After I finish creating my tour, can it only be sold through VoiceMap or can I sell the tours through my own website? And how does that work?
You can sell your tour through your own website using coupon codes. This is a code the user enters into the app to redeem a tour. Weād supply you with a list of codes in a spreadsheet. These codes can be valid for a single redemption or as many as you like, and we let you choose what youād prefer. From an implementation standpoint, most people find it easier to use a single code or a handful of codes with credits assigned to them, and then ātop upā the credits as they are used. You can monitor redemptions remaining on the codes on your dashboard. We sell the codes in minimum batches of 25 at $0.89 per code, and you can just let us know how youād like them arranged and weād send the codes along with an invoice. You can read a bit more about your options here: https://docs.voicemap.me/tour-publishers/sell-in-bulk/
I am also working on selling the tour on my website, and want to avoid responding manually, hence I will be using the bulk codes. To sell my live tours I used Fareharbor. Has anyone started using their booking system to automate the sales? I wonder if there is any other solution better suited for this product.
Hi Olga, and welcome to the forum!
I havenāt used Fareharbor, but my guess would be that they ask for a date at the time of the booking, which makes sense for guided tours. Is that correct? Weāve seen this create confusion with some users who wonder if theyāre meeting somebody at the starting point to pick up a device. They also wonder if they can use their voucher code on a different date. That said, I think Fareharbor will do, especially if youāre worried about integrating new tools, but there are probably better options.
Are you using WordPress for your website? There are some plugins that might make this easier, most of them built on top of WooCommerce. You can see an example from a London publisher here. And weāre actually using a third-party solution called Giftup for our gift cards that might work for what you have in mind.
Please let us know how you get on with this.
Hi Ian,
I can set it up as āretailā item in Fareharbor which does not have any date attached to it, so it will do for now. They even suggested an automated way to send out unique codes!
I do use wordpress, but I have an awful experience with woocomerce, granted it is from 4 years ago, so maybe it is not as clunky and rigid anymore. I guess I do not want to find out. Besides, it costs 300 dollars;D
Best,
Olga
Oh, well that sounds perfect then! Do you have a link to somewhere on the Fareharbor site that describes setting this up?
It is a sort of a workaround, so there is not a help doc I am afraid. I will let you know when this starts functioning for me.
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I am wondering if you guys at Voicemap have some template of detailed instructions we can use on our āafter purchaseā emails for customers that buy on our website?
Best,
Olga
We do Olga. Iāve delayed replying because weāre adding these to our tutorial in a section that will deal with vouchers at some length. This is going up early next week. Weāll update you here when that happens.
In the meantime, here are the instructions we use for Viator bookings:
If this is your first VoiceMap tour, please take a moment to read the important notes below.
ā¤
DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS:
- Install VoiceMap from the Apple App Store or Google Play
- Create an account
- Select Tour Codes from the menu, then select Enter Codes
- Enter the code below then select Download Now
YOUR CODE: XMPL3298
This code can be used by every member of your party. If you have booked for three people, for example, three people can download this tour using the same code. Codes are not case sensitive.
ā
PLEASE ALSO NOTE:
- You can download the tour at any time, before or after your booking date.
- Itās best to download the tour before you set off for the starting point.
- When the download completes, youāll see a screen with a photo of the starting point and directions to it. The red start button will become active when your are at the starting point.
- The download should only take a few minutes to complete. If it takes longer, please cancel the download, go to Account, select Purchased and download the tour from there.
- Remember to bring your own headphones, unless you have booked a driving tour.
SUPPORT:For technical support and other queries, please email support@voicemap.me
Viator only allows ASCII in its messages, which is why the symbols are so basic. You can make the message a little prettier by using Unicode emojis.
The instructions under YOUR CODE might need to be a little different depending on how youāve set up your codes, i.e. whether you have unique codes or one code valid for multiple copies of your tour.
Thank you! This is what I was after 
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Hi Iain, is the tutorial you mentioned already out somewhere? Keen to have a look.
There are two parts to this Olga:
- This, about how users access your tour overall
- This, about the voucher dashboard and the best instructions to include with your vouchers
Please let me know if you find any of it confusing! Suggestions are also welcome. Our documentation is a work in progress.
4 months on, it is working! My Edinburgh architecture tours are now available to buy on my website www.cobbletales.com via Fareharbor. You can check out how it looks on the front end. Fareharbor is a booking management system that takes a percentage fee from every online booking. This is not too straightforward, Iād call it a work around.
There were a few purchases, seems to work fine, I know a few coupons were used, and people have returned to buy more (yey!). It is all fully automated and I will share how I had it set up. The following is full of Fareharbor jargon, you have been warned:)
1.The audio tours are set up as a RETAIL ITEM, the same kind of an item as a gift card. This way it does not require dates.
2.Then one just sets up the ITEM as any other.
