Notification of Support

i disagree, a lot of freelance work i get coes through my profile page and charging users to do this would affect things.

Perhaps a contact form on the item page that is only available to purchasers of the file, then yes if the author chooses they can charge for support.

Although i dont think this will happen without flashden taking a cut, as they would otherwise effectively be holding our money for us to use to buy other files on the site and they had not seen any of this money, they would effectively be paying the other authors their sales commision out of their own pockets. I suppose support funds could go into a different balance that can only be withdrawn, but again flashden has to process payout and would still need a cut. This all gets very complicated when you look into it a little deeper.

Jay

Hey fj, for freelance work can be 1000 other methods to contact an author… that wouldn’t be a problem…. you have a full profile page to instruct your customers on how to contact you…

Of course flashden will take a part from the sales of support tickets, as for any other item. I think that a sevice of this type would need also a staff supervision for any problem, so also flashden would have some costs to develop it…

But… if you actually get 20 support messages every day… also 2$ each would be better than nothing…

I think that we can stay one entire life saying that support is not mandatory, but we all know that at the end it is… because if you don’t offer it your sales are affected and also your image as author…. so we don’t need to be blind…

Every sale I make I know that in 60 minutes I will recieve an email of the buyer asking for something… and 9 times on ten is a question that is not caused by a bad file help or a bad programming…

something like “how do I change the color of this button” cannot be explained in an help file… we cannot teach how to use flash in our documentation…

most of the times these questions are made because laziness and it’s easier sending an email and get precise instructions than checking the file library…

So I’m glad to help, but if is not a problem caused by bugs or any author fault, I want to be paid also 2-3$ for the 5 minutes I need to read and reply back the solution. This is not support, this is consulting…

This is a complicated issue. I guess having the “no mandatory support” message at the point of sale isn’t the best idea. Some of the ideas posted here are a little extreme though.

A few suggestions:

1) On each item page, in the item info sidebar (on the right), add a section for “Author support available” – it can either be yes or no. This will make it absolutely clear to buyers if they can expect support or not.

2) This has been suggested several times, because it would probably reduce support questions – an FAQ tab on each item page that the author can edit. This will probably significantly impact the number of support questions. It’s time this got implemented – it’s been asked for enough.

3) Paying to contact people through their profile – bad idea. There is a lot of non-support related messaging done through profile pages. If someone has a support question related to a genuine problem with your file, you should do your best to fix it (if you’ve chosen to offer support). If you get people asking for free customization (e.g. how to change the color of a button) it’s easy to send them a “template” email saying you do not do customization work.

Obviously there are several conflicting opinions here. This issue seems to get brought up quite a lot – there’s an ongoing struggle between authors and buyers trying to come to some kind of understanding over support – but it never gets solved.

Once GraphicRiver gets out of beta, hopefully Envato will take a serious look at this issue. FlashDen could use some improvements, and it’s probably time for existing sites to be given some attention instead of trying to release a new site every three months.

Double post deleted

3) Paying to contact people through their profile – bad idea. There is a lot of non-support related messaging done through profile pages. If someone has a support question related to a genuine problem with your file, you should do your best to fix it (if you’ve chosen to offer support). If you get people asking for free customization (e.g. how to change the color of a button) it’s easy to send them a “template” email saying you do not do customization work.

I’ve said the same about bugs and about contacting authors for different needs.

By the way when you will start selling or buying here you will change your mind

By the way when you will start selling or buying here you will change your mind

You’re right, I probably will.

By the way when you will start selling or buying here you will change your mind

You’re right, I probably will.

Look, all my customers are very happy about my support…I’m always kind an very fast solving their issues and I want only happy customers…

...my problem is that I want to upload a great number of files, and if now with just 4 items I have mails everyday, I’m just looking for a solution for the future, to help them in the best way and to avoid that my customers will be disappointed because I cannot help them soon and in a good way because overloaded of support requests… if was available a system with clear rules, queue, notifications, rating… this would be useful for both authors and buyers…I’m not saying more than this…

... and I’m not asking flashden to develop this system… is just what I wish to work better…

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, there is ZERO possible way for flashden to gaurantee/enforce any support system on any level.

Many support requests are rediculous. Such as buyers asking how to make a file open a webpage in 3D and make the browser spin in circles. And no matter how many times you tell them it’s not possible, they say you’re wrong, untill you just ignore them and block them from your email.

Other questions I’ve gotten is stuff like “How do I make it load a video” when they bought an mp3 player. What, now since they bought an mp3 player I’m supposed to give them a video player too?

My list goes on and on, but the simple fact is that while a support system seems like a great idea when discussed in a forum, it has absolutely, completely, and zero chance of ever working in reality, because gauranteeing support of any kind opens the door for rediculous requests to not only become even more common, but also makes it so that they will have to be supported.

Rational requests and simple questions are answered/supported by almost all authors. If you search “dabamol support” in forums you’ll see dabamol is known to not offer support on any level, yet when you look at his item comments you’ll see that even he does answer rational and logical questions regularly. This just goes to show, support is there as long as your request is logical and plausible.

Support is not a problem, the current system works in the regard that completely idiotic/inept/illogical/ignorant requests can be ignored and simple logical requests are rewarded with faithful customers and good ratings if you reply, which is worth the 30 seconds it takes to respond.

Many support requests are ridiculous. Such as buyers asking how to make a file open a webpage in 3D and make the browser spin in circles.

That’s easy, throw your screen out the window, the other day I managed 7 spins with random rotation

Lately, I’ve started responding to crazy requests with crazy answers, it is quite efficient, they usually don’t come back!