Selling Downloads

Posted on September 29, 2005, 2:01 am by E-junkieChef under E-commerce

What is E-commerce?

E-commerce stands for electronic commerce. It entails the process, where a person can buy or sell a product via the Internet. Payments are made online through credit cards or bank accounts directly or via online payment services like PayPal™. E-commerce is revolutionizing the way people buy and sell products.

A vendor is able to digitize a product’s portfolio and make it available to buyers as a searchable digital catalog that can enable buyers to locate products very quickly which match their requirements.

A buyer is able to transparently see the different stages of the transaction. E-commerce model works by enabling a buyer to select products, pay for it in a secure manner and have it delivered.

A recent article on zdnet.com pegs the worldwide growth of broadband subscribers at 164 million in the first quarter of 2005, an increase of 52 million lines since first quarter of 2004, with 28 million lines added in the last 6 months alone. With such tremendous growth of broadband and penetration of Internet to even the most isolated regions of the world an online seller has a much wider clientele today then ever before.

Advantage of setting up an E-business

Ease of distribution – digital content can be delivered online or in case of non digital products seller can use existing means like USPS or couriers.
A global market and audience can be reached.
Low capital requirement
E-Business can be done from home.
Middle men can be eliminated from the transactions, thus saving on commission.

What are downloads? How is it different from selling books or shirts?

Data or files such as E-books, mp3, video, photos, software that can be downloaded from the internet are called downloads.

The advantage of selling downloads is that the goods/payments be interchanged instantly, thus eliminating need for shipping the product through conventional means of delivering a product.

When you are selling books or shirts, you have to deal with shipping while procuring the products from your suppliers as well as for fulfilling the orders. Then you have to deal with maintaining the inventory. With digital downloads the product is delivered instantly to the customer and there is no concept of inventory.

What are the advantages of Selling downloads online rather than selling them on a CD?

That will again involve mailing the media using some postal or courier service, this might create problems when you have a lot of orders for different products requiring you to keep track of which person ordered what product and how many numbers for each product, this will necessitate additional software to keep track of orders.

With digital delivery of downloads via the web all these problems are solved.

The advantage of publishing and delivering your products online are

Buyers feel safe as the product they are buying gets delivered to them instantly.
There are no shipping costs.
You can be your own publisher thus saving money on publishing costs.
You need none to very little capital to start selling your product.

Overview of listing, selling and receiving payments online

The first step in setting up a successful E-business is to find the right product and make sure there is sufficient need for such a product. For example, you cannot make a new browser and try to sell it online because most browsers are available for free.

Once you have decided on a product, the next step is to either write/procure it and then to market it. Marketing a product can be done through blogs, by listing it on sites like http://www.betanews.com or selling it on auction sites such as eBay™.

How and where can I sell my product?

One way to go will be to setup your own website and then promote it.

A quick and easy way will be list it on eBay™. eBay™ is an online auction site where people can bid on a product and the highest bidder will get to purchase the product or a bidder can purchase the product outright if buyer is ready to pay a minimum amount set by the seller. It does not cost much to list an item on eBay™.

Some facts about eBay™

eBay™ initially started out as "AuctionWeb" and was started by Pierr Omidyar in 1995. eBay™ has come a long way since its humble origins and is now one of the biggest online market place where you can find virtually anything for sale.

The total user base of eBay™ is pegged at hundred million and is growing every day. With the acquisitions of online payment company PayPal™, eBay™ has integrated everything that is required to buy and sell online.

On any given day there are millions of products ranging from CD's to vintage cars.

Buyers can bid on these products or purchase the product outright by paying a fixed price for the product which is called “Buy it now”.

eBay™ has a global presence and has local sites in the following countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

eBay™ protects its users from the chance of fraud by providing various added features and services such as PayPal™, tips on safe trading, and buyer protection programs.

How will I get paid and what are the different facilities I can use to receive payment?

Once a buyer decides to purchase your product, the most convenient way to pay for it is through PayPal™. You can sign-up for a PayPal™ account for free (PayPal™ will charge you a small fee per transaction). The only requirement for registering a business or premier account required to accept credit cards and website payments with PayPal™ is that you have to have a valid email address and a credit card. The buyer does not need a PayPal™ account to send you money.

