Support Center/Artist Knowledge Base/Selling

Creating An Offer

Topspin Artist Support
posted this on December 06, 2011 02:45 pm

Overview

A Topspin "Offer" is what you use to sell content to your fans. You can offer any product or combination of products in your account at any price you'd like. When a fan clicks on the Offer purchase button, they will be presented with the Topspin Purchase Flow, or "checkout" process. Topspin handles all necessary backend steps to accept and process the fan’s payment information. Fans will receive a receipt immediately upon purchase detailing their purchase.

Setup

Placing a purchase button on a website is very simple — all you have to do is paste the embed code generated by the Topspin application on to the web pages you control.

Generating an embed code in the application

In your Topspin account, click on the “Sell” tab, then click on “New Offer”.

Campaign Settings

  • Internal Name: This is an internal reference name for your offer that is used for reporting and is never surfaced to fans.
  • Fan Facing Name: This is the name you will use to track this widget in your offer history. Be as descriptive as you need to be for it to make sense. This is seen by fans when they share, embed or purchase.
  • Button Text: Button text refers to the text physically inside the button to get people to click, e.g. “Get it Now”, etc. (You may also change this text by altering the embed code the application generates).
  • Description: The product description is how the album will be titled in the purchase widget that gets triggered and the fan’s email receipt.
  • Theme: The purchase button widget background color can be either white or black. For customizable options, please see the CSS Article.
  • Highlight Color: Specifies the highlight color of the widget. Change this color in addition to the Theme to properly match up the widget UI with your webpage.
    • Note: that this field is editable after publishing your widget, but the changes would ONLY apply to public offers. Any purchase button widgets on the web that are not directly calling the public offer wouldn't inherit the changes after the spin was published. You would need to edit this on the webpage yourself.
  • Street date: The street date does not affect availability. Purchase buttons with a street date set in the future will not report to Soundscan until the first reporting period after the street date.
    • Note regarding Street Date and Pre-Order:

The most important thing to note is that just setting a Street Date does not make the item a pre-order unless the item is only a physical product with no ancillary files. The Street Date field (under Campaign Settings) is simply one piece of the pre-order puzzle; it tells your fulfiller when to start shipping pre-ordered product (it’s also used for Soundscan reporting).

    • To set up a pre-order with digital media, scroll down and check the “Pre-order Configuration” box. (See Below)

Product Choice

Now select your Product Choice - this is an item you are selling and CAN NOT be changed after publishing your offer if you are setting up a pre-order. For example, if you have an album and all the tracks are not ready, you will NOT want to enter that album here since the additions or changes will not be delivered to customers in the event of a pre-order. Instead, if you have a product needing additional tracks or changes, you will want to set up a 'Street Date Product' as described below.

Note: If setting up a street date product that has digital components that need to be delivered on the street date, you must set up the digital components as a street date product configuration in the preorder section of the offer setup. For more info on this and setting up pre-orders, see the Pre-Order Configuration secion below and also Creating a preorder.

  • Product Type: Options you can select are Package, Digital Package, Fanpack, Merchandise, Ticket, Membership, Audio Track, Video, Image, File (
    • Note: options are only displayed if you have corresponding assets created.
  • Product Name: (will appear as Song Title, Video Title, etc) - this is the image, video, song, etc that you choose to sell. Note: If you select a product type above and then nothing shows up to select in 'Product Name', this means you will need to go back to the 'products' tab and first create the product before setting up the item for sale.
  • Audio Formats: Available audio formats
    • High-Quality MP3 - 320kbps MP3, a baseline offering.
    • AAC
    • MP3 HD
    • Apple Lossless
    • FLAC
    • Apple Lossless + Flac
    • Source Audio
  • Video Formats:
    • Up to 480p Standard-Definition H.264 Mp4: Compatible with iPhones and iPods, the smallest video size. DVD-quality (assuming you uploaded a high-quality source file).
    • Original File: This is the original file uploaded in to the catalog
    • Original file + 480p

Associate Streaming Player

If you would like to display a streaming player when presenting your offer to fans, you can add one to your widget here.Note: this feature is currently disabled, but will be available in the future.

