Store is at http://questioncopyright.com/. It was set up by Amplifier.com, our fulfillment house. Our main contacts there are: Joel Bush, Mike Schaub, Macon Stokes, Jud Harris. The "questioncopyright.com" domain is owned by us, but managed by Amplifier. The store is backed by Yahoo Stores, which is how all of Amplifier's stores are done. Both we and Amplifier have the login details, and we both use the Yahoo Stores admin interface to make changes. Amplifier invoices twice a month; see subdir amplifier/invoices/. Our store accepts payment via: * Google Checkout * PayPal * Mastercard, Visa, Discover (processed by First Data / Paymentech) * American Express (processed by American Express) The processor statements are in the bookkeeping/ subdirectory, with self-identifying names. We opened a tech support contract with SolidCactus ($59.99/mo, does not automatically renew) in late October 2009, for Yahoo Stores help. It did help -- see howto/toggle-header-banner.txt for example. Downloading and Saving Sales Statistics: ======================================== Once per month, we download the previous month's sales numbers and save them in Subversion (scripts then parse them to generate reports). Go to smallbusiness.yahoo.com, click on the Small Business button at the top, and you'll be in the Yahoo Stores interface (you may be prompted to re-enter the qcostore password or security phrase). Then go to the "Store Control Panel". Under "Statistics", click on "Sales". Scroll to the bottom and select the date range you want, either by selecting a month by name or by explicitly naming the days. If the latter, go from the first day of a month to its last day. Now click the "Show" button above to refresh the page. Scroll back up to the top. Under "Store Manager" and "Sort" at the top, you'll see "Download: [Spreadsheet]". Click on that. It will give you a CSV file with a name like "yhst-20024741711964-sales.csv". Check it in as, e.g.: cm/store/bookkeeping/yhst_sales_20100201-20100228.csv The scripts in cm/bin/ will know what to do from there. Sales Categories & Divvying Up Money: ===================================== The store sells some things that are purely QCO (like stickers and certain t-shirts), and other things are associated with a particular artist -- right now, Nina Paley, but there may be other artists in the future. For QCO's mission, the benefits of partnering with artists are: proof of the free distribution economic model (this is largely what the Sita Distribution Project is about, for example), the promotion of the Creator Endorsed Mark, and the many obvious benefits that come from having, e.g., Nina Paley as Artist-in-Residence. QCO's profit-sharing agreement with Nina Paley is described in ../sdp/nina-paley-contract.txt. Some parts of that contract are about processing donations, and we can ignore those here. The parts that are relevant to the online store are: - For the standard-priced Sita DVDs, she gets 50% and QCO gets 50% - For other Sita-related items, she gets 100% of the profits. - For QCO items, QCO gets 100% of the profits (of course). Inventory: ========== It's this simple: https://volume.amplifier.com/tools/reports/ Old inventory reports are in the "Archive" folder. New reports are in the top-level. You pretty much always want the new. "ATP" means "available to promise". The files inventory.pdf and inventory.csv are cached here with most recent inventory reports from Amplifier -- do 'svn log -v inventory.???' to see when they were last updated. Restocking: =========== For shirts, get the Screen Printing Reorder form from: https://volume.amplifier.com/tools/reports/ in the "Screen Printing" folder. For other stuff, TBD. Adding a New Product to the Store: ================================== First, make sure you've actually shipped the items to Amplifier. They can't sell it if they don't have it :-). Then email client-service@amplifier.com a spreadsheet describing the item, as a "New SKU" (you can include multiple new items in the same spreadsheet). See cm/store/amplifier/*.xls for examples. Now go to http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ and log in (you may be prompted for the extra security key). Click on "Catalog Manager", then "Manage Your Items". You should come to a page listing all the items in the store (the "Items" tab on the top will be active). Click the "Add Item" button and on the resultant page fill in these fields: ID: Use lower-case product SKU code. Name: Short description, like "Sita Sings the Blues DVD Standard Edition - NTSC" or whatever. Code: Product SKU code again, but (by convention) upper-case this time. Qcc-use-sita-style: If Sita item, "yes", otherwise "no". Price: The price the customer should be charged. Ship-Weight: Use other items as a guide for this. Orderable: "Yes" (unless it's a container page, of course). Taxable: "Yes". Image: Upload one. 400x380 pixels