Discount Deals Vendor Information
Why Promote Through Us?
Bits Du Jour won the Best Independent Software Vendor Service Award at the 2010 Software Industry Conference
We offer an online marketplace to promote your Windows software, service or eBook at a
discount, usually for one day only.
Our coupon discounts couldn't be easier to set up. The sale is yours. This store is a portal that directs sales to your cart. We
act as a promotional affiliate, and take a percentage of each sale as a commission. We are not
a distributor or reseller. Sales take place through your regular sales mechanism.
Benefits to You
- You'll get exposure. Our audience isn't your standard one.
- People go to your website because they're looking for products like yours. We get a different audience.
- People who are curious. People looking for a good bargain on something they can get immediately.
Or maybe just trying to put off their work for a minute. And not only do you pay nothing for the exposure, you actually make money from
all sales we generate on that day.
-
In addition, your product listing, with links to your Free Trial and your website, remains in our
site generating you extra traffic for years to come.
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We also give you the ability to add your RSS news feed to your vendor page.
This gives you great exposure going forward, and it's free to all our vendors!
- Our promotions have a 7:1 download to purchase ratio. Compare that to your current ratio and
you'll see, we're doing something right!
- You'll get sales you otherwise wouldn't. Again,
the people who come to your site are looking for some specific kind of software,
and may be comparing several options. The people who come to this site are looking for a good
deal, or just seeing if there's something interesting available.
- You'll get any additional product sales that go with your product sale, as well as later upgrades, or
future add-ons. You'll get new purchasers to add to your mailing and promotion lists.
- From an SIC 2006 presentation: people who have already bought one of your products are
seven times more likely to buy another one than someone who has never bought anything from you. If you send emails
out to your mailing list, current customers are thirty times more likely to respond to the promotion. You can easily
turn sales you make into more sales.
- No matter how good the discount, most users won't buy anything without trying it. And not everyone will
get back to our site in time to buy the product at the discount, so you may see later sales at full-price from your own site.
- It's no risk, and very little work for you. We don't charge any setup fees
and only get paid as a percentage of your sales.
- Our coupon discounts system mean that we're not a reseller,
where you'd have to set up your products for us to sell, and add a new method of handling
sales and tracking payments. We use your existing processes, and your own store.
All we do is refer sales to you. All you need to do is set up
a special SKU or coupon for us for the day.
Your own affiliate agreement is enough. Or, if you don't have one and aren't a member of one of the other affiliate programs, you can sign ours.
Articles
How the Process Works
- You fill out our Signup Form.
We need your contact information, and the names of the product you'd like us to feature.
You can always add more products later (or tell us not to feature one you've signed up for,
there's no commitment until we actually schedule the feature).
- You offer a discount of a minimum of 30% off your product's regular
single unit price. We strongly recommend more, most of our top sellers offer over 50%, but only
require 30%. There's no maximum discount, and we've run many greater than 90%. The
regular price must be the real amount (street price) the
product is sold for on your website and any distributor sites.
- We'll review your software and make sure that it's a high quality application that's going
to appeal to our users. We can't feature everything, but we try and be fair.
- You make the discount available through a special (unique)
SKU or special (unique) promotional coupon, and provide us any links we need if we can't
generate them ourselves using the affiliate program's control panel.
- When we're ready to schedule your feature, we'll email you with a suggested date for
the promotion and a draft of our feature page for you to approve. We also require that you don't run any other promotions within 2 weeks of ours on any other sites, including your own.
Once you OK it and send us the discount coupon information, we're all set.
- Three days before your product is featured,
it will be previewed on our
All Discount Codes page
(without the purchase links being active).
We also send out a newsletter to our subscribers and publish the promotion in our RSS feeds.
- You (or your affiliate program vendor) pay us an affiliate commission
on all sales using the special discount coupon or SKU or affiliate link.
Our commission is 50% of the sale price (that is, of the discounted price)
of any sales we originate. This pays for our work, we never ask for a setup fee.
- After the feature runs, if you're not a member of an established affiliate program,
you'll tell us how many units were sold from the
promotion, and send us payment for the appropriate amount. If you are, payment is
handled by the affiliate program, we never ask for setup fees.
Sign Up Now!
FAQs for Content Vendors
Product Content
Features
Coupons: Purchasing, Payments and Agreement
Sales and Results
Promoting
Answers
Product Content
Can I ship products?
