A Guide to Sell Digital Downloads Online using a PHP Shopping Cart
Digital goods, electronic goods, digital products or e-goods are anything you can sell that is in a digital format. The types of products include ebooks, software, website templates, music, videos, license codes, ringtones and pdf tutorials. The costs of adding a digital item to a shopping system is very small so it can be a great way make a steady income.
A PHP shopping cart with add to cart buttons can be combined with selling digital downloads as used in the PHP-eSeller application.
Here are just a few of the advantages to selling digital downloads using a specially designed PHP shopping cart:
• No inventory – you have no stock levels to maintain so you have no storage problems or supply problems.
• Costs are the same to sell one or thousands digital goods.
• No postage costs.
• The customer will instantly receive the product using a digital download system.
• The transaction is quickly completed so you have the money in your account straight away.
Some online services specialize in selling digital goods, including invoicing, payment, and delivering the digital copy for you. In that case, you have to pay some sort of fee to the service provider.
Alternatively you can have a PHP shopping cart on your web site that you install yourself or get a developer to install for you.
Choosing a PHP Shopping cart can be difficult, here’s some guidelines to help you get started:
1) Fees
The payment system that the shopping system uses will have some kind of transaction fees. This will vary so check what they require and what you can afford. Selling through PayPal is often a convenient way and they use a transaction fee.
2) Integration with your website
Make sure the shopping cart can be integrated with your website. This may be by modifying a template system or by adding buttons to your existing web pages.
3) Features
Here’s a few of the features that might be helpful:
* Automatic product download
* Have the option of no shipping
* The ability to simultaneous sell tangible (physical) goods and digital goods
4) Security
It’s important that the purchase made by the customer is secure. You should expect your customer, after purchasing your product, to receive a secure link to immediately download the purchased item. The link should expire within a certain amount of time.
5) Easy to Use
Make sure the transaction is smooth and easy for your customer, you want to make it easy so that your customer come back for more.
Here’s a great eCommerce guide from my site at:
http://withinweb.com/global/hints_tips_and_tricks/digital_files.pdf
on further concepts for digital downloads.
The product PHP-eSeller is designed to sell digital goods from your web site using a PHP shopping cart system. PHP-eSeller has a number of carts, and displays which enable you to integrate it to an existing site.
