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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...aspdotnetstorefront  module aspdotnetstorefront module
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4/30/2007 12:55 AM
 

RE: "Does anyone know when will the aspdotnetstorefront  module be released ?"

We are 1-2 weeks away from BETA release. Why did this take a year to develop...because AspDotNetStorefront is an entire web site commerce framework and DNN is an entire portal framework, so integration posed challenges, to do it properly. You can all judge us based on our features & price...that's how the market works. We are not interested in those putting up stores for toy sites...our client list includes McDonalds, Disney, 3M, Crocs.com, EdHardy...so we are not amateurs at the business of e-commerce. Most of what you are reading on the forums here regarding our DNN version is heresay...and maybe you should contact us for the exact information. Thanks.

 
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4/30/2007 1:01 AM
 

RE: eWay...we already support eWay gateway, and are certified and listed by eWay also.

RE: "with the most we've see on the marketplace website..it doesn't integrate and to be talking about"

not quite sure what you are asking/state....if you clarify, we can also clarify.

RE: "The majority of users based on the amount of threads with the word 'go daddy'  will not be able to use this product unless something changes substantially, since the base product doesn't work on the following hosters"

That is 100% correct. If you are trying to run a professional e-commerce web site on $9.95/month hosting plans, do not pick our solution. Find a toy cart instead.

RE: "Take into consideration that many of the users with DNN are budget users and cringe paying a cent for anything"

agreed. If you have $0 budget, we have 0 solutions for you.

 

RE: "The product as it stands is - between 400US for up to 50 products, the Enterprise level can only be used in the US, and when released, it won't have the history that it currently has, so no matter how much one talks about it being for 5,000 100,000 or 1 million, not even the most talented developer I've heard about has been able to integrate a first class forum such as CS with DNN, and it wasn't for the love of trying."

I'm not sure what language that is in, as I have no clue what you are stating or asserting. If you clarify, we can then also respond & clarify for you.

RE: "going to have teething problems as does all software"

maybe. that's what BETA will find out. We do not release software that doesn't work, or the client list we have would not use our product.

So in summary, yes, we plan a fully native and endorsed (by DNN) DNN storefront...not a toy storefront. It will be up to you all to accept it or not. We do not develop or release, toy, open source, or free softare...if you want that, you have other options.

 

 

 

 
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4/30/2007 5:06 AM
 

Hi apsdotnetstorefront - do you have a name?   You could be anyone behind a name, so my advice for you in this forum is to put a name to your identity.  How can I verifiy that you exist and are qualified to comment on this product? And for such an important project, I would think that you would like us all to get to know you!

Firstly - I stand corrected and I apologise  - you are correct that eWay is supported which great news..  I looked at your specs on your site to get the information about what you offer. That payment gateway provider didn't appear on the page, I couldn't find it, as I have looked before.  It is in Beta Format but nevertheless it is there, and not in the IS level as per your matrix sheet.

Secondly - I will clarify the comment - I read over this and you are correct - it requires more detail - I went back to your site and read in more detail and I have read now that your store does in fact allow for unlimited products and that your 400.00 entry fee is a guideline only so it is not limited by products as that was my initial understanding when reading your feature matrix.  I thought you were limited to under 50 products, but it appears I was incorrect.

You will also find that the thousands of others who use this product are not the McDonalds or Disneys or Croc's.. or 3M, but are in fact, every day business people, marketing people, community people out there trying to make a go of things with the best tools and resources they have access to and many have been educated strongly about the fact this is an open source project, that entry level is cheap or next to nothing, that we don't need to spend alot of money to make things work.  

Making comments about toy or open source projects undermines the reason why many of the volunteers here give back to this project.  For some, it's not all about the money.  It is about providing an ecosystem that helps the world go around.  If there were not as many people interested in this project at the 'free level' it would diminish the opportunities you have to sell them something, so there is some value to be had with open source and there are some excellent free and almost free products around, and I believe you are almost inferring they can't be taken seriously.

