Website technical question

[FrozenCanuck]

Hi folks,

I have managed to get to the final stages of a muse I previously discussed. This involves selling a product that already exists (a CD program) but is not sold online. I'm friends with the product creator and owner, hence the ability to sell online where others do not. He doesn't want to do the work, so will buy wholesale and sell for him.

His business partner recommended that he have the ability to actually see what orders I get, so that they know I'm not just taking his product, manufacturing it myself, and selling in large volume without paying him wholesale prices. ie, he wants a way to verify that my sales pass the smell-check versus what I'm actually buying from him.

I plan to use PayPal for transactions, so clients see my website, click "order", get sent to Paypal, and then to my thank you page.

Any ideas so that he could track my orders? I do not want to give him access to my PayPal account because I will use it for other muses, not just this.

FC

[Marko van Basten]

Well, I am at the final stages of creating my web site, and am on the fence about wether to use PayPal, or just pay someone on Elance to integrate a shopping cart for me.

However to answer your question, I did look thru the PayPal documentation and there was a section about letting other users have access to your account, and that you could "restrict" the access to certain areas and functions. So this is what you may need to look into.. download PayPals manual PDF (its like 100 pages long though). And look up that section... maybe it will help.

Marko

[Thor]

depends on how site is setup but if you get email notification about sales you could
a. add his address into the 'alert' or
b. set a rule in outlook say, that auto forwards any emails from orders@whatever.com to your friend.

sounds annoying IMHO, the reality is any purchaser of the product could copy the contents and re-sell..

[kamakiri]

The quickest way would be for the programmer to add in a security key. You sell the product, the consumer installs it with the 30 day 'keyless' install, then they send you the hardware footprint (unique to each PC), and the programmer sends out the key to you (or directly to the consumer).

That system might sound difficult, but I know quite a few places doing that. Specifically the POS software companies with downloadable trials. www.pospizza.net for example. They have a 90 day trial period, where you can download for free, and play with the software. If you want to purchase it, you need to send in the hardware food print, and they send you back a key. I have actually purchased 4 of those systems, and although it is a bit cumbersome at the start, the system works great.

[jdoc]

I agree with Thor - using an automatic e-mail forwarder would be the simplest solution. PayPal may be able to do this for you. If needed, I don't see why you couldn't just get a separate PayPal account for this muse verus others - as far as I know you can have multiple accounts.

[Mike Rhodes]

paypal is good

but if you're serious about an online biz, you probably want something more powerful & something that integrates with auto-responders, allows up-sells etc
try 1shoppingcart.com

another alternative could be google checkout
but not unfortunately if you're in Oz :(

mike

[Stallion]

Reply is about a week late.

Usually when you get payment from paypal, you should get an email telling you. You maybe able to set paypal up to send out a receipt to you and this other guy.

Or.

If paypal doesn't have that you may just set up an abritrary email in paypal in paypal, like paypal@yoursite.com that automatically forwards to your regular email and this other guys email.

[djugurba]

I may be out of whack here, but I don't see how it's any of the guy's business how many orders you have. If you buy wholesale, his involvement should end there. If you didn't know the guy, and wanted to buy his product wholesale, how would he know how many you sold versus what you bought from him?

If you want to give him the numbers, why not set up your fulfillment at the same place as his non-online fulfillment so he can see total units moved and save you a shipping step?

[webgal]

Well, I don't know if he should or not but I have cube cart and it lists all the sales as does paypal. Most of the shopping carts do this.