Sales emails and identifying the sales channel

[clive]

Hi,

I receive an email each time one of my guides is sold, but the email simply says that a guide has been sold. It doesn’t tell me where the sale came from.

What I’d really like to be able to see is which channel each individual sale came through — for example VoiceMap web, App, Viator, or another reseller (white label).

I’ve also looked at the royalties report, but I’m finding it quite confusing because there are so many different selling prices so it’s difficult to work out exactly where the sales are coming from.

Is there currently a transaction-level report available which shows something like:

• Date
• Tour
• Language
• Sales channel/reseller
• Price paid
• Publisher royalty

I’d really like to understand how my different distribution channels are performing, particularly now that there are several different resellers involved.

Thanks!

[helene]

Hi @clive thanks for the question. At the moment, the best way to track tour downloads and sales is still through the Monthly Breakdown on your publisher dashboard.

What you can find on your dashboard report:
A summary of your Total Sales, Outstanding Royalties, and Total Units Downloaded.

A chart with the Monthly Breakdown of Downloads and Roaylties per tour.
Just above the chart, you’ll also see the option to export your sales and downloads as a csv. This breaks down the numbers per tour on a monthly basis, but not per channel.

To see the sales per channel, you can track the numbers on the Downloads table just below that. The table breaks down where each sale comes from. We give a detailed explanation of what each term means and includes in our documentation here.

We’ll look at how we can provide more info for all publishers but, right now, we only provide more detailed reporting for publishers on Pro and Premium plans on request, since it’s still a manual process.

[clive]

Thanks for clarifying. I can see the “Reseller” column in the Downloads table, but it appears to identify only whether a sale was made through a reseller. It doesn’t show which reseller was responsible.

Is there any way for publishers to distinguish between individual reseller channels — for example Viator, Awin, Expedia or other partners? Or is that information only available through the manual reporting offered to Pro and Premium publishers?

Ideally it would be great if the email received could state. Sale source: Viator or Sales Source: Web etc etc

Have a great day all!

[clive]

I’ve just noticed something else while looking for information about my Ronda tour. It is also listed on Booking com’s attractions site:

https://www.booking.com/attractions/es/pr4h1ljqvolq-ronda-self-guided-audio-tour-the-bridges-secret-prison.en-gb.html

Interestingly, the URL still contains the old Viator title, “The Bridge’s Secret Prison” , even though the current Viator listing has since been changed to “City of Dreams: A Ronda Self-Guided Audio Tour”.

The Booking listing currently has 21 reviews, while the current Viator listing has 30, and I recognise some of the reviews on Booking from Viator.

So I’m curious about how this distribution works. Is Booking receiving the tour listing and reviews through VoiceMap, through Viator, or through another reseller/distribution partner?

This is another example of why it would be really useful to be able to see exactly which reseller or distribution channel generated an individual sale.

[helene]

Hi @clive

Apologies, I see now I missed your previous comment. Going back to your question about individual resellers: the main reason we don’t show them on the publisher dashboard is the added complexity. We’re always adding new resellers and distribution partners, which is great for getting your tours in front of new audiences, but it makes displaying the details of each sale on the dashboard tricky, especially for publishers with several tours that have been listed across different channels for years.

The data from resellers also doesn’t come to us as neatly as you’d hope. When we list a tour on Viator, for example, it’s also sold through Tripadvisor, as well as through Viator’s partner sites. About a third of our Viator sales come through these partners, which include Booking.com and Expedia, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. The sales report we get from Viator separates Viator and Tripadvisor sales, but it groups all other partners under a single label, so we can’t tell which partner site a sale came from. Viator is currently our main reseller, but we also work with smaller, regional partners, which means the list of individual resellers for your tours can get quite long.

We do provide more detailed reporting on monthly sales and sales channels for publishers on Pro and Premium plans, as you mentioned. But we do have the same challenge with the Viator partner sites, so these reports usually focus on the transaction-level reporting you mentioned earlier.

On the Booking.com listing: they’re is one of Viator’s partner sites, so it pulls both the tour information and the reviews from Viator. Changes can take a while to reach partner sites and, unfortunately, it’s not something we can push through ourselves, which is why you’re still seeing the old name and fewer reviews there.

Thanks for the suggestion about including the sale type (web, in-app or reseller) in the notification email. We’re actually looking into this, along with other ways to improve reporting for all publishers.

To help with that, can you tell me what you’re hoping to get from a breakdown by reseller? For example, would knowing a sale came through Viator rather than Musement change how you price or promote the tour? If there’s anything else you’d find useful, let me know.

Thanks!