3. Add download instructions to the ITEM CONFIRMATION NOTES. I added the starting point to it as well as the location does not show for retail items as part of the confirmation email.
4.Coupon codes generated on the voicemap dashboard are added as CAMPAIGN CODES. CAMPAIGN is set up with a name that will be used in confirmation emails preceding the codes. Codes can be added to the campaign in bulk, by copy pasting from an csv file that you exported from voicemap. When someone purchases an audiotour, they receive an email with the codes from that campaign. As many codes as there are tickets on the purchase. In the same email the customer receives instructions how to use the above mentioned codes, etc. Voila! My tip is to ask voicemap to generate codes that start with fh so you can tell which coupons were for fareharbor!
- The confusing bit is that Fareharbor uses the term āmaximum usesā in two different places for different purposes. Under CAMPAIGN, the maximum use is set to 0 and it changes to 1 when the code has been sent out to the customer.
However, under CODE GENERATOR in CUSTOM FIELDS āmaximum usesā needs to be set to 1, so codes are sent only one and only time.
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Test all your items by buying your own tour, there is a lot of room for mistakes.
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You will see that fareharbor adds a booking fee of minimum Ā£1. I have chosen to absorb this fee and it is set up with what fareharbor call āeat the feeā in custom fields.
Fareharbor has been very helpful in working it out, but you have to make sure they understand what you are trying to do, and most importantly you need to know what you are trying to achieve with this. Now that it is functioning, possibilities are infinite.
I think that ultimately for the customer buying on voicemap app directly is much easier than faffing with the website booking, but this way you earn more on sales.
ps this does not work for viator api.
If you need help setting this up, let me know:)
Olga
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Thank you for taking to time to share this Olga!
A number of our publishers use Fareharbor. Iām going to send your post to them.
Thereās another excellent implementation of this by Michele Davis at thatgirlinvictoria.com/self-guided-audio-tours.
@alicia, could you ask Michele if sheād mind sharing how she did this?
Hiya Olga,
Iām currently at the stage you were when you got on this thread in January 2021! I work as a guide in Coventry and Stratford and sell tickets through Fareharbor for those, but I also did online tours for Heygo back in the day, so Iāve got a load of local places where I did the research and have the scripts and now am finally getting around to converting these into Voicemap tours. My first one should be ready to go in a few days, but the rest will be something Iāll probably not now have the time for until after high season.
Iām very impressed with your website and I would like to use parts of your approach as a template for my own, but more generally I was wondering, five years later how it is working out? You were concerned about the amount of work which might have been involved in individually issuing codes, so Iām guessing this is automatic and doesnāt really need keeping an eye on much?
I was especially wondering about how the finances work out, not how much you making of course! But what is the difference between selling direct via Voicemap and through Fareharbor?
I know itās a while on from this post, but sheās now not using Fareharbor.
The āBuy Nowā button links directly to Voicemap.
Weāve added a section to our documentation on using Fareharbor: Selling tours through FareHarbor | VoiceMap Tour Publisher Documentation
Hopefully this is what youāre looking for.
What I am looking for really is a contact at Fareharbor who has helped with setting up the sale of Voicemap tours before, as I am getting nowhere with the people I have dealt with there in the past. I currently sell IRL walks via Fareharbor, but want a completely different profile for doing Voicemap tours, as I hope the one I have just published will be the first of many and various different locations. Iāve seen other guides suffer from confusion when having both in-person and audio tours for sale side-by-side and people mixing them up!
I have read the guide, but there are some elements of that I feel need to be completed by someone from Fareharbor, or at least Iād like to know there is someone there who should be the first point of call.
We donāt actually have a dedicated FareHarbor contact for this, since we donāt hold an account with them ourselves. The recommendations in our documentation is a workaround using their retail item and campaign code features, not an official FareHarbor product, so their general support should team should be able to help you with this.
When you contact them, describing the mechanism helps more than naming VoiceMap. Youāre selling a digital product via a retail item, and want to send a unique code per customer through a campaign, with maximum uses set to 1 on both the campaign and the code generator field.
On the separate profile question, Iād also recommend asking their support directly, but you might be overcomplicating it and should be able to set it all up in one account.
Thereās actually an easy website fix or the mix-up youāre worried about. Give your audio tours its own dedicated page rather than lumping it in with your other tours. At the top of the page, explain what a self-guided, GPS-triggered tour is before linking through to the tours. This way users know exactly what theyāre buying.
Where Now Tours does this well: same company, in-person walks and VoiceMap audio tours kept in totally separate sections, with a simple page for the audio side explaining what you need before the buy link.
Frieda Vizel has a great video at the top of her audio tour webpage that explains exactly what listeners can expect from the tour.
Weāre happy to help with anything on our end (setting up voucher codes, credits, redemptions) that youāll need for the integration.