Get Ready for the Season

Whether you like it or not, Christmas is just around the corner and Internet sales usually spike during this time. To make sure you can capture as many sales as possible we have created a Holiday Gift Guide with nicely categorized products. Your customer can search by category and by price and we've made sure there is something for everyone. We've put a link on every page of the storefront so they can't miss it.

Banners
If you have your own web site (click here if you don't) you can put some great new banners on it and capture those sales directly from you site. Go to the promotional tools after logging into you reseller account and get the HTML code for these banners.
Good luck and feel free to shop around yourself.

Systemax Built-to-Order Systems, updated and perfected

If you have been selling Systemax Built-to-Order machines in the past and found that the systems were a bit outdated, we don't blame you. Today however, marks a special day in the history of our company. We have implemented new software that gives us the ability to update product information from Systemax and others, almost on the fly.

What does this mean for you?
First of all we now have a much larger product offering, including servers and even data storage products. It also means that we will always have the best pricing available which means you can make more money and still be competitive. But most of all, the system is error-free. Where we used to have price discrepancies in the past, we now have a very robust system that has proved to be flawless. We will be adding other manufacturers to this system soon, including MPC and Gateway.

How do you get there?
Just go to your storefront (under sales), and click on "custom pc's" in the top menu bar.

Microsoft Action Pack Subscription changes

If you are one the many resellers with a Microsoft Action Pack subscription you have probably received a phone call or email explaining the upcoming requirements for receiving the quarterly Action Pack.

For those of you not familiar with the Action Pack Subscription, this is Microsoft's explanation:

The Microsoft Action Pack is available exclusively through the Microsoft Partner Program. It can be the start of an ongoing relationship with Microsoft that becomes even more valuable over time.
The Action Pack subscription includes a Welcome Kit and four quarterly updates. You get new Microsoft software for your business use, access to special partner training materials, and sales and marketing tools to grow your business.

To put it simply, for a mere $300 you will get sales and marketing material but more importantly, the latest operating systems for both server and desktop, Office applications and much more. This is all for demo and internal purposes and not for resale but it can save you thousands of dollars every year for your company. Since there were no requirements for receiving all this, Microsoft has been sending out these Action Packs to anyone willing to pay $300.

As of November 30th this will change. The official reason is that Microsoft resellers increasingly found action packs with customers, preventing them from selling real licenses.

Whatever the reason, a new online-training and assessment requirement will go into effect November 30, 2007. New and renewing subscribers will be required to take any Microsoft E-Learning course and then pass its associated assessment with a minimum score of 70 percent. To continue receiving your Microsoft Action Pack Subscription, you will be required to pass an assessment every two years. You can take these free classes here.

Classes range from sales to technical and cover most of Microsoft's products. By the end of the year there should be more than 1,000 classes available. And you don't have to take them all.
I was assured on the phone by Microsoft that anyone with more than average computer knowledge should be able to reach the required 70%.

I'd love to hear from you how this goes so we can pass that on to other resellers. In case you need help, you can always call the Microsoft Partner desk at (800) 993 7764.

Making old work with new

As more and more manufacturers eliminate legacy ports from their motherboards, customers sometimes end up having to make a choice between sticking to an old PC that has the ability to connect to their older peripherals, or having to buy new peripherals because they decided to upgrade to a new PC.

Although there is nothing wrong with having your customer buy additional peripherals like printers or scanners, some of them might have proprietary equipment like bar-code scanners, cash registers or other products that cost a lot more to upgrade.

With the three devices below they can connect thier old equipment, including keyboards and mice to thier new PC. One advice: check with the peripheral manufacturer to make sure they support this.

From	Product	NDPC sku
PS2 to USB	Trendnet USB to PS2 adapter	2132748
Serial (9 pin) to USB	Sabrent 6 foot USB 2.0 to serial adapter cable	3251473
Parallel to USB	Cable to Go 6 Ft USB to Parallel adapter	6844511

Beta version is ready for testing

We have just uploaded our second version of our ResellersOnly.com Beta site, version 1.1. We have added robust error trapping and worked out some bugs we found after the first release.

Please feel free to test it but please read the notes below before you do (the URL is at the bottom)

1) If you want to give us feedback, please include a URL and describe what you were doing if you experienced an error. Please send any feedback to betafeedback@nextdaypc.com . We do encourage feedback and we certainly use it, but we do not reply to these emails

2) Some areas on the web site appear to have links but do not function as such. This is intentional, these areas are not finished and will appear in a future version.

3) You can use your current reseller ID and password to log in.

4) The old site will be available until we launch the production version of the site here: http://www.resellersonly.com/login.asp

Ok, here we go: http://www.resellersonly.com/member

Have fun and please let us know what you like, dislike and if you experience any issues.