Ecommers… wordpress business, etc.
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I am having problems with the paypal button to sell books from my site. I haven’t sold many yet… I am just getting started… and with the paypal button I am unlikely to get very far… it is pretty awful. But I have several paid blogs for my different books… basically two… MY QUESTION is… do I have to buy the WORDPRESS BUSINESS for $200 for each of them in order to be able to use ecommerce?? That’s getting pretty expensive.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hey Christopher,
If you don’t want to use your current PayPal Buy Now buttons for your books…or, link to the books on an outside e-commerce site, you have a few choices:
- As you mentioned, you could upgrade to Business. Either both sites could be married into one Business site, or you could have two separate sites.
- You could move your site to a self-hosted version of WordPress.org, and for nominal cost, you could set up an e-commerce site. Or two. You would simply use WordPress e-commerce plugins to add a shopping cart.
If you’re unfamiliar with the differences between hosting here at WordPress.com, and self-hosting via WordPress.org, here is some information for you:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/ - You could tell me exactly what you don’t like about the look of your PayPal button on your current site, and I can try to assist in anyway I’m able. Perhaps I can help make things more aesthetically pleasing for you?
Please let us know if you have any other questions. Thanks much!
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Hi thanks…
The paypal button was giving me difficulty when I was trying to order a number of books for a friend who is disabled… not letting it go through with her card… the issues was resolved… but I started investigating other things like ewcid (sp)… and the ‘stores’ are a bit more attractive… and perhaps more flexible for the sort of thing I was trying to do.
Question… I actually have three paid sites and one not… the three paid equal the price of a business account… is it possible to have them all ‘married’ to one business account? — they already kind of are… when I post in one it uses my title from the original, etc… and they are all related anyway… SO my quesiton is… for one payment of $299 can the various sites then all be one business account deal and I use the same ecwid store, for example… for all of them… that sort of thing. And would there be a limit to the number of site pages as I continue to grow my book publishing business… and want a page for each book? Right now there is ‘Tales Of The Ocean City’ (paid), The Musical Forest (paid), So You wanna Be Italian (not paid) and Name That Opus (paid – not a book)… Anyway, I think you know what I am asking… The self-hosted need more time to put in it than I have at present…
I also might wish to make a new page for my composing career (www.chkaufman.com)
Thanks so much! I appreciate your advice!!
Chris Kaufman
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Hey Chris!
If you were willing, you could absolutely create a single Business website that included those three existing sites. All the posts from each site could be given a category, ie: Tales Of The Ocean City, The Musical Forest), So You wanna Be Italian, & Name That Opus. And each category could have a different page so those posts would show up exclusively in their respective areas.
You could definitely add your work as a composer to that site, if you wished as well. The world would be your oyster :)
Also, the very nice thing about the Business upgrade is that you have access to live chat support from 7am-7pm EST Monday-Friday, so you can have a guiding hand (if you need), while you’re setting everything up.
The one thing you’ll have to do is decide under which URL you want your site to be represented.
Drop me a note if you have any other questions! Thanks!
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Hi again and thanks so much… a couple of things… how would I go about this combining process… would I get credit for what I’ve already paid for the three blogs… and also – you mentioned which url to choose… that’s an issue because I need to have the http://www.talesoftheoceancity url go to that page… the ‘squiggletbuglet.com url go to that page… etc.
Thanks…
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Hi Chris,
I’m so sorry for the tardy reply. We all went away for our annual full company meet up, and ticket support was at a minimum. We are back at our desks and ready to help.
I’ve spoken to the Business upgrade team for you. They said that the site that you upgrade will be charged the difference between the Premium Upgrade ($99/annual) and the Business Upgrade ($299 annual). So, it’ll be $200 to upgrade altogether.
The other two blogs won’t be refunded as they extend past the 30-day from original purchase date.
In order to combine content from the sites, you can export from the originating sites, and import into the destination blog. Here is information on those topics:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/export/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/Once you upgrade to Business, if you have any struggle with the export/import process, a live chat Happiness Engineer can assist you. You will see a pop-up window in your Dashboard, asking if you need a hand.
