dang frustrated that any how to stuff I had could have just as well been written in Chinese!
Then my son walked in. He thought I’d had a fight with my honey or something because of the look on my face. Told him no, it was just the computer as usual. By this time I was tearing up. So he sat down and had me explain what I was trying (and failing) to do. We spent about 2 hours working thru where to find stuff, how the programming worked, where to follow the code around and which files were the ones to be editing. He’s much more technical than I am but even he doesn’t deal with PHP…don’t ask!
So it was back to the forum to see if I’d gotten an answer. OMGosh. I got one…from Sam! Gave me some options… I chose Option B. Within the hour, I had a newer beta version of the cart installed, fully viewable and fully functioning on my site!! That man is a Prince and definitely my hero!
You know, Ruth just added a new post today called “A Guide To Choosing An Online Cart” (how timely!). I got the link to it, read it & posted a comment on it during my frustrated hours. It covers many of the different shopping carts available on the market and what their differences are. She’s used several of them herself so it offers a wonderfully honest perspective. At the time I was getting frustrated, I seriously considered throwing DLGuard out the window and trying something else. Never again!
From a seller side, this is the only cart I’ve set up so at this point, I certainly can’t tell you whether any of the others would be more, less or just as frustrating to set up as DLGuard.
From a buyer side, I’ve used several. Some I find much friendlier than others in how they let you shop. Some I found to be functional but they look less professional. But in regards customer service, I just don’t think you’ll find one ANYWHERE that has the level of support that Sam provides with DLGuard. He’s gone above and beyond every time I’ve needed something. He answers people’s questions daily in the forum for his product. And I’m not the first one that’s been frustrated, confused and then offered Option B! He doesn’t have to set this up for us, but he does it anyway.
So, with that finally handled, it’s time to go pretty the thing up, add the test product, and then do the testing… oh yay. 🙂  Then I can go add more information to my Niche Research PLR Pack as per some of the suggestions I got, create a few more, and I’ll be ready to roll.
It sounds SO much easier on paper….