Picking Add-ons and Themes for white label system for clients.
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I don't know if this is in place or not, but the Market place seems to be geared toward developers or self managed customers. It would seem to me that as a web developer, I have customers that would probably like a lot of the marketplace offers ( add-ons ) etc. But I don't feel comfortable sending them to this marketplace as without the understanding of the product and how it works, they would be very confused very easily.
Utility programs / code helpers etc. are add-ons that they wouldn't understand. But if we had a filtered selection process, ( with out prices ) then our end-user customers could pick add-ons to add to their sites ( social media, image galleries, ecom, etc. ) then we could come on this site and buy them and install them for them.
So, I think that you guys could sell a lot more product ( add-ons and themes ) if someone designed a shopping cart like program for developers to go through the add-ons and come up with a collection of appropriate add-ons that we could add to our websites. A catalog of generic add-ons with out the forums or support or pricing.
The no pricing option is important, not for marking up other peoples work but for customizing add-ons to work with different themes and receiving a fair price for the modifications. It is basically contracting out for the end-user.
I have lost customers in the past because they didn't know that we could supply them with something ( they didn't ask ) it would be nice if I could just point them to an URL and tell them we can easily add any of these options ( add-ons ).
Anyway something to consider.
Jim Robinson
Utility programs / code helpers etc. are add-ons that they wouldn't understand. But if we had a filtered selection process, ( with out prices ) then our end-user customers could pick add-ons to add to their sites ( social media, image galleries, ecom, etc. ) then we could come on this site and buy them and install them for them.
So, I think that you guys could sell a lot more product ( add-ons and themes ) if someone designed a shopping cart like program for developers to go through the add-ons and come up with a collection of appropriate add-ons that we could add to our websites. A catalog of generic add-ons with out the forums or support or pricing.
The no pricing option is important, not for marking up other peoples work but for customizing add-ons to work with different themes and receiving a fair price for the modifications. It is basically contracting out for the end-user.
I have lost customers in the past because they didn't know that we could supply them with something ( they didn't ask ) it would be nice if I could just point them to an URL and tell them we can easily add any of these options ( add-ons ).
Anyway something to consider.
Jim Robinson
I dunno, I use the lightbucket stuff on istock photo... I can see the idea
of "hey let me put a dozen things in a shopping cart together for you,
forward you the URL, and if YOU purchase this stuff I can help you better"
making sense in some ways...
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
of "hey let me put a dozen things in a shopping cart together for you,
forward you the URL, and if YOU purchase this stuff I can help you better"
making sense in some ways...
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Maybe I didn't explain it very well. ( it sounded so much better in my head ) It is the potential customer that I was referring to. All or most of web designers have websites where they show samples of their work, definitions of what they can do ( services etc. ) and some have templates that an end-users can use at a lower cost than a custom site.
So, ( hypothetically ) if I want to offer my potential customers C5 templates I would have to send them to the C5 site and have them fend for themselves.
The idea that I was proposing was that the C5 marketplace is the wholesaler and we are the affiliates. On my website I have a page that says "Templates" and it is fed from a pre-filtered API that I have set-up. The enduser picks a theme and then I go and purchase it -set-it up and then charge the customer. The author of the theme gets paid, I get a customer and the enduser now know that they at anytime can go back and change the theme to a new one when they get bored with the old. Everyone wins.
If it still isn't clear maybe if you thought of the themes or add-ons as products warehoused by C5. I am an affiliate with a shopping cart on my site. end-user buys products and I as the reseller go and buy from the wholesaler and deliver the goods.
In the past I had a moving box website that had affiliate ads on it - the moving box wholesaler offered me an API to put their shopping cart directly on my site and the sales went up considerably. Because we were the storefront the enduser put more trust and purchased more often instead of being redirected to another site.
Anyway, I have been building websites since 1999 and have had well over a thousand customers that we built custom sites for and we have seen trends come and go. The reason I have been looking at Concrete 5 is that we are losing ( hosting ) customers daily to Wordpress. My competitors are basically just reselling Wordpress templates. They are charging for swapping out headers and basic set-ups. I personally don't like Wordpress for content management and find that the end-user still needs training to update and maintain their sites.
Jim Robinson
So, ( hypothetically ) if I want to offer my potential customers C5 templates I would have to send them to the C5 site and have them fend for themselves.
The idea that I was proposing was that the C5 marketplace is the wholesaler and we are the affiliates. On my website I have a page that says "Templates" and it is fed from a pre-filtered API that I have set-up. The enduser picks a theme and then I go and purchase it -set-it up and then charge the customer. The author of the theme gets paid, I get a customer and the enduser now know that they at anytime can go back and change the theme to a new one when they get bored with the old. Everyone wins.
If it still isn't clear maybe if you thought of the themes or add-ons as products warehoused by C5. I am an affiliate with a shopping cart on my site. end-user buys products and I as the reseller go and buy from the wholesaler and deliver the goods.
In the past I had a moving box website that had affiliate ads on it - the moving box wholesaler offered me an API to put their shopping cart directly on my site and the sales went up considerably. Because we were the storefront the enduser put more trust and purchased more often instead of being redirected to another site.
Anyway, I have been building websites since 1999 and have had well over a thousand customers that we built custom sites for and we have seen trends come and go. The reason I have been looking at Concrete 5 is that we are losing ( hosting ) customers daily to Wordpress. My competitors are basically just reselling Wordpress templates. They are charging for swapping out headers and basic set-ups. I personally don't like Wordpress for content management and find that the end-user still needs training to update and maintain their sites.
Jim Robinson
I totally get it.
Thx for articulating this idea well. It's a good one IMHO.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
Thx for articulating this idea well. It's a good one IMHO.
best wishes
Franz Maruna
CEO - concrete5.org
http://about.me/frz
The market place already offers filters so I am not sure what else you think would be helpful to non-technical users. Maybe you can give more details.
In my experience however users that come to me are one of two kinds:
Either they have an add-on already selected and want me to modify it.
Or they have a project and certainly don't expect me to tell them to go look in the market to find what they need. They expect me to find it for them. Now if a client wants something done but doesn't tell me... Well I'm not a mind reader. I do my best to go through everything with my clients to define their needs. If they decide they can go away without telling me about something they need, then either they really don't understand the concept of the expert or I didn't do my job properly at defining their needs.
Either way, the idea of telling paying clients to go find it for themselves seems rather strange to me.
Anyway, just my 2 bits.