is a good size. Caption: Whatever you want the product page to say. Inset: Optional; for a good example, see lower left of questioncopyright.com/sstb-dvd-std01-ntsc.html 150x200 pixels is a good size. ._______________________________________________________________________ | What if it's different colors or sizes of the same core item? |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | | From: Amplifier Client Service | To: Karl Fogel | Subject: Re: Question Copyright: Spreadsheet for new products | (water bottles, bags). | Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 22:20:06 +0000 (GMT) | | [...] | | As for the Catalog Manager -- we're always happy to set up any of your | new products on our end, of course. For the bags, it's totally easy to | set it up in Catalog Manager so customers can pick the color from a | dropdown menu. It's actually pretty much the same way you'd set up a | t-shirt, where the customers choose sizes. You're exactly right -- we | need two SKUs for the different colors, just like you provided, but | they can be on one page in the store. You can use one item ID for the | item page (this is the topmost field in Catalog Manager), perhaps | something like "SSTB-UBAG." | | Basically, you'd set up the item page normally. Then under the | "Options" section, you'd type: | | Color Teal Fuchsia | | Underneath that field, you'll see a link for "Enter Individual Item | Codes." Click on that, and it will bring up two rows. On each row, | select "Teal" or "Fuchsia," and then on each space to the left, enter | the appropriate SKU, "SSTB-UBAG-TEAL," etc. `----------------------------------------------------------------------- (Similarly, "Size S M L XL XXL" will work, etc.) Hit "Save", and then back on the "Manage Your Items" page, switch to the "Publishing" tab. Click "Publish Catalog". Now there's a new item in the store, but it doesn't yet show up on any store pages. We need to display it on one or more pages. (Before you do the rest of this, confirm with Amplifier that they have the new SKU and the physical item. Otherwise, any orders placed will need manual correction on their end, which is a pain for them.) Use the upper-left breadcrumb link to return to "Store Manager", then choose "Store Editor". Navigate around the store as though you were a customer, but when you get to the page where you want to add the new item, you can click "Edit" in the editor toolbar at the top. On the edit page, just list the new item code (e.g., "SSTB-DVD-STD01-NTSC") in the "Contents" field -- where you put it in that space-delimited list will determine where it appears on the page. Click "Update" when done to be returned to the previous page. If this is a "Sita Sings the Blues Merchandise Empire" item, then navigate to the item's own page, click "Edit", and in the "Template" field change "qcstoretemplate" to "qcsitastoretemplate". (This causes the Home button on that page to go to the SSTBME store home, instead of the QCC store home). Hit "Update" to save the change. You will again be returned to the previous page. Once there, hit "Publish" (right side of the top toolbar) to make the changes live. It takes a minute or two. In the meantime, you'll be prompted to go back to the Store Manager page, but you could just close the browser window too at this point -- you're done. ._______________________________________________________________________ | What about graded pricing / quantity pricing? |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | From: Amplifier Client Service | Subject: Re: Question Copyright: New product SKU: Sita Sticker | (SSTB-STK-SITA) [ ref:00D31X4g.500392DW8:ref ] | To: "kfogel@questioncopyright.org" | Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:51:24 +0000 (GMT) | | Hello Karl, | | Awesome! We'll work on getting that added to our systems ASAP. As | for the graded pricing, that's no problem at all -- it's really | easy to do in Yahoo! I took the liberty of adding this to your | Catalog Manager (minus the pictures) on your behalf -- this is how | to set up quantity pricing for this kind of item: | | http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/regular/regular-30.html | | I set the pricing at the amounts you mentioned, but it's extremely | easy to change, if you decide on other price points! Let me know | if you have any questions about this, and thanks, man! | | Thanks, | | Mike Schaub | Amplifier Client Service | 512-469-0505 x202 | -------------------------------------------- | kfogel@questioncopyright.org | 6/25/2010 | Hello Amplifions! Attached is a new product listing: SSTB-STK-SITA (a | sticker of the character Sita from the film). | | I've set the price at $1.00, but what we really want is graded pricing: | | $1.00 for 1 sticker | $8.00 for 10 stickers | $30.00 for 50 stickers | | ...etc (or something like that -- we welcome advice on the numbers). | | Is