What is the system for a restaraunt?

[Doug Franklin]

Let's say a local hot-dog restaurant wants to display high tech wise there specials for the day. If they already have wireless internet available they obviously have a full time internet connection. Then hardware wise they would need a cheap computer with decent monitor (flat screen seems the way to go?) and we could set up the Kiosk. Would they be set up to modify the content on their own? If so, does the installer sort of lose contact with the customer at that point? Or do you think the installer could maintain contact by providing content update services??? May be a time consuming effort and hard to charge for?

If the hot-dog guy wants multiple screens, what hardware would be install? I am familiar with video cards and a video output, but what can we hang on them? I guess the output is typically an RCA jack and we would want to run coax. Once it is in coax format, we can split it and amplify it as necessary and then just feed less expensive TVs I guess? Would the resolution be good enough if converted to show on a TV?

So, let's price such a setup for the hot-dog guy. He could use the full 10 pages (more I guess if commits to full year payment?) and not have an add-on of additional pages. We would let him buy a cheap computer and he has internet access already. He would have to buy a subscription priced from $54 to $69 depending on length of commitment? Is there a formal contract? Is the month to month pricing without contract?

Are you thinking a marketing strategy is to set the hot-dog guy or whoever up with a free subscription and get them interested and then get them to commit to a yearly or whatever contract?

[mjstrand]

First off, I'm thrilled that the hot-dog restaraunt is going high tech. by using this product, they'll dominate the world market of hot dogs. Hee hee.

Once you set up a customer, you will lose some contact with them unless you keep working with them on your own for other things. You could probably offer content update services, and I could have also. I prefer to come up with products that dont require much of my own time so that I can sell more units, and just let the monthly revenues roll in for the subscriptions. If you decide to do the updating for the customer, you can probably get lots of revenue from that customer, but you wont have time to sell more of these, making you work harder for less overall money. Obviously, you should be getting at least $100 per hour (once you know what you are doing) to initially put in the system, plus you will make a percentage on the hardware that you buy at a reseller discount. I suspect that the initial kiosk design will be done by you as well as charging for training the customer on how to do it themselves.

Right now, if you log into the reseller area and purchase you will receive a discount on the order, and then you can charge the customer directly at the retail price. If you just let the customer pay for the renewal directly through our site with their credit card, then you will get the affiliate percentage as a credit on account which you can request a check or paypal payment after your credit exceeds $50. If you dont pre-order for the customer, and they initially pay for the subscription, you will only get the affiliate percentage as well. Essentially, if you pay us, you get a higher discount off the purchase (immediate money in your pocket). If we charge the customer, then you get a lower percentage that is in our savings account until you exceed the $50 (you can use the credit balance for additional pre-purchases or your own subscription at any time though). I hope this is making some sense.

As for the hardware, if there are multiple screens playing the same "channel" (the same content), I recommend that you buy a VGA to TV converter (there are a couple listed on the site). Connect that to a cheapo VCR to take the RCA jack and convert it to channel 3 or 4 over standard coax cable (depending on how the VCR is set up). The Coax cable can then be split (and amplified if necessary) to go hundreds of feet to all the TV's. Pricing is about $60-80 for the VCR to TV converter, $30-$40 for the VCR, a couple bucks for the coax splitter and 10-20 for an amplifier. We also have found a wireless TV transmitter that goes 125 feet that may eliminate the need for the VCR and all the cable stuff. I think the price was about $150 for one transmitter and one receiver. (all prices are rough reseller costs, not retail). As for resolution, the entire system was designed to work with TV's. The nice part is that the VGA resolution works great at 800x600, so cheapy VGA to TV converters work well.

When the hot dog guy buys a subscription, he gets 50 pages and 3 gigs of bandwidth which is enough to run 8:00 am to 5:00 pm 5 days a week with lots of weather and stocks (they chew up extra bandwidth because our server has to get the data as well as feed it out). Images also chew up more bandwidth. If they want to run multiple computers with the same "channel", that will also chew up more bandwidth. You can see the pricing for everything at http://www.online-kiosks.net/pricing.html. If they want two "channels", then they would buy an additional location as well as their primary subscription.

As for the pricing, the price depends on what he wants to purchase. If he wants the annual pricing, then he will pay $54.95 times 12 months right up front (around $600). If he had an additional location too, then he would pay $29.95 times 12 plus $54.95 times 12. If the cstomer decides to purchase month by month, then your discount would be the affiliate percentage. You as a reseller cannot purchase this for them. It is in your best interest to sell as much as you can up front to keep all of our efforts lower with fewer renewals.