Pre-Order Configuration

See Creating a preorder for greater details on setting up a pre-order.

Note: The street date product must include a digital download if there are digital files that need to be delivered on street date. If a street date product is not selected, nothing will be sent to fans automatically. You will also receive email reminders from us to make sure you set up your street date product before the street date. This is to make sure your fans are not left high-and-dry, having paid for digital products and then receiving nothing on street date.

Topspin has a fully-featured "set it and forget it" pre-order tool, which lets you choose the delivery date for digital products, reward customers with instant downloads, and more. To launch a pre-order, follow these steps:

  • Set Street Date: (see section in Campaign Settings) Create a Buy Button Spin and set a Street Date. This will inform your fulfillment service of when to begin shipping orders for any physical products contained in this Buy Button.
  • Digital Delivery Date: If you do not set a Digital Delivery Date, all digital files in the Buy Button will be available for download immediately upon purchase.
    • By setting a Digital Delivery Date, you determine when the digital media will be delivered to pre-order customers.
    • It can be offset to local timezones.
    • If you have all the necessary digital assets in your Catalog, just set your Digital Delivery date to the same day as your Street Date, and your digital media will be released to customers at that point in time.
  • Street Date Product: Some users may want to launch a pre-order before their music is fully mixed & mastered. If you don’t have the actual products in-hand when you launch your Pre-order, use the Street Date Product as a place-holder.
    • When you set up a Pre-order Buy Button, the contents of this package can be left blank (just specify what type of file it will eventually be), and an actual file can be chosen at a later date.
    • Street Date Products can be any digital asset (audio, video, image, other file, or digital package).
    • If your Buy Button has a package, no digital contents will be delivered until an actual Street Date Product has been set, so make sure you add one eventually.
  • Instant Gratification Product: Some users may want to offer an immediate download as a reward for pre-ordering.
    • Instant Gratification Product sends the customer a download immediately upon purchase.
    • You can choose to restrict the Instant Grat product to orders placed before a certain date, or offer it for the life of the campaign.
    • For instance, if you wanted to incentivize pre-orders, you might only offer the Instant Grat product up until Street Date.
    • However, if you wanted to offer a product as a permanent incentive to order direct-to-fan, you could use the Instant Grat product as a promotional tool.

Note: On the fan side, everything is delivered by receipt updates. No more separate download links or mail merges of unique redemption codes. It uses the same security measures that our receipts have been using for years now. You don’t need to worry about a link being leaked worldwide.

Pricing Rules

Price 
This is the price you will be selling items for from this purchase button. It's also possible to set up credit card exceptions. Useful when creating a promotional campaign with a major Credit Card as a sponsor.

  • Currency:

Choose which currency you'd like to sell your Spin in. Options include

    • US Dollars (Default)
    • JPY
    • EUR
    • AUD
    • CAD
    • GBP
    • CRD (Credit)
  • Calculate Fees: Once a price has been specified, calculate fees will provide an estimate of fees incurred.
  • Restrict Quantity: Check this option to set a maximum amount of purchases per email address for this offer (e.g., restricting ticket sales or limited edition items). Fans will not be allowed to purchase more than the Max Purchase Quantity.
  • Accepted Payments: Choose credit cards that are activated for purchase. This is typically used if you have an exclusive offer with American Express, etc.
    • GBP: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB, Maestro, Solo
    • USD: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB
    • EUR: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB
    • JPY: Visa, Mastercard
    • AUD: Visa, Mastercard
    • CAD: Visa, Mastercard

Geographic Sales Restrictions

You can now restrict sales to specific countries by selecting/deselecting the country options in the country selector.

Note: Paypal as a purchase option is only available when all countries are selected.