there any way to achieve this in Yahoo Stores? | | Thanks, | -Karl `----------------------------------------------------------------------- Adding a New Category (New Section) to the Store: ================================================= You can't do this through the Catalog Manager anymore. Instead, go into the Store Editor, and on the home page, click the "Section" button on the top to create a new section. Then things get subtle: By default, the new section page will have the ID "newitem". (Also it will *claim* to be of type "item", but that's a lie -- it's really of type "section", don't worry.) We want a custom ID. The way to get it is to put the desired new ID into the *Name* field and hit "Update" to save it for the first time. The "newitem" ID will change to whatever you put in the name field, and this new ID is now permanent: you can't ever go back and change it. Once the desired ID is completely saved, you can go back and change the Name of the page to whatever you need it to be. (That might include just making a case change relative to the ID, as we did for the "bookliberator" -> "BookLiberator" section page, for example.) All this was explained on a 2014-09-17 10am call with Yahoo Stores. Incident number: 45552312 (note: replaces the incident number 45551240 that we originally got from Amplifier when we called them first) Merchant Solutions: (866) 438-1582, or outside US (408) 916-2110 Merchant Tech Support (888) 814-2524 (but try Merchant Solutions first) Before calling Merchant Solutions, you may want to get a new incident number by visiting https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/contact and following the obvious steps. On about the 3rd page, if you scroll down to "Call", there's a button for "Get Incident Number". * [2014-09-17 4pm] Updating the Image on the qco-bl-beta-srsly page didn't show any change in the image displayed on the bookliberator section page, in the Store Editor. Even after publishing, a comparison of http://questioncopyright.com/qco-bl-beta-srsly.html and http://questioncopyright.com/bookliberator.html shows two different images for qco-bl-beta-srsly. WTF? I obtained a new incident number, 45572867, and called again. Reference number: 140917-039184 Discount Coupons ================ Don't ask Amplifier; just do it through the Yahoo Stores interface. https://help.yahoo.com/kb/yahoo-merchant-solutions/create-coupon-sln19520.html Or coupon creation with promotional email: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/yahoo-merchant-solutions/creating-coupon-simple-promotional-email-sln19556.html Embedding the Customer Service iframe in our About page ======================================================= I had to call Amplifier on 2017-02-13 to figure this one out. Basically, log in to my.amplifier.com, go to the settings gear in the upper right-hand corner, choose "Settings" from the drop-down menu, then choose "Customer Service Tool" from the top horizontal nav bar. There are two embeddable iframes there (each with blank custom CSS, which can be ignored unless you want to indulge in fancy stylings). We want the *bottom* one, the "yhst-20024741711964 (Yahoo)" one. The top one is just for custom orders placed through my.amplifier.com, which we almost never do and which our customers certainly don't do. Just grab the "" text and paste it into an HTML section in whatever page you want, in the Store Editor. That embeds a Customer Service section right into the page. You might want to change the width from 800 to 500, and put "
...
" around the iframe. Print on Demand =============== Documentation for setting up print-on-demand is here: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dvjg79c_24ft3zbkgq&pli=1 Taxes ===== In May of 2009, we told Mike Schaub at Amplifier to charge New York sales tax at 8.375%, because: New York City local sales tax: 4.000% Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD) sales tax: 0.375% State sales tax: 4.000% ====================================================================== Total: 8.375% But Karen Sandler later clarified we should pay in CA, not NY. Oops. So on 2011-04-22, Karl called Amplifier, and Topher Hyink switched us to CA. Specifically: new tax rate is 9.25% (Stanford / Palo Alto); it had been 8.375% in NY. Note tax is charged on the shipping cost as well. Go into Store Manager -> Order Settings -> Tax Rates to see what Amplifier is charging for TX and CA. Neither Amplifier nor Yahoo Stores actually sends the taxes to California -- we have to do that. Log in to the Yahoo Stores interface, go to Process -> Orders, fiddle around with the order numbers to get the right range for the tax year in question, and Export as either Excel or CSV depending on how you want to do the calculating. Karl called (408) 916-2110 on 2011-04-22 and had a conversation with a Yahoo Merchant Solutions rep about this. It was case #fooo.