Purchase Links
OVERVIEW
2-Way Micropay™ purchase links allow users to make a purchase with just two clicks. The product can be online content, such a web page, or a physical item. The cost of the product can be as little as one cent up to the maximum amount authorized for the seller’s account.
Some key advantages of 2-Way Micropay™:
- payments can be processed without the high costs associated with credit cards;
- there are not credit card forms to complete;
- buyers can login to their payment account only once per day and have access to numerous web sites and resources, eliminating the need for multiple login ID’s and passwords;
- buyer’s ID’s can automatically be used to track buyers, to collect contact info, and provide guaranteed permission based follow-up communications with buyers in a way that NEVER involves the risk of being accused of spam.
When a buyer who is already logged in activates a purchase link this will bring up a confirmation window identifying the item and the cost. Upon confirming intent to buy, the funds are transferred and the buyer is redirected to the “delivery page” associated with the purchase. The delivery page may contain the paid for content (such as a video or downloaded content) or it may be a web page containing confirmation that the order has been received and will be shipped to the automatically provided shipping address. If the buyer is not logged in, he or she will be required to login before the purchase can be completed.
Currently, both the buyer and the seller must have a Qixit™ account. The funds will be transferred from one Qixit account to the other.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Manual Creation of Purchase Link
Description of Fields Used in Manual Entry
Automated Creation of Purchase Links
After Creating A Product, How to Use the Purchase Link
Additional Protection of Your Content From Multiple Access
To create a purchase link, you must first upgrade your Qixit Account to a Vendor Account.
The first time you log into this page, you will be required to complete a form to upgrade your account to a vendor/advertiser account. A one time fee of $10 is required to upgrade your account.
Upgrading your account will allow you to create both purchase links and payment links.
There are two ways to create purchase links: manually and through an automated process.
Manual Creation of Purchase Link
If you are not using our WordPress Plugin, you can manually create a product by logging into your account at http://www.qixit.com/products/ When you then select “Create New Purchase Link” you will see a page like the image below.
To create a product, the following fields are required: Description, Cost, Pitch URL, Delivery URL, and Commercial Code. All others are optional. The default Refund Message is “All Sales Are Final”
Additional fields can be used to (a) modify the receipt the buyer will receive with each purchase, (b) split payments between up to two additional parties, and (c) produce automated reporting of data regarding the buyer and the transaction.
After completing the form, a product ID will be created which will also be shown in the “Product Link” field. The Product Link field is the link that buyers must use to purchase the product. Cut and paste this anyplace you wish to use the purchase link. If you wish to mask the purchase link, use a redirect link that will activate the purchase link.
Description of Fields Used in Manual Entry
| Description | Description of product. This will appear in the window where the buyer confirms intent to purchase and also in the buyer’s receipt. |
| Cost | Enter the amount to be charged in dollars and cents, with a minimum of 0.01, one cent. |
| Pitch URL | This is the link to your webpage page offering the purchase link. It will appear on the buyer’s receipt and is intended to allow the buyer to return to your website. It should be a permanent link to something describing what is or was available for sale at the time the purchase was made. |
| Delivery URL | This is the page to which the user is directed after the payment has been confirmed and processed. It may be the page where you actually deliver the product, such as a video, or it may be a thank you page where you confirm that the product will be shipped.NOTE: The delivery URL must be in a form that includes http:// as a prefix for the link. www., alone, will not work.The Delivery URL may also include additional variables (substitution strings) which will relay back to your server the age, gender, Qixit ID or other information you may wish to collect when a purchase is completed. |
| Commercial code | Select the code that most closely fits the category of the product or service you are selling. |
| Thank You Perm | Each purchase creates a “Thank you for your purchase” receipt which is delivered to the buyer’s Qixit address. This receipt automatically includes the pitch page URL but only optionally includes the Delivery URL. If you elect the option “Thank You Perm,” the delivery URL is included in the receipt. This allows the user to go to the delivery page as often as she wants. This is a buy-once view often option. If you do not select this option, the delivery URL is not provided to the user. In such cases, the user has to use the pitch page link to go back to the purchase link and must pay each time she wants to access the product page. |
