Additional AdCardz Updates
First up, thanks for all the feedback on the new look Member’s Area. We’ve still got a lot we want to do, but your comments and support are all much appreciated, thank you. If you’ve missed it, I’d recommend you have a look once you’ve read this update…
Account Checklist:
We’ve now added a step-by-step checklist to help everyone get through the set up a whole lot faster and easier. You’ll also be able to see at a glance what needs doing next…
There were a lot of people with AdBoards they weren’t using, and plenty more whose accounts were only partly set up, so we’ve added the interactive checklist, similar to the ones we use on a couple of our other sites. So far the feedback is all extremely positive, so please check it out and make sure you are taking full advantage of all the features of your membership.
Contact, Profile and Payments:
We’ve set up some additional checking on these three items to make sure they are complete before anyone sets up a new AdBoard. This ensures we meet the requirements for our various payment processors, and also that you can get paid.
If you haven’t logged in for a while they will likely be showing as needing your attention when you log in. Please just review your info and click update on each… even if you don’t make any changes… and that will mark them as done.
Account Info Page:
Long overdue, we’ve added a new page showing Your Subscription info to the Your Account menu. You’ll be able to see the status if your subscription, when the next payment is due, plus a few options to reactivate or upgrade your account as required.
Right now there are a number of overdue accounts that we’ve let slide while we got through the server move and upgrade… if you think you might be one of them, we’ll be sending some reminders shortly, but you can log in and bring it up to date anytime.
Built-In Banner Exchange:
This is a handy set-and-forget tool we added a while back that will earn you credits on three exchanges each time your AdBoards are viewed… so a busy AdBoard can generate a LOT of credits… which you can use to send even more visitors to your AdBoards.
This has had an updated as well… one of the banner exchanges had closed… so please take a moment to update/set-up this one next time you login.
Payment Processors:
This is the next big item on the to-do list and we’re already on it. First up we’re adding a few alternate processors, and we’ll be looking for feedback and assistance on some regional-specific options. We’ve already had a few requests, but it’s difficult to set them up on AdCardz if we’re not allowed to use them ourselves. So we’re working on that, plus waiting on approval for a couple of more generic processors.
In the meantime…
We’re going to trial a fully Done For You Payment Processing option.
We’re currently setting up a Stripe Payments checkout using our account, and IF YOU CHOOSE TO ENABLE IT, we will collect all sales on your behalf, and forward those amounts on to you once or twice a month.
We had avoided it up until now, as we didn’t want to get in the middle of your sales… or create a whole lot of extra work for ourselves… but I think we can automate most of it and simplify the rest, and it seems to be the one area where a lot of our Members struggle if they don’t have access to the more popular payment options.
This will be entirely optional and a bit experimental, so we’ll post more detailed info when it’s ready to go and invite anyone interested to help out with the testing.
Built-In List Building:
The other request that we keep on getting is some sort of automated list building. We’ve always avoided this, believing that your Advertisers are not giving you permission to add them to a list, and it would be too easy for a few people to abuse it and hurt us all.
So we’re currently testing a few options for showing external opt-in pages to your referrals when they use the site. The idea being you can set up a few different offers, save links in AdCardz, and we’ll show those randomly to your visitors in a few different formats… login offers, pop-unders and interstitial pages.
We’ll post more on this when we’ve settled on the best format that balances effectiveness with minimal intrusiveness.
Other Coming Attractions…
Believe it or now, the current To-Do List for AdCards still has another 20+ items after this, so there’s plenty more on the way. Quite a few are relatively small teaks to make various features easier to use or more effective for you, but there’s a couple of bigger projects I’m eager to get stuck into… I just need a few more hours in the day!
Anyway, that’s more than enough for now. Please do login and check it all out when you get a chance, and any feedback, bug reports or suggestions will all be much appreciated!