I appreciate it will be endorsed by DNN - from what I understand, one board member has a vested interest in it, so of course it will be endorsed by them - it makse complete sense to do so, but based on your comments - I wonder now how this will leave the DNN store project team thinking that they are wasting their time on something that will never be endorsed by their own board, or taken seriously since it cost nothing but the time of others which you didn't have to get a return on.

When it comes to solutions, I am always looking at what's around, it would be foolish not to, and will look at aspdotnetstorefront objectively, since there is no reason not to, but in reference to your request to ask questions to the right people, it would help that you identify who you are, within the company, and why I should listen to you since in your posts, 4 overall at this point, there is no name, no reference, nothing, so in my opinion, not really qualified to ask direct questions to and get real answers.

So how about put a name to the post next time to add some credibility here and help others also identify quickly who we are talking to.

Thank you.

Nina Meiers
My Site  -  My Blogs  - Goodies - DNNSkins - Nina's Free Skins


Nina Meiers My Little Website
If it's on DNN, I fix, build, deploy, support,skin, host, design, consult, implement, integrate and done since 2003.
Who am I? Just a city chic, having a crack at organic berry farming.. and creating awesome websites.
 
New Post
4/30/2007 6:46 AM
 

AspDotNetStorefront wrote

.... We are not interested in those putting up stores for toy sites...

AND

....If you are trying to run a professional e-commerce web site on $9.95/month hosting plans, do not pick our solution. Find a toy cart instead.

Interesting choice of wording in your reply.  I assume that you think the carts offered by PayPal themselves is also a "toy cart."  The funny part about these egotistical and arrogant sort of statements is that "toy carts" are what built PayPal into a multibillion dollar busines.  Can or will the same every be said of AspDotNetStoreFront?  Probably not.

In my experience those who cast such dipsersions on those they consider "less than" themselves usually end up with major problems "down the road" a bit.  Usually with a whole lot less money than they thought they would have in their pockets.  The truth of business is that  "a quick nickel is a lot better than a slow dime." 

There is obviously a balance between price and service offered, but the winners are always the ones who manage to provide the least expensive service possible to the largest audience possible.  Just ask the telephone companies.  The last time you used call forwarding or *69 or call waiting you were using a very "cheap" service for which they charge "pennies" compared to what they might be able to get, but they are getting those "pennies" from millions of users eacy month.  (Which I might add totals to millions of dollars each month for a piece of software that runs unattended)

If you were as smart as you thought yourself to be, the following figures could probably hit the mark a little closer.

Last time I checked, DotNetNuke had a subscribership to it's site of around 350,000 distinct users.  At your prices you can probably expect around 2 to 5% market acceptance.  Not bad as that equates to sales of around $2.8 Million to $7 million at the piont where you have achieved one of those penetration rates.  Not bad for a year's work I grant you.

On the other hand, if you were charging a subscription model that allowed you to penetrate that same market for only $50.00 per year per site (chum change really), you might find a market penetration of much higher than that. perhaps as much as 25%.  Then the numbers would be $4.375 million per year if there were only one site per user.  Difference is that this would be ongoing and recurring revenue and you would not be constantly marketing and spending money to acquire new clients/customers.  And, the least expensive, most profitable client you will ever have is the one you already have who just keeps paying you.

If your annual subscription included periodic updates, you could virtually guarnatee yourself a growth curve of significance and tremendous value.

The model you have chosen, and decided not to go after the "toy" cart market has placed you squarely in the corsshairs of every other ecommerce vendor on the planet and you will be constantly defending your client base at great cost to you. No, you will not have to "deal" with the mom and pops of the world, but the I gues companies like PayPal (and their "toy" cart) and Godaddy, who both generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues are just clueless as to where the real ecommerce money is.