| Address Required | If selected, the buyer will be prompted, and required, to approve release of his or her shipping address before payment is allowed and the user can be directed to the delivery URL. This option should only be used when shipping physical products. |
| Display Full Screen | Only applicable when users are using the downloaded Qixit email client. If elected, your ad in a full browser window instead of an email frame. |
| Open in New Browser Window | Only applicable when users are using the downloaded Qixit email client. If elected, your ad in a full browser window instead of a new browser window. |
| Browsing Enabled | Only applicable when users are using the downloaded Qixit email client. If elected, the user will be allowed to browse within the email frame to links embedded in the Qixit email. |
| Affiliate’s Commission | Percent of payment to be paid to referring Affiliate, if any. Default=0. |
| Affiliate’s Qixit User ID | If affiliate commission is > 0, then you can create a payment link that either pays a specific Affiliate or you may make the commission payment available to any Qixit user who promotes your purchase link.To create a payment link that always pays the same affiliate, enter that affiliate’s Qixit ID in this field. This is a great way to pay a royalty to an musician, artist, author, or content creator, for example.If you leave this field blank, and the commission rate is >0, this indicates that you are willing to pay the commission to any Qixit user who distributes your purchase link and adds his QixitID to the link by appending “aff=MyQixitID” For example, if you are willing to pay a 20% commission to anyone who promotes your video, for example, just create the link, leaving this field blank, setting the commission to 20, and explain to your customers how they can promote your video on their Facebook page (for example) and receive 20% every time their friends view the video through their modified link.Any Qixit user can receive referral commissions. It is not necessary for them to upgrade to a vendor/advertiser account. |
| Forwarder’s Commission | Percent of payment to be paid to a second Qixit user account, if any. Default=0. |
| Forwarder’s Qixit User ID | The Forwarder’s Commission is basically just a second Affiliate’s Commission. Read above for more details.By providing the second affiliate split option, you can automatically split payments received up to three ways. You might want to do this, for example, if you are the distributor of video’s for original content creators who get 15% of all sales, and your distribution provides for a 20% commission to whomever publishes or forwards your purchase link to other people. In such a case, you would set the affiliate Qixit User ID to the video creator’s ID but you would leave the Forwarder’s ID blank. To claim the Forwarder’s percent, a third party would append the string “fwd=MyID” (replacing MyID with their actual Qixit ID), when they published or forwarded the link. To create a payment link that always pays the same second affiliate, just enter that affiliate’s Qixit ID in this second affiliates field, the “Forwarder’s Qixt User ID” and that setting will override any attempts to append a “fwd=” variable to the purchase link. |
| Product Link | DO NOT edit this field. The Product Link is the link you will cut and paste into any web page, email, or other electronic document which will trigger the payment and product delivery process. This field will be filled once you elect to “Save” the new product. |
| Refund Message | Add a refund message to the buyer’s receipt. The default is “All Sales Are Final.” If you wish to put something else here, this is the place to do it. |
| Return Address | Add any additional information here to be included on the receipt. |
| Report URL | This is an optional URL which will be hit by Qixit servers upon completion of a successful sale. This is an alternative way to collect data on each sale using the Substitution Strings. The other way is to include the Substitution Strings as part of the destination URL.For example, your programmers may create a data logging program at http://OurDataCollector.com/collect.aspx. To collect the first name, Qixit ID, gender, and zip code of each buyer, the Report URL might be constructed to be: http://OurDataCollector.com/collect.aspx?FirstName=(name)&Buyer=(userid)&gender=(gender)&Zipcode=(zip) |
| Substitution Strings | The variables below may be used in either the Delivery URL or the Report URL or in the purchasefast link. Use parentheses around the variable name. The server will replace the variable with the actual information appropriate to the transaction |
| UserID | Qixit ID of the Buyer. This can be used to direct market to the Qixit user, but will require you to pay the Qixit user his or her required fee to receive advertising each time it is used…unless you can convince the user to set the to zero in order to receive your much beloved emails! |
| Name | First Name of the Buyer |
| ReferralID | — Reserved Field — |
| MailingAddress | Mailing Address of the Buyer, if requested by seller and provided by Buyer. |
| Gender | Gender |
| Age | Age group (not exact age) |
| IPFrom | IP address of the Buyer |
Automated Creation of Purchase Links
Your programmer can easily define products, set pricing, and setup feedback on all sales using our web API, productadd.aspx.