To further confuse things, lets say that the customer buys the 12 month subscription, and after 2 1/4 months, they need to buy One additional location. The order system will not allow them to buy additional subscription time. The customer can select how many additional locations, pages or bandwidth packages that they want to buy. The price is automatically calculated to fill out the remainder of the subscription. Since there is 9 3/4 months left, it will use the quarterly pricing ($36.95) and multiply that by 9.75 for a total of $360.26. Since they purchased it from the site, you will receive the affiliate percentage as a credit on your account.

As for the marketing strategy, right now, I'm offering everyone 1 month of free trial usage. I'm hoping that we can get people interested in signing up, looking at, and liking the system. When they are runnnig and have their hardware installed, they will have the hard part over and will continue to renew. I suspect that as a reseller, you will want to do the entire installation yourself, including signing them up for a demo so that you can immediately get the customer as a subscriber. The other approach you can take is to just send them to the site with your special affiliate link, and hope that the customer eventually buys something and you get your affiliate percentage. That is a much lower chance of success than if you work the customer and get them signed up.

[Doug Franklin]

A couple of other thoughts/questions I had over the weekend. I want to try to test market the concept here in Milwaukee. So my thought is to approach a few customer potentials and see if there is interest. I'm thinking it would be interesting to contact them and have a page or two already done and ready to pull up when calling on them. If I do this, can I some how set up a couple of pages without messing up the system? For example, our hot-dog guy. Could I go online in advance of meeting with him, put in his basic information of company name, address, etc. and then maybe a one or two fake pages of promotion and a page or two of weather or whatever and then go demo it to him online? I would create a fake used id and password. If it did not go anywhere, we could go in and scrub it. But my thought is that if I can actually demo the slideshow, it will sell itself.

Another question is in regards to how you handle customers who I may have approached, but who then come direct. I am wondering for instance for those companies with their own IT guy or uncle or whoever that does their IT, will they try to go direct and I lose the commission. Since it appears a typical sale effort will probably involve several face to face sales calls, I would hate to lose out if this happens? I am not proposing an exclusive in the territory unless you think that is possible? I just want to make sure I understand the ground rules before I invest a lot of time and effort in the product.

I am very excited about the possibilities with this product! I believe it will be very attractive to many small to medium sized companies too. I think the smaller ones will want to pay by credit card monthly thus my questions above. In your experience, do you feel there are other key products or services which fit well with your Onlne-Kiosk product? I want to add some other related products to have a compete package for customers. At this time, I have web conferencing, web casting, remote server maintenance, and sales/marketing planning. I have looked at numerous other products, like ACT/Sales Logics contact software, etc. but they are totally consuming. I want to be consultative in my efforts with these customers to help them grow their business so I don't want to have too much focus on one main product line.

[mjstrand]

As for setting up people to demo to, you can add as many customers as you like to the system. The tricky part is that the email confirmation goes to the customer if you actually type that in. We don't allow any single email address to be in the system more than once, so you will have to create a special email address. If you want a customer account removed, send an email to us and we'll take care of that. We will work on creating a special reseller only option to create a "special customer" that assigns the customer to you and also skips the email confirmation page.

As for customers who come on directly, as long as they a) have clicked on your special link or b) use the account you already set up for them, they are assigned to you when they are created. When the IT guy purchases the system direct from us, you receive the affiliate commission (as long as they dont fill in a new installer code on their order). You will only get the higher reseller discount if you pay for their subscription. So, you will get something if they bypass your installation services, but not as much.

If the IT guy signs up for an entirely new account without clicking on your special link to get the online-kiosks.net site, then you'll get nothing. Therefore, it is important that you send all your communications with your special link so that you get the money. My past experience has found that exclusive territory is beneficial only for undeveloped countries where we cannot handle all the issues involved. I really expect this system to take off quickly with all the promotions we are doing, so exclusivity is not available. Since you are an early reseller, you will be able to get many more customers "assigned" to you by doing lots of promotions with your special link (or even creating the accounts). Even if other resellers use their special link later on, if the customer already has an activated trial account, you get the credit for the sales (unless the customer purposely overrides the default installer code). Its kindof like seeds that have your name on them. The more seeds you plant while there are no other farmers, the quicker they will grow and they will overshadow all the new seeds from other resellers. Perhaps I should stay away from analagies!!!

I am glad that you are excited about this product too! I would very much appreciate it if you would log into your kiosk account, click on BackGround, and enter in a quote. It adds your comment to the customer feedback area of the site and also gets a link to your site. If you havent added your special link to your site yet, you should seriously consider that too because it starts the "seeding" process of putting your name on the customer. Remember that they must sign up for an account within 1 week of clicking on your link.

As for other products or services, I'm not sure beyond the hardware components we've already talked about. Since there are so many categories of uses (teller lines, employee break areas, lobbies), they all would have different supplemental products and services. Some of yours sound like good prospects. I agree that contact management and accounting systems would take way too much customization to satisfy every customer.

I really appreciate all the feedback and questions, and would love to hear them from your potential customers as well. Thanks again!