I think I'll just go build a "toy cart" that integrates DNN with PayPals basic cart seamlessly the way PayPal intended it to, so users of all sizes could implement a cart solution with PayPal in seconds, add products to any category they wish in seconds, take advantage of the millions PayPal has already spent on the "back office 'wheel' " and shipping solutions more arrogant programmers keep trying to re-invent so that both users and site owners can use it the way millions are used to it working and see if the "toy cart" model really does have the value I suspect it does.

Oh,,, by the way, have you ever reasearched just how many sites and companies started out with "toy carts" and grown in to large and profitable,,,, Oh, crap,,, that's right, eBay figured out that formula too and some of those very "mom and pops" with their toy carts are doing millions of dollars in business each year.  But I guess none of that is impressive enough for you.

Clay

 
New Post
4/30/2007 8:02 AM
 

Just to set the record straight... yet again.  DotNetNuke has and will continue to support and endorse the DotNetNuke Store module.  But just like many in the DotNetNuke community, including you Nina, we can support BOTH commercial and Open Source offerings since in many cases they are aimed at different markets.  The whole reason that the DotNetNuke open source store exists is because we actively sought out an ecommmerce module that could become an officially sponsored DotNetNuke project.  Without the backing of the DotNetNuke management team that would not have happened.  The open source project continues to have our full support, which is why we recently sought new leadership for that project to revive the team and get them moving forward again.  Rob Collins and his team laid a great foundation for the project, but due to life challenges was unable to provide the support that the community was desperately seeking.  With Rob's support a new project lead was found who could devote the time and energy needed for the project.

It is absolutely correct that PayPal offers a payment option that is used by many sites for building their ecommerce solutions, however, the PayPal solution is stricly a payment solution.  It does not deal with how you display products, search for products, or any of hundreds of other features that distinguishs a complete ecommerce solution from the payment solutions of PayPal.  And yes eBay does provide some of these services as well.  But try as you might, you do not see major online retail establishments using eBay.  Why is that?  It is because eBay also does not provide the breadth and depth of features offered by most commercial ecommerce packages.

The fact that there are lots of users who use and are successful with a pure PayPal or eBay or open source solution does not diminish the market need for a high-end ecommerce solution on DotNetNuke.  Businesses come in all sizes and shapes each with their own unique requirements, especially when it comes to ecommerce.  Some businesses are satisfied with the solutions that are available today for DotNetNuke, but I have spoken to dozens of business owners and consultants who have stayed away from running their or their client's ecommerce sites on DotNetNuke because they did not like the ecommerce solutions that were available.  These are the very people who are looking for a solution like Rob's AspDotNetStorefront.  So you may think that Rob's language in this thread is overly dismissive of these other solutions as being mere "toys", but that is partly because many of the businesses that are looking for ecommerce solutions have this same opinion.  You don't have to look far in these very forums to find people who are unhappy with Portal Store, or Catalook or the DotNetNuke Store module, and Rob may have the solution they are looking for, or he may not: that will be decided over time.  In the case of AspDotNetStorefront, I know that he has a backlog of customers who are more than willing to pay his asking price because they love his product but want to see it running on DotNetNuke. 

The fact that DotNetNuke started with a lot of free or nearly free modules does not mean that all of our solutions must cater to that audience.  There are an equal number of larger businesses who can and will pay much more for solutions that meet their needs.  You can even see that in the prices on Snowcovered.  3 years ago, it was almost unheard of for a module to charge more than $100 dollars.  Now it is becoming more and more common.  You even see some solutions, like Falafel's web planner, which costs much more than $100, and which sells very well.

In the end, my position is what it has always been.  I seek to promote the DotNetNuke platform.  If people don't want to use DotNetNuke because of the platform then the DotNetNuke team should seek to correct the platform, just as we have always done.  However, if people don't use DotNetNuke because they don't find any modules that suit their needs, then we should be open to looking at established Asp.Net vendors and encouraging them to port their products to the DotNetNuke platform.  Just because some people are happy with the current selection and price of the modules that already exist, does not mean that there are not a lot more potential DotNetNuke users who would gladly pay more for a different solution.


Joe Brinkman
DNN Corp.
 
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