You’re also welcome to combine your sites before the upgrade, if you prefer. Either way will work well for your intended goal.
Drop me a line if I can answer any other questions! Thanks again. Best to you.
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HI Thanks – this is unclear… I don;t want to export or import content… I want to combine the pages I already have into one system. Each with their individual urls… http://www.talesoftheoceancity.com, http://www.squiggletbuglet.com… etc… So I am confused by what you told me and the information you sent me to.
SO copying and importing doesn’t do this…? Thank you.
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Hi Christopher,
Just to be clear, you’re looking to combine multiple sites (talesoftheoceancity.com, namethatopus.com, squiggletbuglet.com) under one Business account, but have each site also display separate content. Is that correct?
If so, that will not be possible. Business upgrades are available on a per-blog basis. If you wanted to combine all of those domains on a single blog (like talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com), you could definitely do that. However, in that case, all three domains would reflect the exact same content. In effect, you would be purchasing a Premium bundle for talesoftheoceancity.com for example and having squiggletbuglet.com and namethatopus.com redirect to that domain. Does that help to clarify?
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Hi – thanks for getting back… I’m sorry to be a bit confused. I thought I asked these exact questions to the previous helper and got a positive answer… I guess I’m not sure what you mean by ‘content’… showing different content… showing the same content…
I want the three domains… under one roof… and to be able have them have their urls… Like several pages under one roof… and have a ecommerce store like euclyd which serves them all…
What do you mean by (and I’m sorry to be so ignorant) — and thanks for your time — what do you mean by blogs being ‘redirected to that domain’… please do your best to explain. Thank you.
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Hi Christopher!
I really apologize for the confusion. Let me explain a bit more!
Domains are tied to a WordPress.com blog address. For example, talesoftheoceancity.com is tied to talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com. So, any content you add to talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com is reflected on talesoftheoceancity.com. The same thing is setup for your other two domains:
– namethatopus.com and namethatopus.wordpress.com
– squiggletbuglet.com and squiggletbuglet.wordpress.com
Upgrades are also tied to an individual blog address like talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com. So, for example, the Premium bundle you purchased for talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com is only good for that particular blog. You were required to purchase additional Premium bundles for squiggletbuglet.wordpress.com and namethatopus.wordpress.com.
If you wanted to purchase one Business bundle (say for talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com), it would not be available on your other blogs namethatopus.wordpress.com and squiggletbuglet.wordpress.com. Therefore, it wouldn’t be available on the respective domains (squiggletbuglet.com and namethatopus.com).
If you only wanted to purchase one Business bundle, we would need to move both squiggletbuglet.com and namethatopus.com to talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com since that’s where the bundle would be applied. In that scenario, you would need to pick a “primary domain”, meaning a domain that all the other domains directed to. So, say you pick talesoftheoceancity.com as the primary domain. Then, talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com, namethatopus.com, and squiggletbuglet.com would all redirect to talesoftheoceancity.com. Does that make sense?
In that scenario, all of your content would be controlled through talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com. So, you couldn’t have three separate stores as they would all be associated with the same blog.
I believe what you’re looking for is a Business bundle on all of your sites (and domains) so that you can run three sites independent of one another. Is that correct?
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The sites don’t have to be independent from each other…. I can sell all the books on one ‘store’… I just want be able to have the store on each page… and have them have their URLS so when someone types the address http://www.suiggletbuglet.com – they go to that page.
One can have a single business site with many different pages… each with it’s own content? I can’t buy a dozen business accounts… it is all one business… selling books… the publishing name is Three Dashes Publications – – and I want each book to have it’s own page… Perhaps Three Dashes Publications is the name of the business… with the other pages under it… reachable by their URLS…. is this possible? Thanks.
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Hi Christopher,
Thanks for clarifying. It’s definitely possible for each book to have a separate page. However, those pages would all live under one domain. So, you would need to pick one of your three domains. Then, the books would have to be labeled like this:
http://talesoftheoceancity.com/book1
http://talesoftheoceancity.com/book2
http://talesoftheoceancity.com/book3
If you combined all of the domains under the same Business bundle, they would all redirect to one domain. Does that make sense?