All the fields that can be defined in the manual product creation process can be passed through as variables with productadd.aspx. In addition, the variables vend and vendpw are required. These identify the vendor’s Qixit ID and the Vendor’s password for creating products.
The same API can also be used to edit and modify existing product descriptions, pricing, and other options.
The variables are listed below. For a more complete description of each field, see the table above for the form for manually creating products
| productadd.aspx variables (red fields required) | |
| vend | Vendor username |
| vendpw | Vendor password |
| cost | Cost |
| desc | Description |
| Purl | pitch url — site or page offering the purchase link |
| Durl | delivery url — URL redirect code returned to browser on confirmation of payment |
| Aff | QixID of affiliate to receive Affiliate percent. Note: The affiliate payment will only be made if it is also included in the purchasefast link as described below. |
| AffPct | Affiliate percent — the percent to be paid to the affiliate “aff” |
| Rurl | Report URL |
| Fwd | CURRENTLY INACTIVE – Forwarder’s ID (2nd affiliate) |
| FwdPct | CURRENTLY INACTIVE – Forwarder’s percent |
| Perm | Perm link? (if Y, the Durl will be printed in the buyers receipt) |
| Cod | commercial code — See list of acceptable codes |
| RMsg | Refund Message |
| Raddr | Return Address (goes on receipt) |
| AddrReq | Address Required y/n. If yes, buyer will be prompted to approve release of his or her shipping address.. |
| Fscreen | Full Screen – used only for thick client |
| Nbrowser | New Browser – used only for thick client |
| Bena | Browser Enable – used only for thick client |
| pid | product id — only submitted when doing a product update, otherwise will be created when product created |
Productadd.aspx Example
https://www.qixit.com/productadd.aspx
?Vend=MyID33
&vendpw=ai#FIDf
&Desc=Blog Post
&Cost=.01
&Aff=
&Affpct=0
&Purl=www.best-reviewed.com
&Durl=http://best-reviewed.com/blog/?cat=28
The first variable should be preceded by a ? and the subsequent ones by an &.
Variables may appear in any order and are not case sensitive. The “Aff” variable can be set to null (blank), but must appear in the string.
The & may not be used to separate substitution string variables within the Durl or Rurl.
If the above vendor ID and password were correct, the response page to confirm success creating the purchase link will look like this
00|Success|Product successfully Updated|Qixit ProductID:430010a5-2bf4-44td-8e1a-96033ed94a5e
A success will always begin with 00. The product ID number, the PID, can then be used with the purchasefast link to post for buyers to use. In the example above, the most basic purchase link would be as shown below. Additional options could be added, as described later.
http://qixit.com/purchasefast.aspx?PID=430010a5-2bf4-44td-8e1a-96033ed94a5e
If an error occurs when creating a productadd call, the response will look like this:
04|Failure|Provided Vendor Information supplied is invalid|Qixit ProductID:
To modify an existing product, simply add the product ID following the PID variable. The PID will also be used in the purchase link to identify the product.
