I was interviewed last week by a local blogger about what Manfred Macx is all about, and she just posted it.  If you’re looking for a better understanding of what we’re doing here, or just want to check out a lovely portrait of me taken by my wife on short notice, check it out.

We reached our goal!  $515 and counting for Reach Incorporated!

Well, half week one, anyway.  I know that in many respects, the internet is closed for the weekend, so it makes sense to look at Wednesday (launch) to Friday (now) as our first week.

It’s been a good week.  We’ve raised $185 towards our goal of $500 (with all the money raised going to Reach Incorporated).  That’s 37%.  Not bad for a couple of days.

Next, we need some new authors.  Raising money for charity with my book is great, but if this little venture is going to succeed, we need to help some authors make a living.  Do you have a book you want to sell?  Do you have a friend or a loved one, perhaps, who you know has a book in them, but might be afraid of letting it out?  We want to help.  We want to help you find your audience, connect with them, and give them something they’re eager to pay for.  If you or someone you know is interested, let us know.  Or, sign up for an account and follow the instructions to become one of our authors.

At long last, ManfredMacx.com is live.

We’re launching tomorrow.  Manfred Macx will be open for business.  It’s been quite a long time coming, but barring unforeseen disaster (and, if necessary, in spite of it), tomorrow the wait will be over.

We are very excited, and more than a little terrified of what’s to come.

I’ve been chatting this morning with Mark Hecker, Executive Director of Reach Incorporated, about the plans for the launch of ManfredMacx.com.  And then I saw this post come up at Techdirt.

A fascinating new study has shown that “pay what you want” offerings seem to maximize the net take for those using it if they include charitable giving. The study was done at an amusement park, where people could buy a photo of themselves on a roller coaster, and four different situations were tested: (1) the standard “pay a fixed price” (2) a straight “pay what you want” (3) fixed price with part of the money going to charity and (4) pay what you want with part of it going to charity.

What’s amazing is that the fourth one was the best one in terms of the net amount to the seller (yes, after giving the portion to charity). Sales were much higher and the net dollar amount to the seller was much higher than the straight “pay what you want.”

“Pay what you want” is definitely one aspect of the model at ManfredMacx.com, so it’s wonderful to see that a partnership with a charity can be beneficial to everyone involved.

That said, we are proud to announce that the money raised with our first book is going to Reach Incorporated.  They find students who are struggling with reading, help them to be better readers themselves, and help them teach younger children to be better readers, as well.

We’ll have more details soon, so be sure to check back.

Anyone paying attention has been hearing this for quite some time, but we’re really almost ready to launch ManfredMacx.com.  It’s been a long and eventful road, but it really is almost time to start publishing some books.

The first book we’re going to publish is my 2002 National Novel Writing Month effort, The Dance of the Ducks.  All the proceeds will be donated to charity, so if you want me to call you on your birthday, you can make that happen, and know that your money is going towards a good cause.  And the novel still has an unnamed character, so the naming rights will be available, too.

And if you have a novel you’d like to publish, let us know.  We’d love to talk to you about your book.

ManfredMacx.com has a merchant services provider!  Nothing is set up yet, so we can’t launch the site, but this is the last piece of the puzzle.  All that remains is getting the information to connect to the card processing system, writing a bit of code, and then finding some authors who want to sell some scarcities!

Direct Connect is the company that’s going to process cards for us.  So far, everyone there has been really helpful.  I’ll keep updating as we really get a sense of what it’s like to work with them.

No one should be surprised when a website launches late – the bigger surprise is when things go as planned.  Manfred Macx is no exception.  However, the primary reason the site isn’t live now is that I grossly underestimated how hard it would be to find someone to process credit card transactions.

So, to help those out there with a great idea but just as clueless as I was about what it takes to get a merchant services account, here are things I’ve learned.

1. Forget PayPal.  Sure, they’ll approve you when others won’t, but this is just so they can take the first month’s fee.  They don’t actually do any review of your business model when you sign up.  They take your fee, then when you try a test transaction to make sure you’re connected properly with their API, they’ll lock your account for review.  Had they bothered to read the information they took when I signed up, they would have known that my business plan violated their terms of use.  They chose not to read, and I wasted a few weeks thinking my problems were solved.  Their customer service is great for the purchaser, but TERRIBLE for the merchant.  Stay away.
2. Collecting money on behalf of a third party is risky. I never really thought about it, but there’s a big difference between “the customer pays you, then you deliver the product”, and “the customer pays you and someone else delivers the product”.  Even if you don’t see the difference, the underwriter will.  It’s important to know who is responsible for making the customer happy.
3. There will be more chargebacks than you expect. You may think your customers will love the service you provide, and maybe they will, but your merchant services provider will assume that many of them will be unhappy and want chargebacks.  Lots and lots of chargebacks.
4. Merchant services providers have bad websites. Don’t know why.
5. There are more layers than you realize. I thought, going in, that I would find someone to process credit cards.  But in most cases, you need the front end (Authorize.net, for most providers) and the back end (First Data is the largest, but there are tons).  Plus you need a bank.  And you’ll probably run into resellers, where you make a deal with Company X, but the application actually goes to Company Y, and Company Z actually processes transactions.  It all seems sketchy to me.
6. The application will be unintelligible, and mostly boilerplate. It annoys me to no end that legal documents intended for non-lawyers are so ridiculous.  Being a lawyer is hard – ask anyone who’s gone to law school.  Reading a basic legal document shouldn’t be hard.

So, I have two promising leads on the table.  If neither one of them pans out, I’m going to try Amazon’s services.  They do the processing for two websites with similar models (Kickstarter and IndieGoGo).  But Amazon is notorious for cutting off partners who annoy them (see:  MacMillan, the states charging them sales tax).  I hesitate to depend on Amazon for a vital part of my business.

I’ll keep you posted on progress.  We’re ready to go once we have a credit card processor.

It’s getting closer and closer to launch time.  Manfred Macx is looking for authors interested in taking control of their book and using free infinite goods to sell more of something else.  Leave a comment here or send us an email if you’re interested.  We’ll even let you poke around the private alpha release of the website so you can get an idea of how it’s going to work and what you’re getting yourself into.

Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.  There’s still plenty of work to do, but the site launch is getting close.  It will only get more exciting as launch gets closer, so drop us a line if you want to get involved.