E-Commerce for Bloggers: wpSALE Plugin – More Sales with WordPress

In forums or groups with a wordpress topic, there are quite often questions about how to offer downloads that require a charge. One of several WordPress shop plugins could shurely offer this, .. but really more hypothetically. If you want to offer loose download links against payment (to the eBooks for example) or certain information (with serial numbers for products for example), those shop plugins are most of the time far much too complex and expensive and therefore really overdone and in most cases also not flexible enough. The newly developed WordPress plugin wpSALE is very quickly installed and offers parts of a post or downloads only after successful payment with PayPal.

German Version
wpSALE: Mehr verkaufen unter WordPress. Unkompliziert und effizient

Jump marks

• Mode of operation
• Examples
• Screenshots
• Features
• Download & demonstration
• Version of progress
• Installation

Mode of operation
So what does wpSALE? This software, which comprehends by the way only a few kByte, notices the marked parts of the blog operator and replaces them with an alternative, promotional text, regardless if these parts are download-links, text parts or even something different. wpSALE alters the via short code marked part (similiar to wpSLEEP) to a chargable and only after payment reachable content area.

The short code (= marked part) can therefore be placed everywhere and also multiple times within a blog text. When marking the parts, the corresponding attriubutes are also defined: That is why the data has not to be entered in a complicated way and with effort in the WordPress backend – everything is already done locally within the shortcode.

Price und the promotinal text that wpSALE adds with a link for payment, are those attributes. With the help of more attributes/parameters, which are placed before or after the payment link, even more information can be added, which offers you more freedom and playground for the arrangement of the “sold note”. An Example with possible parameters for the time being:

Examples

• [wpsale cost="0,99" id="display-serial" before="Paid content!" link="Now paying via PayPal!" after="Please pay $ %cost% for viewing the content"]Your Serial: 123456789[/wpsale]
• [wpsale cost="3.99" id="download-product" before="Pay $ %cost% to download this product!" link="Now paying via PayPal!"]Thanks for buying with Paypal! <a href="#">Click here for download the file.</a>[/wpsale]

Marking, forwarding, paid
After marking the area and saving the post, the reader can only see the alternative text and the link (before, link, after). But all of this happens intuitively: If the user decides to pay and clicks on the payment-link, wpSALE automatically forwards him to the PayPal site, where he loggs in and makes the payment. After successful transaction, PayLal forwards the user back to his previous website. The alternative text is now gone and the user can see or download the content, he paid for.

The successfull transaction at PayPal has supplied the browser with a valid cookie, that passes the verification. The advantage of this technic is obvious: The reader does not have the effort to have to register and wait for the admin review to be able to see the content that requires a charge. The course of process is just one step and thanks to PayPal quick, safe and unbureaucratic.

The possible shady side of this solution
The disadvantage is surely that the cockie can be deleted and in cause of that, the user can not access the content he paid for. This can happen by manual deletion or by the validity period of the used browser. On the other hand there is the question, if the offered content that required a charge, should be accessable for eternity, after one has paid for it. I am quite sure: No it should not. My thoughts, speculations and view about that:

• The link that forwards one to the download of the eBook, once the user has paid for it, leads to the direct downlaod: The pdf can be saved locally on his pc.
• The serial number, that is shown after successfull payment, is copied once to activate a certain program. After that, not again.

Screenshots

Settings in the Backend of the wpSALE plugin

wpSALE sales in table form

Features

• Faster, gentle code for database
• Entry of product details directly within the article text
• Protocoll of all transactions
• Uncomplicated process without registration
• Cookie validity of 1 year
• Usable from WordPress 2.5

Possible attributes in [wpsale]… [/wpsale]

• cost
  Product price in german oder english format.
• id
  Explicit ID respectively the name of the product. Ideally – as IDs do – this identification number consists only out of numbers, but this is not mandatory. PayPal shows the ID within the payment details.
• before
  Text before the payment link.
• link
  Associated text to the payment link.
• after
  Text after the payment link.

Possilbe placeholder in [wpsale]… [/wpsale]

• %cost%
  At the time being the only placeholder can be placed within the attributes before, link and/or after and will be replaced with the value from the attribute cost automatically. The advantage: The price of the product has to be set in the short code only once.

Download & demonstration
Not available!

Version of progress
Version 0.5 dated 19.11.2008:

• Encryption of data (price, productID)
• Automatic cleanup of the data table
• Improving the pay process

Version 0.4 dated 07.11.2008:

• New option: Language of the PayPal login page

Version 0.3 dated 31.10.2008:

• wpSALE sales statistic in table form
• English interface
• Restructering of code

Version 0.2 dated 21.10.2008:

• Improved compatibility with all PayPal accounts

Version 0.1 dated 20.10.2008:

• wpSALE goes online

Installation

• Download plugin
• Unzip the archive
• Upload the file wpsale.php into ../wp-content/plugins/
• Go to tab Plugins
• Activate wpSALE
• Click on Settings and define within the options

Tipps

• Check that the email address of the PayPal receiver is set under wpSALE settings, otherwise there will be no forwarding to PayPal.
• Permalinks settings should not stand on default.