Here are some facts regarding PayPal™

PayPal™ was founded in December 1998 by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. PayPal™ quickly became popular with eBay™'s millions of buyers and sellers as the trusted means of paying and receiving cash on purchases and sales. In October 2002 PayPal™ was acquired by eBay™. PayPal™ had previously been the payment method of choice by over fifty percent of eBay™ users. PayPal™ is accepted by thousands of businesses worldwide and is the preferred payment method on eBay™

In 2004, the total value of transactions through the PayPal™ system was $18.9 billion, up 55% year over year.

PayPal™ operates in 57 countries and manages over 78.9 million accounts.

PayPal™ supports payments in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling and Japanese Yen.

PayPal™ takes security very seriously and takes steps to prevent fraudsters from illegally accessing you account details PayPal™ uses proprietary technology to keep fraudsters at bay. PayPal™ and eBay™ have over 1000 employees worldwide dedicated to protect buyers and sellers from fraud. These specialists work 24/7 to monitor unusual activity on member accounts.

PayPal™ also provides its buyer and seller protection schemes which protect both the buyer and seller from the risk of fraud and cheating.

What are the problems associated with hosting my own downloads on my website?

You will manually have to check for sales regularly and send out your product via email. This causes delay in delivery of the product. If you are on a vacation or get an order in the middle of the night, the wait can be frustrating for the buyer.
If you are sending out insecure download links, your customers can further pass them on. You loose revenue and on top of it, it might cost you a bundle in bandwidth costs.
You will need to learn programming and understand the payment processing system to maintain your shopping cart and product database.
If you have a download system in place without price verification, fraudsters can get your product by only paying a penny.
Another problem could be from people trying to hack into your site and illegally downloading the software without purchasing it.

How can I avoid all the issues mentioned above while hosting my product online?

With a service like Ejunkie, all the above problems can be overcome. Ejunkie download delivery service ensures that you can start and sustain an E-business with minimum Investment. Ejunkie enables you to easily sell products on eBay™ or on your own website and let yours buyers download the product instantly and securely.

Some of the features of Ejunkie download service are:

Store your product securely. Ejunkie uses industry standard encryption as well as best security practices to provide a secure environment for you to host your product.
Your customers get instant download of the product. Depending on whether you list your product on your site or eBay, your customers either get redirected to the instant download or get a link to the download in their email.
Sell on eBay or on your site using BUY NOW buttons, PayPal shopping cart or a third party shopping cart. Ejunkie’s delivery service can be used to sell your products on eBay or on your site using individual buy now buttons for each product, or with PayPal or other third party shopping carts.
Limit the number of downloads and validity of secure product downloads links. With Ejunkie you can limit the validity of secure product links. You can choose to let a user download the product a set number of times or set the link to expire in a set number of hours/days.

How can I promote my product? What are the different ways in which I can reach a wider audience on the Internet?

The best methods of promoting your products include

Blogging: Blogging is a good way of getting noticed and building an audience. Furthermore, blogs help your website get listed with search engines. You can get your free blog at http://www.blogspot.com/
Google and Yahoo ads: You can buy pay-per-click advertising for your product using Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. You can create your own ad and then select keywords for which it will be displayed. You do not pay per impression, but rather per click.
Link exchange or banner exchange: Link exchange or banner exchange is where you can exchange and display links to other people's products and services on your site and they will do the same for your product services by listing it on their site. Either you can contact the sites that relate to your product manually or you can use a free automated service like http://www.link-vault.com/
Getting good ratings on eBay™: Providing good quality service and timely help to a customer will enable you to get a good rating on eBay™, which is very important as many users will check your rating before buying a product from you.
Providing freeware versions/time limited versions of the product for trial: By providing ad supported, trial or less functional versions of your software or e-book, you can let the customer try your products before making a decision to buy it. If you are selling mp3 or video files, you can provide 30 or 60 seconds clips. If you are selling photos, you can provide watermarked or low resolution versions.
Listing your product on relevant sites: If you are selling a software you can submit your product on software listing sites like http://www.download.com or http://www.tucows.com. If you are selling web scripts, you can list your product on sites like http://www.hotscripts.com.

We will be addressing the various online promotion techniques and topics like RSS feeds, Podcasting, Google Sitemaps™, Froogle™ product search in another article, which will be available shortly.

All the best with your endeavor, we hope you have great success with it.