It would not be possible to have a Business bundle associated with all three domains (talesoftheoceancity.com, squiggletbuglet.com, and namethatopus.com) and have all domains work. They would all need to redirect to one domain in the account referred to as the primary domain.
So, say you created a page called “Store” to sell your books. All of the following URLs would be directed to one single URL:
talesoftheoceancity.com/store
namethatopus.com/store
squiggletbuglet.com/store
I believe you’re looking for each of the above URLs to direct to their respective store so that if a user wants to purchase Tales of the Ocean City, they can do that from talesoftheoceancity.com/store and they don’t see anything associated with the other two books. Is that correct?
One option would be to setup an entirely different site (christophersbooks.com for example). Then, you could setup individual pages on that site (christophersbooks.com/name-that-octopus) for example. In that case, you could apply the Business bundle to ChristophersBooks.com. But, you couldn’t setup page-specific redirects. That means you couldn’t setup squigglebuglet.com to redirect to christophersbooks.com/squiggle-buglet.
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So – if I set up a new ‘masterblog’ – titles Three Dashes Productions or some such… I could have a separate page for each book… (could import the pages I’ve already created?) —- but the key is… the URLS – for example – http://www.talesoftheoceancity.com – would no longer work? — I need people to be able to use the address and just then be at the page…
I guess I am still not clear on the different between ‘redirect’ and the page… I’m sorry to still be confused on this basic issue… I’m sure you feel you are explaining it so that any child could understand. I’ll try again.
ONE host blog. ONE business account. Different pages for each book. ONE store for all. The respective urls are useable (i.e. I can say ‘go to http://www.talesoftheoceancity.com) and they type it in and are on the page I’ve created for that book.
One store for all book pages is good. As I publish more books each needs it’s page. Paying a hundred a year each time is going to get astronomical… impossible. Also – at present I can’t get a decent store widget… only the paypal. I can’t do a business account for each blog page.
Thanks for your help.
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Hey Christopher!
So, let’s say that you create a new “masterblog” called christophersbooks.wordpress.com for example and purchased the Business upgrade on that blog.
You could definitely create individual pages on that blog for each of your books. For example, you could have christophersbooks.wordpress.com/tales-of-the-ocean-city and christophersbooks.wordpress.com/name-that-opus.
You could associate as many custom domains (talesoftheoceancity.com, namethatopus.com, and squiggletbuglet.com for example) with that site (christophersbooks.wordpress.com) with the Business bundle that you want.
At that point, we would have the following:
Blog: christophersbooks.wordpress.com
Business bundle and ecommerce options
Domains: namethatopus.com, talesoftheoceancity.com, squiggletbuglet.comThe catch is that you have to choose one of those domains to be the primary domain on the account.
Say you picked “namethatopus.com” to be the primary domain on the account. In that case, all domains would just resolve to that address, meaning if a reader entered talesoftheoceancity.com, they would just be directed to namethatopus.com. The same thing would happen for squiggletbuglet.com and christophersbooks.wordpress.com. The domain namethatopus.com would become the “one domain that rules them all” so to speak.
So, in that above example, you could create an unlimited amount of posts, pages, and “ecommerce” pages on christophersbooks.wordpress.com, but the URL would always read the primary domain (namethatopus.com in the example we’re going with). If a user entered talesoftheoceancity.com/book-1, they would be redirected to namethatopus.com/book-1 since that’s the “One domain to rule them all” so to speak.
This would work fine if you didn’t have individual URLs for your books since you would have to set one domain as the primary domain on your account and let the others sink into the background.
With your current setup, the main way to get it to work would be to purchase Business upgrades for your individual blogs. So, talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com and talesoftheoceancity.com would have a separate Business upgrade. Like you mentioned, this gets expensive and isn’t really feasible in the long-term.
I hope that explains the Business bundle a bit better!