Shipping Rules

If you have set up self-fulfillment, you will see these options:

Flat Fee Shipping

Use a flat fee per offer if you decide not to enable weight based shipping. The downside of using flat fee shipping rates is that if your fans purchase more than one item, the system sums the price of the shipping rates. The only workaround is to implement (https://docs.topspin.net/tiki-index.php?page=Weight+Based+Shipping+... based shipping)

If you enable Flat Fee Shipping, you will see this:

  • Shipping Price: If your campaign includes physical merchandise, this is where you specify shipping costs. There's also an option to create shipping exceptions. The default shipping rate applies to all countries outside the exception list and MUST always be defined.
  • Require Shipping Address: Choose this option if you are selling physical merchandise and need to collect addresses for fulfillment.

NOTE: If you are setting up 'Shipping Exceptions', and you enter a price in this box next to a region:

You must click the blue arrow pointing down to populate all the boxes in that region. Notice below, '2' is entered in the Price field for North America. You must then press the blue button to populate the fields below (US, Canada, Mexico), otherwise, when publishing the offer, your shipping exceptions will not save:

If you decide to set up Topspin Fulfillment or a Third Party Fulfiller, you will not be able to edit the Shipping Rules, as the fulfiller will be setting this up for you. You will then only see this:

Access Requirement

If you have already created a Membership Product in your 'products' tab, you can then choose a Membership Product to require a level of gated access for this purchase button. Here, the Membership Product called 'New Access' has already been created, so it can now be selected:

If you haven't set up a Membership Product, you may do so by clicking the blue 'Products' link and creating a Membership Product. Note, however, that if you select 'Products', you will be immediately directed you to the 'products' tab where you will be creating this new Membership Product, and therefore, the current Offer you are creating for sale will not be saved (unless you have already published this offer). So it would be best to publish the offer for sale that you are creating first (at the top right corner of the form, press 'publish' or 'publish changes') and then go back and press 'Products' to create the Membership:

The Cross-sell message is shown to customers who attempt to purchase the item but do not have the proper Membership. It can be used to direct the user to a page where they may purchase Membership. The Cross-sell Message is the text that will appear in the Purchase flow. The URL is the destination where the customer will be sent, and the Button Message sets the text that appears on the button (which is linked to the URL).

If you do not enable a Cross-sell, a customer who does not have the proper Membership will simply be told they do not have access to the product.

Custom Post Sale Messaging

You may also enable Cross-sell. In this section a Cross-sell Message , URL , and even a Button Message can be added to create a more personalized receipt.

Test Product

If you have included digital media, you will be given the option to test the tracks which will be received by your customers.

Preview and Publish

At the bottom of the creation form, you can see what the widget you’re creating will look like. If you’re satisfied with the appearance of the widget, click “Publish” in the upper right of the creation form:

You will be presented with a confirmation code that shows your widget, and provides you with the embed code that you will need to place this widget on the web. (Don’t worry — you don’t need to get it now. You can always go to Spin - Summary and click through to the details page for the widget to get its embed code).

Embedding Widgets

Now you can place the embed code generated by the application on one or more web pages you control:

Take the embed code for your widget from the box shown above and insert it into pages wherever you want. You can place the code as-is in most webpages you control.

You should always give your widget a quick test from start to finish to make sure that it works as expected - from the first click to downloading your media and checking your receipt to make sure things work as expected.

View Performance Data

Find your campaign under the "Embed Tracking" view at the bottom of the form:

You’ll be able to view data like number of views and sales.

Test your media bundle

After creating a purchase button offer in the Spin section, you can now download the media from that offer and view what your fans will download (and eliminate the need for so many Artist refunds. The steps for doing this are as follows: 
1. Create a new purchase button 
2. Publish your purchase button 
3. Either select the Edit button on the confirmation page or select the Purchase Button that you would like to test from the Spin summary. 
4. In the spin details, scroll to the Test Product section and click the "Download Copy of Media Bundle" button.

  • Note that the media will only be available for download after it has been processed. This may take up to 15 minutes (sometimes longer).