Yes, as long as you offer them available for download,
shipping can be an option as well. You can also offer 'backup installation CDs'
or other options.
What can't I sell?
We won't feature any "adult content" or
file sharing software, or software that could be used for illegal or "semi-legal" purposes.
Your product can contain no viruses, spyware, trojans or malware of any kind,
and cannot violate anyone else's copyright or other intellectual property. Also, you have
a way for purchasers to opt-out of your mailing list, and
must have a published Privacy Policy that states that purchaser's information will not be
sold, rented, given away or mistreated. We reserve the right not to feature any products submitted to us.
What about guarantees?
All the software that you sell with us must come with the full
guarantees that you usually offer. It's standard in the industry to offer 30 days money back.
We don't guarantee on your behalf, although we do try and resolve any problems our
purchasers have with you.
Features
How many times are our products featured?
We do re-run products after several months have elapsed, especially those that do well.
Are the discounts announced in advance?
We've experimented with this,
and found that products were selling noticeably better if people have time to look at them.
We preview everything three days in
advance for signed up users on our
All Discount Codes
page.
What happens after the discount ends?
After the deal closes then we don't accept any more sales. We often get
emails from customers who missed the boat which we forward on to you.
Can we do a BOGO (Buy One Get One) rather than a discount?
Currently we are not supporting this as an option, however we do accept reduced price bundles.
What requirements are there?
First and foremost you have to have a great piece of software to get listed.
We hand review everything and some products unfortunately won't make the cut. We also
choose products that our users are going to buy. You must offer a good discount, abide by our signup agreement,
and respect your purchasers' email addresses. We also require that you don't run any other promotions
within 2 weeks of ours on any other sites, including your own.
Purchasing, Payments and Agreement
What if we don't have any affiliate tracking system in place?
You have to have some way to track the sales, even if it's just
a special product SKU at the discounted price, or a discount coupon that's only
listed on our site. While we'd rather be able to log in to an affiliate system
and see the sales, we're willing to trust you to report the sales through our site
accurately and pay us for them.
How do you work with other affiliate programs?
If you're a member of a third-party program, all you need to do is to
set up the discounted product or discount coupon you want to feature at
the discount we agree on, with only our affiliate id authorized to sell or use it. We will use
the affiliate program's reporting and payment systems.
If you have your own affiliate program, we'll sign up for it, and use the tracking
and payment systems you have in place already.
What affiliate programs can I use?
All the major ones, and many smaller ones, including:
Avangate, RegNow, Digital River OneNetwork, eSellerate, FastSpring, Plimus, Share*It/element5, Commission Junction,
Kagi, BMT Micro, cleverbridge, Northstar Solutions and several more. If yours isn't listed just fill it in on
the form's comment area. If we're not members already, we're happy to join.
Will you act as a reseller of my software, rather than an affiliate?
For coupon deals we only sell software as an affiliate.
However, you may
let
us know if you're interested in any other partnership ideas.
Sales and Results
Does this work? What kind of sales should I expect?
We don't want to set unrealistic expectations. It works very well for some offers, but not for them all.
The products that sell very well have big discounts, or are also promoted by the vendor to their existing users.
It's important to keep in mind that you'll be adding users, who you can sell upgrades and add-ons to, as well as making the original sale.
And you'll be increasing your market share and getting exposure, a great way to make a splash with a new product launch or version.
How can I improve my chances of good sales?
Offer a big discount, and help us promote your feature, in your mailing list, on your website,
or in any blogs or boards you spend time on. Read up on our articles for some great additional tips.
What kind of traffic do you get?
It's growing pretty quickly.
Send us an email and we'll send you the latest numbers.
Will you provide traffic details on my promotion?
Yes, you'll get access to details on how many visitors came to your website and downloaded your software or started the checkout process.
Promoting
Can we offer promos in the newsletter even if we've never had a featured product on your site?
Possibly.
Let us know what you are thinking about and we'll see if it works.
Will you exchange promotions with us?
We have to take things on a case-by-case basis.
Just
let us know what you have in mind.
Can I do a Giveaway with you to raise publicity for my product?
Yes! We're beginning to experiment with heavily promoted giveaways and prize sweepstakes which go out to a broad audience, giving you
a great way to cast a wide net to potential new customers.
Please
get in touch with an impressive software prize package, and leave the promoting to us!
Sign Up Now!
Have questions we haven't answered? Contact Us!