Here are two options that I could see working:
Option 1: Purchase a “non-book” domain like christophersbooks.com and set it as the primary domain on your account with a Business bundle. This way, all of your individual book URLs would redirect to a main domain that isn’t book specific. Then, you could have pages like christophersbooks.com/tales-of-the-ocean-city for your individual books.
Option 2: You keep the individual book sites, but setup one common site (like christophersbooks.com) to have your store. This way, you only have to purchase the Business bundle for one domain (christophersbooks.com). On your individual pages like talesoftheoceancity.com, readers would see a link for “Buy the Book” or “Bookstore”, which would direct them to christophersbooks.com/store where they could purchase the books.
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Hi – thanks again for your time!
So for option one… I could keep ‘www.talesoftheoceancity.com’, for example… but it would automatically send them to the master page Christophers Books… then a row of links to the individual book pages.
i.e. the exact same book title urls… are directed to main site and they have to press the button for the book – which could be in huge letters. Then the store is on all pages.Option two — keep individual blogs as they are, but have a link to the store – a one page master blog with the bookstore on it. A bookstore is right up front as large as I can make it.
Question – I don’t remember what the extra benefits of the Premium upgrade were off hand… but would it be possible to reduce my present blogs to the regular free versions… would I then have to buy the urls at 18 a year? – something like that. Are rebates possible at this point? — how would that work?
That would mean buying a business account for Christopher’sBooks (Actually Three Dashes Publications) – then linking the regular free blogs to it… with the urls for $18 a year… does that make sense?
Then there’s how to do it.
The disadvantage of both options is that it makes people press 2 buttons to buy a book. But the second seems better, they’ve already chosen to buy it… it takes them to the store… there it is.
Thanks!
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One more to clarify… in option one. The one master blog with various pages within it. When someone presses the link… http://www.talesoftheoceancity.com… are they sent to the Page within the master blog that is the page for the book? Or to a front page where the link to the page is… can I not attach the above url to the page within the master blog of that name?
So the question is… when the press the link to http://www.tales….com where do they exactly end up? What do they see? — sorry and thanks.
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Please see below!
So for option one… I could keep ‘www.talesoftheoceancity.com’, for example… but it would automatically send them to the master page Christophers Books… then a row of links to the individual book pages.
Yep! Just a quick clarification, the individual book pages would be off the master domain. So, it would be something like christophersbooks.com/tales-of-the-ocean-city.
I don’t remember what the extra benefits of the Premium upgrade were off hand… but would it be possible to reduce my present blogs to the regular free versions… would I then have to buy the urls at 18 a year? – something like that. Are rebates possible at this point? — how would that work?
The Premium bundle comes with several upgrades like Custom Design (adjust colors and fonts), Space Upgrade (upload audio straight to your site), and VideoPress (upload videos straight to your site). You can see the included upgrades here:
http://store.wordpress.com/premium-upgrades/pro-bundle/
If you end up going with option #2, we can definitely work something out with your current upgrade situation. The domain-only would be $18/yr.
That would mean buying a business account for Christopher’sBooks (Actually Three Dashes Publications) – then linking the regular free blogs to it… with the urls for $18 a year… does that make sense?
Here’s how it would look – You would have four total sites on your account:
– talesoftheoceancity.wordpress.com with custom domain talesoftheoceancity.com ($18/yr)
– namethatopus.wordpress.com with custom domain namethatopus.com ($18/yr)
– squiggletbuglet.wordpress.com with custom domain squiggletbuglet.com ($18/yr)
– christophersbooks.wordpress.com with custom domain threedashespublications.com (Business account – $299/yr)The top three (the individual sites) would all have links that pushed readers to threedashespublications.com/store.
Can I not attach the above url to the page within the master blog of that name?
Unfortunately not. You couldn’t specify threedashespublications.com/tales-of-the-ocean-city to open up talesoftheoceancity.com. This is what I meant earlier by page-specific redirects. I’m sorry for not being more clear!
So the question is… when the press the link to http://www.tales….com where do they exactly end up? What do they see?
In option 1, if someone entered talesoftheoceancity.com, they would just be automatically redirected to threedashespublications.com since that’s the primary domain on the account.
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