One Time Offer Generator

Dawn Rossi, 03-19-2008

We have been getting a flurry of requests lately from customers looking to implement a basic Sales page + One time offer, using the Software Projects shopping cart.

A one time offer is a marketing technique where customers are presented with an upsell offer, after purchasing an entry level product.

The sales copy positions the offer as a one time opportunity that will never be available again, thereby creating a stronger call to action.

This is a very powerful technique used by all info marketers.

I wanted to put together a quick guide, explaining all the steps involved in setting up a 4 page website with a one time offer.

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A One Time Offer (also called OTO) site typically includes 4 pages and follows this format:

Order Page: Main page. Includes the sales copy for your entry level product and the credit card / PayPal form.

OTO Page: Presented to customers after they successfully place an order. The one time offer page invites customers to take advantadge of a one time opportunity to purchase a secondary product (also called: upsell).

OTO Thanks: Clicking "Yes - I'd like to take advantadge of the OTO offer", charges the customer account the additional fee and redirects them to this page. The OTO Thanks page should include links to download both the entry level and upsell products.

Thanks: Clicking "No" on the OTO Page, redirects customers here. This is a standard thank you page, where customers can download the entry level product.

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There are three steps to implementing a One Time Offer site:

Step 1: Create the html pages for "Order", "OTO page", "OTO Thanks" and "Thanks"

Step 2: Define the entry level and upsell products in the Software Projects system.

Step 3: Add shopping cart code.

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Step 1: Create html pages

There's not much to say here. Your copy writer and graphic designer should be able to put together the 4 pages for you.

If you need assistance with graphic design or copy writing, we can help.

Step 2: Define products in the Software Projects system

Login to your Software Projects account and click on the "Product Manager".

Click on "Add Product" to create a new product.

The New Product page will then come up:

The important things to setup here are:

Product Name: How do you want to call this product

Display As: This is the name that will show up on customer's shopping carts. Keep this the same as Product Name.

Codename: Super important - The product codename is a one word unique string that identifies this product across the system. Use a short codename that you can remember - you're going to use this codename on step3.

Price: Set the price of the product. You can click the checkbox below the price to configure recurring charges if this is a membership program.

Base cost: Your internal cost for fulfilling this product. This is helpful for ROI reports.

* Turn off the checkbox next to "Customer can purchase more than a single copy of this product" to prevent customers from getting charged twice if they resubmit the order.

Once you're done setting up your entry level product, repeat the process to setup the upsell product.

When you're done, you should have two products under your product manager:

Now click on 'Stores' under the Setup menu and edit the name of the default store (SPI Store) to match the name of your site.

Write down the store ID as we will need that on step 3.

Step 3: Add shopping cart code

Open your favorite FTP program and connect to your server.

You should have at least 4 html pages that you created as part of step1:

Rename all files from .html to .php and download them to a local folder on your machine, so that you can easily make changes to each file.

Open the index.php (Order Page) in NotePad and add this code to the top of the file:

Now add this code directly below the previous block, replacing -

1037 with your Software Projects account ID (login to your account and click on 'Settings' to see it)

13 with the store ID (see step 2).

oto.php with the file name of your one time offer page.

// If submitted order for processing
if (Strcasecmp($HTTP_POST_VARS['action'],'checkout')==0)
{
foreach ($HTTP_POST_VARS as $a => $b)
$postfields[$a] = $b;
$postfields['a'] = 1037;
$postfields['store_id'] = 13;
$postfields['s'] = $sessid2;

$ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://softwareprojects.com/cart/do_checkout");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$postfields);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); $buf = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch);
@list($checkout_result, $ResultStr, $order_id, $name, $address) = @split("\|",$buf);

// If successful, redirect
if ($checkout_result==1)
{
require_once("oto.php");
return;
}
}

Now scroll down to the bottom of your file, where you would like to insert the credit card order form.

Copy and paste this block of code, replacing -

pillgates with your entry level product codename

1037 with your Software Projects account ID

index.php with the file name of this page (in case you're not going to call it index.php)

$params = ""; foreach ($HTTP_POST_VARS as $a => $b)
$params .= "$a=".URLEncode(stripslashes($b))."&";
foreach ($HTTP_GET_VARS as $a => $b)
$params .= "$a=".URLEncode(stripslashes($b))."&";
$ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://softwareprojects.com/cart/checkout?".
"a=1037&product_codename=pillgates&emailaddress=".URLEncode($emailaddress)."&s=$sessid2&r=".
URLEncode($ResultStr)."&$params&flag_noemail_ok=1&aff_id=".$_COOKIE['aff_id'].
"&redirect=".URLEncode("index.php"));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
echo curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Save changes.

Now open your One time offer page and add this code to the top of the file:

Scroll down to the bottom of your file, where you have the order button offering customers to take advantadge of the one time offer.

Set the button to go to oto_doit.php - a new page that we are now going to create.

Save changes.

Now open a blank NotePad and paste this code, replacing -

1037 with your Software Projects account ID

pillgates_oto with the codename of your upsell product (step 2)

OTOThanks.php with the file name of your OTO thank you page.

13 with your store ID (step 2)

// Register session
session_start(); if (!empty($s)) $sessid2=$s;
if (Strcasecmp(substr($sessid2,0,6),'sessid')!=0) { $ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://www.softwareprojects.com/cart/");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); $sessid2 = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch);
@session_register("sessid2"); @setcookie("sessid2",$sessid2,time()+3600*24*365,"/"); }

// Do one click order of resellerproduct
$postfields['a'] = 1037;
$postfields['store_id'] = 13;
$postfields['product_codename'] = "pillgates_oto";
$postfields['s'] = $sessid2;
$postfields['aff_id'] = $_COOKIE['aff_id'];
$ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,"http://softwareprojects.com/cart/do_backgroundcheckout");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$postfields);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); $buf = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch);
@list($checkout_result, $ResultStr, $order_id, $name, $address) = @split("\|",$buf);

// If successful, redirect
if ($checkout_result==1)
{
require_once("OTOthanks.php");
return;
}

// Failed
// Redirect to home page
Header("Location: order.php?ResultStr=".URLEncode($ResultStr));

Save changes.

Upload all files back to your server and you should be all set.

Congratulations on setting up your first One Time Offer!

Mike Peters, 03-28-2008

Update:

A One-time-offer wizard is now available.

Login to your account, click on Product Manager and select the One Time Offer wizard under the Wizards menu.

It will complete all of the above steps for you at the click of a button.

You can still customize everything after your files are generated.

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