After 1000 FaceIt downloads in 3 days via download.com and no sales, I'm starting to worry there's something wrong. Logs show over 300 hits to our Buy page, many of them with the demo expired, and many consecutive attempts from the same IP - as if something wasn't working. However, I can't see anything wrong.

Could you please donwload the FaceIt demo (only 2.4 MB, here (http://www.mrio-software.com/demos/faceit_demo_installer.exe)), open it, and try to use any of the in-game buy now button? It should open an Explorer window, take you to our site, and the site should redirect you to the eSellerate shopping cart, with FaceIt selected.

Please let me know if you have any trouble. Thanks a lot!

Works fine to me! :D

great game by the way :)

eSellerate strangeness for me. I sent you some e-mail.

Worked fine for me...I tried all the Buy buttons that I could find. You might also try using the integrated eSellerate SDK...we did this and it was really easy to add.

I did find the game really hard to play...mainly because it took too much mental work for me to find matches...so, it was more work than fun IMO.

I really like the music and our artist commented that he liked the movie theater theme.

Hope this info helps...good luck,
-Scorpio

The buy button worked here.
I agree with Scorpio, it's a little bit laborious to find the matches.

Downloaded the game three times but always when I tried to open the file I got message:

"install corrupted or in incomplete.
This could be the result of a failed download or corruption from a virus.
If desperate, try /NCRC command line switch (NOT recommended)"

Gambett, I'm assuming people haven't experienced the same problems buying Betty's Beer Bar from your web site?

Also, a quick question for you...how do sales of Betty's Beer Bar on your site compare to sales on other sites?

- Roulette

Worked fine for me, although I could not get back in the game after visiting the eSelerate store. It may have something to do with my dual monitor setup. Eventually I had to hit CTRL-ALT DEL to terminate the game.

Works fine here.

altough I don't like the game - but hey... I'm no puzzle oriented dude... I think those faces are too hard to see. perhaps it's in my eye, but I have no... well - EYE for this.

Worked for me.

Thank you all for your feedback.

Joe : That's not good... but it's almost impossible to reproduce for me, since I don't have a dual monitor setup. What do you mean, exactly, by "I can't go back"?

Scorpio : I don't see any strong reason to use the SDK. Can you share any?

Alex_Code : With what tool did you try to download?

Roulette : About BBB, I haven't really looked, but with FaceIt I find strange to have 1K downloads and no sales. Maybe download.com really doesn't generate good traffic after all. About sales, I think we sold 5 or 6 copies from our site last month :( We definitely should improve our direct sales, but for now we are targeting the big distributors.

Morphecy : I'm not a puzzle oriented dude either. I have MOHAA in my CD right now :) But as a developer, I'm a $$$ oriented dude ;) (before everyone starts insulting me, please read this (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=22224#post22224))

I have the same problem as Alex_Code, can download ok but cant open, I get the same error message.

AFAIK, the downloads from the download.com counters are about double than the real downloads generated by download.com Can someone confirm this?

Originally posted by Razz
I have the same problem as Alex_Code, can download ok but cant open, I get the same error message.
What do you download it with?

Originally posted by Diodor
AFAIK, the downloads from the download.com counters are about double than the real downloads generated by download.com Can someone confirm this?
It look more like 40%-50% more for us, but it's a small sample (cca. 1000 downloads counted by download.com, versus cca 700 hits in the web logs).

ggambett, the buy link works fine for me, although the music keeps playing while the game is minimized, which I find quite annoying.

Originally posted by Scorpio
You might also try using the integrated eSellerate SDK...we did this and it was really easy to add.
Did you happen to notice any difference in conversion ratio when you did this? Can you atleast share what percentage of your sales come from the integrated eSeller? Thanks.

What do you download it with?

No accelerator, just normal windows download on NT 4.0

Joe : That's not good... but it's almost impossible to reproduce for me, since I don't have a dual monitor setup. What do you mean, exactly, by "I can't go back"?
The game remains minimized while viewing your web store. When I click on your game to get it back to focus it doesn't respond and therefore I can not play the game.

My setup:
Dual 733mhz Intel
2 TNT2 graphic cards
1g ram

For those that asked about eSellerate (and integrated eSellers vs web eSellers) here's some info that I hope you find useful.

(note that we use Armadillo for our main "hipsoft" versions...but we work with a lot of different distribution partners so we end up supporting many of the various DRMs out there)

Because our Buy Now button brings up the integrated eSellerate purchase process (instead of going to the eSellerate purchase page) ...only about 15% of the purchases come from the web site.

A few reasons to consider the integrated eSellerate over the web eSeller include:

Smoother purchase process since the user doesn't have to leave full-screen mode and get (abrubtly) kicked back to the desktop to buy via the web page (I agree that this is debatable).

Less chance of a user getting distracted (new email, instant messages, etc.) when they are back at the desktop (and out of your game) and possibly not following through with their original intent to purchase.

User doesn't have to type in any registration keys.

Unfortunately, the eSellerate servers often take 10-20 minutes to update and activate a new registration key after a web purchase. This means that if a user purchases via the web and then immeidately tries to unlock their game...it can fail and you have to include in your error message...something like..."please wait 10-20 minutes after your purchase for the servers to update". This is border-line unacceptable IMO (on eSellerate's part). Note that this may only be the case if you are using activation counts on keys (which we use).

I believe that using the integrated eSeller makes it *much* easier to participate in the affiliate program. You don't even need to make a custom build (eSellerate will do this for each affiliate to tag it with their affiliate ID).

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Of course, there's some advantages to using the web eSeller as well:

Some users feel more comfortable purchasing via a web page.

You can't do cross-promotions such as "buy our other game now and get $5 off" at the time of checkout (this can be very powerful IMO).

The integrated eSeller adds about 200k to your install because of the eSellerateEngine.dll file.

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We just started using eSellerate in December because of a new partner...so I'm by no means an expert on it. Their support has been great (although setting up a new product on their web site is a bit complex IMO).

Note that I am not saying one is better than other. My original statement was just a suggestion to consider adding it.

Good luck,
-Scorpio

ggambet: With Opera 7.03, but downloaded the file once again and now there was no error.

And yes, buy now buttton lead me to the shopping cart with FaceIt selected. Only thing I noticed that didn´t seem too logical was that if you have already clicked buy now button n times before, then quantity of the games in shopping cart next time you will click buy now will be n+1. Have you done it like that by intention?

Originally posted by Scorpio
Unfortunately, the eSellerate servers often take 10-20 minutes to update and activate a new registration key after a web purchase.
Just to clarify - this delay only applies if you use their software activation API, right? They do deliver the full version download links/serials via email in timely manner (less then 5 minutes)?

Originally posted by Alex_Code
And yes, buy now buttton lead me to the shopping cart with FaceIt selected. Only thing I noticed that didn´t seem too logical was that if you have already clicked buy now button n times before, then quantity of the games in shopping cart next time you will click buy now will be n+1. Have you done it like that by intention? [/B]
Hmmm. No. The URLs may need some tweaking... thanks.