It’s been one heck of a day.
I awoke to discover that I had already performed transactions with my first customers and simultaneously encountered my first problem.
It seems, despite my best intentions, I’d goofed. Plain and simple, in my first attempt at e-commerce setup and configuration and all that fun stuff, I’d misunderstood the documentation supplied by my new service provider, e-junkie.com. I’d read and re-read it, and then read it once more, but I still managed to get it wrong.
I suppose that it’s good for me, every once in a while, to be a “newbie”. It makes you remember that feeling, the stress and the uncertainty. And why I don’t like it. 
I also found out, by testing the waters, trial by fire if you will, that e-junkie.com has prompt and knowledgeable service. I filed a tech support request immediately upon discovering my problem, and they responded promptly by email, indicating that a tech would assist me shortly, but that I could also visit their forum for potentially faster solutions provided by either staff or a community member. That sounded familiar, so I went to the forum as well. In the end, I received accurate replies both on the forum and by email. Color me impressed.
So as much as I wanted my valued FeedBurner subscribers to be able to take advantage of the secret “Subscriber Loyalty Reward” that I’d informed them about, the system didn’t work. For the frustrations that you my friends surely encountered, I apologize.
But it didn’t take too long until I’d sorted it out and got it working, but even that introduced a new wrinkle: the subscribers needed to enter the supplied text on my site and then click the “Buy Now” button. When I added the HTML code to the description of the training package, the button was huge and ugly and there was nothing that I could do about it quickly. (I’m still a student of HMTL/CSS.)
As a temporary measure, I put up a notice requesting that subscribers use the better looking text entry box and button on the Home page.
Finally this evening, I’ve made it a little better, so now the text entry is available on the product description page. Admittedly, it’s not what I’d really like it to look like, but for now it’s functional and much more convenient for you. It won’t win any design awards, but you’ll get what you’re able to get.
One the positive side, I received a number of encouraging comments today which countered the problems nicely. Among them:
“I’m really looking forward to going through this material.”
“Thanks for the great site and your helpful posts on the Datawatch forums!”
“Thank you for your assistance over the weekend helping me make decisions about purchasing Monarch. I purchased [“30 Days to Become a Better Monarch Modeler”].”
“Someday I will look to get my copy signed by the author”.
“Thanks for something I have hoped would be developed – a user guide written by a user.”
Thanks again to all for the wonderful support. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store.
What about you? Will tomorrow be the day that you join those who today took proactive steps to excel with Monarch?