In the example below, the previously created product is modified to change the cost to 20 cents and to also receive the first name as part of the delivery URL
https://www.qixit.com/productadd.aspx
?Vend=MyID33
&vendpw=ai#FIDf
&Desc=New Blog Post
&Cost=.20
&Aff=
&Affpct=0
&Purl=www.best-reviewed.com
&Durl=http://best-reviewed.com/blog/?cat=28,Fname=(name)
&PID=430010a5-2bf4-44td-8e1a-96033ed94a5e
After Creating a Product, Use the Purchase Link
After you create a product, a basic purchase link will be generated and will appear in the Product Link field, if you are logged into the manual product creation / editing form at http://www.qixit.com/products/
The basic purchase link requires only a single variable, the product ID (PID) generated when the product is first created, as shown below.
http://qixit.com/purchasefast.aspx?PID=430010a5-2bf4-44td-8e1a-96033ed94a5e
The purchase link can also have additional variables added which pass in additional information, including information that will be echoed back as part of the delivery URL.
| Purchasefast.aspx variables | |
| Pid | Product ID |
| aff | Affiliate’s Qixit ID. Accepted only if not predetermined by vendor and affiliate commission is greater than zero. Otherwise ignored. MUST be present if aff is defined in the product link in order to trigger payment to the Affiliate. |
| fwd | INACTIVE. Forwarder username. Accepted only if not predetermined by vendor and forwarder’s commission is greater than zero. Otherwise ignored. |
| Desc | Secondary Description, appears on receipt along with primary description |
| Ref | Referral Code, typically the Qix ID of the vendor. If a buyer did not have a Qixit account and creates an account when attempting or completing the purchase, the referring party may receive referral credits. |
| Echo | If used, this variable must be last parameter in the string. Substitution strings are allowed within the Echo string. The echo string is especially useful for managing one view per payment, and for collecting customer information, such as their Qixit contact information. Substitution strings like (Name) and (Age) can also be included in the Echo string and will be replaced with data from the transaction record. |
The echo string gives your programmers additional flexibility. While some information can be predefined in the delivery URL, other information may be dynamically generated at the time the modified purchase link is generated and offered to the buyer. Activation of the dynamically modified purchase link can then pass these dynamically generated variables through the payment process so they are received back at your servers, as part of the delivery URL, when the payment has been successfully processed.
PurchaseFast Example With Optional Fields Appended
http://qixit.com/purchasefast.aspx
?PID=7957e2b6-d32b-443c-8294-44a18bb55cbf
&ref=BlogID
&aff=author01
&fwd=promoter01
&echo=OneTimeCode=site90ads1k3T&Buyer=(userid)
,gender=(gender),age=(age)
Additional Protection of Your Content from Multiple Access
You may choose to not provide the Delivery URL in your customer’s receipts if you require them to pay each time they wish to access your content. However, if the user saves your Delivery URL from their browser cache, it is feasible that they could access the content repeatedly, or share it with others, unless you take additional precautions.
This is one example of where the echo string can provide very valuable options for your security processes. One way to prevent reuse of your Delivery URL for each sale using the echo string is to append to the purchasefast link a unique, one time code, each time it is served to a prospective buyer.
To do this, your programmers may display an intermediate payment link (ie. www.yourowndomain.com?p=23abc) on the pitch page when when activated redirects the prospect’s browser to the actual purchasefast.aspx payment link (i.e., www.qixit.com/purchasefast.aspx?pid=98312) which has appended to it a unique one time code: (i.e., www.qixit.com/purchasefast.aspx?pid=98312&echo=se90ads1)
After the payment is received, the onetime code is appended to your the Delivery URL for your product (ie. www.yourowndomain.com/product.htm?echo=se90ads). When this URL request hits your servers, the server is programmed to check this one time code against your own database. If the code is valid, has not yet been served and perhaps meets other verification tests, such as the browser’s IP address, it represents confirmation of payment and the server so delivers the content.
But, if the one time code was already used, your servers can retrieve from your database when it was used and who the original buyer was. Instead of serving up the content (again), you can serve up a page stating something like:
“The link which brought you to this page was is probably copied from a browser cache following a purchase that was previously made and for conent previously delivered.
“The purchase was made on July 1, 2010 after payment from Joe12@Qixit.com for [product description] which was delivered to the buyer that same day.
“If you still wish to buy this content, click here.”
Additional options for masking and controlling access can be found by studying the WordPress 2-WayMicropay Plugin.