A guide to sell digital downloads online

Digital goods or electronic goods or 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, licence codes and ringtones. The costs of adding a digital item to a shopping system is small so it can be a great way make a steady income.

Here are just a few of the perks to selling digital downloads:

• No inventory – you have no stock levels to maintain so you have no storage problems or supply problems.

• Costs the same to sell one or thousands.

• No postage costs.

• The customer will instantly receive the product.

• 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.

Alternatively you can have a shopping cart on your web site that you install yourself or get a developer to install for you.

Picking a service can be challenging, here’s some guidelines to help you get started:

1) Fees

Transaction and hosting fees will vary, some require a monthly subscription and others, just a percentage or both. Check which ones they require and what you can afford. Selling through PayPal is often a convenient way and they have a transaction fee.

2) Integration with your website

Make sure the service can integrate with your blog or website, it’s best to use a service that has a cart that can blend in with your website. Sometimes a provider has code you can cut and paste code into your web page.

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 goods and e-goods

4) Security

It’s important that the purchase made by the client 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. Some systems offer “digital stamping” with a unique ID so you can track who is sharing your digital download. Some services offer rules that allow you to choose # of clicks or # of days the link is valid.

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.

My product PHP-eSeller is designed to sell digital goods from your web site using PayPal as the payment system. PHP-eSeller has a number of carts, and displays which enable you to integrate it to an existing site.

See PHP-eSeller http://www.withinweb.com/phpeseller/