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How to Sell Downloads
With digital downloads on the increase and CD sales declining, now is the time to sell your recording as a digital download online. It's very cheap and very easy once you know how, and it's a LOT easier to do than you might think.
I’ve spoken to plenty of people who are keen to sell a recording from their website. Many of them are confused about the process and say thing things like:
"I just don’t know how", or
"It’s too complicated" or
"I have to get in touch with my web designer and talk to him about it..."
There’s really no need for all this fuss and bother! The fact is, these days it costs almost nothing to start selling digital downloads, and it’s very quick and easy to set up. How quick and easy?
All right then, let’s get right into the "how to" of it all.
How to sell downloads on your website - the 4 step process
Let’s start with a brief overview of how to sell your recording from your own website.
1. Create your recording meditation and turn it into an mp3 file.
2. Open a Paypal account if you don’t already have one. For many of you, this is a no-brainer. Paypal is probably the most popular way to transfer funds over the internet, and is essential if you want to sell anything online these days.
3. Sign up to a digital download service like DPD (more on this in a minute).
4. Copy and paste a little bit of code to your website to create an "Add to Cart" button that your customers can click on.
You do not need to pay a web developer to build a digital download facility for you, and you do not need to buy or install any software.
How do digital download services work?
Digital download services make things so easy. I’ll describe how it works with DPD because I use DPD myself on this website.
You start by uploading your mp3 recording to DPD, and they store it on a secure server. When a customer clicks on the "Add to Cart" button on your website, DPD handles the transaction and ensures that you receive payment in your Paypal account. Once payment is received, DPD sends the customer an email that contains a link to their download.
Basically, DPD makes sure you get paid, before delivering your mp3 to your customer for you. It’s all automatic.
The great thing about this system is that the download link expires after a few days. This means that your mp3 file is nice and secure. Even if one of your customers was a bit naughty and tried to share their download link with lots of other people on the internet, the download is soon disabled and cannot be accessed again without your permission. DPD even lets you define how long the download remains active, and you can even set a limit on the number of download attempts that each customer is allowed.
Top Download Service Providers
Here are three of the most popular digital download services
DPD (Digital Product Delivery) is famous for being extremely user friendly and for being one of the cheapest digital download services around. They offer one month free to new users. They also have a very funky looking pop up shopping cart that many people find appealing.
Ease of use 9/10 Pricing 9/10 Reliability 10/10 Customer service 10/10
Payloadz also offer a reliable download service and very cheap start up prices. At the time of writing you can start selling for free. Unfortunately, as soon as you sell more than $50 of downloads your monthly fee starts to increase incrementally. The more you sell, the more you pay. Their system is fair but in the long run you may end up paying less with DPD.
Ease of use 7/10 Pricing 8/10 Reliability 9/10 Customer service 6/10
E-Junkie is a popular digital download service, but may be a tad complicated for some first time users. E-Junkie also only allows quite limited storage space so if you have more than one recording to sell, then chances are you’ll need to upgrade your account (and monthly fee) soon after you sign up. In their favour, E-Junkie do offer the first month free.
Ease of use 6/10 Pricing 7/10 Reliability 10/10 Customer service 8/10
The verdict?
In my opinion DPD is the best service for people who want to sell downloads from their own website. Their service is extremely user friendly and very cost effective, being the only service that offers a fixed monthly pricing structure. Chances are, unless you have a lot of products to sell, you’ll never pay more than $5 per month. If you are looking for a low cost, no hassles way to get started selling downloads, then I highly recommend DPD. I use them myself on this very website.
Why you should sell digital downloads
There are three major reasons why selling your recording as a download is preferable to selling it as a CD.
1. Every year the number of people who choose to buy digital downloads increases, and the number of people who buy CD’s declines. In 2009 music download sales increased by 29 percent, and accounted for 33 percent of all music tracks purchased in the U.S. In fact, it is expected that digital downloads will outsell CD sales in 2012. Yes, things really have changed that much already!
2. Digital downloads are much better for the environment. Think about all the transport vehicles that are required to deliver a CD, not to mention the plastics that go into the production of CD’s. Digital downloads are a much cleaner, greener way to deliver your recordings to your customer.
3. Digital downloads are much cheaper to create. You don’t have to spend nearly as much on graphic design costs, and CD duplication costs are eliminated altogether.
Of course, there will still be a market for CD sales for some time to come, but they are definitely on the decline. It’s no wonder really, given that it is so easy to buy and sell digital downloads these days.
A final tip for selling your downloads online
Whenever possible make sure you add a short audio sample of your recording to your website so that your visitors can preview it before they buy. People are far more likely to buy your recording if they can actually hear what it sounds like first!
I’ve spoken to plenty of people who are keen to sell a recording from their website. Many of them are confused about the process and say thing things like:
"I just don’t know how", or
"It’s too complicated" or
"I have to get in touch with my web designer and talk to him about it..."
There’s really no need for all this fuss and bother! The fact is, these days it costs almost nothing to start selling digital downloads, and it’s very quick and easy to set up. How quick and easy?
All right then, let’s get right into the "how to" of it all.
How to sell downloads on your website - the 4 step process
Let’s start with a brief overview of how to sell your recording from your own website.
1. Create your recording meditation and turn it into an mp3 file.
2. Open a Paypal account if you don’t already have one. For many of you, this is a no-brainer. Paypal is probably the most popular way to transfer funds over the internet, and is essential if you want to sell anything online these days.
3. Sign up to a digital download service like DPD (more on this in a minute).
4. Copy and paste a little bit of code to your website to create an "Add to Cart" button that your customers can click on.
You do not need to pay a web developer to build a digital download facility for you, and you do not need to buy or install any software.
How do digital download services work?
Digital download services make things so easy. I’ll describe how it works with DPD because I use DPD myself on this website.
You start by uploading your mp3 recording to DPD, and they store it on a secure server. When a customer clicks on the "Add to Cart" button on your website, DPD handles the transaction and ensures that you receive payment in your Paypal account. Once payment is received, DPD sends the customer an email that contains a link to their download.
Basically, DPD makes sure you get paid, before delivering your mp3 to your customer for you. It’s all automatic.
The great thing about this system is that the download link expires after a few days. This means that your mp3 file is nice and secure. Even if one of your customers was a bit naughty and tried to share their download link with lots of other people on the internet, the download is soon disabled and cannot be accessed again without your permission. DPD even lets you define how long the download remains active, and you can even set a limit on the number of download attempts that each customer is allowed.
Top Download Service Providers
Here are three of the most popular digital download services
DPD (Digital Product Delivery) is famous for being extremely user friendly and for being one of the cheapest digital download services around. They offer one month free to new users. They also have a very funky looking pop up shopping cart that many people find appealing.
Ease of use 9/10 Pricing 9/10 Reliability 10/10 Customer service 10/10
Payloadz also offer a reliable download service and very cheap start up prices. At the time of writing you can start selling for free. Unfortunately, as soon as you sell more than $50 of downloads your monthly fee starts to increase incrementally. The more you sell, the more you pay. Their system is fair but in the long run you may end up paying less with DPD.
Ease of use 7/10 Pricing 8/10 Reliability 9/10 Customer service 6/10
E-Junkie is a popular digital download service, but may be a tad complicated for some first time users. E-Junkie also only allows quite limited storage space so if you have more than one recording to sell, then chances are you’ll need to upgrade your account (and monthly fee) soon after you sign up. In their favour, E-Junkie do offer the first month free.
Ease of use 6/10 Pricing 7/10 Reliability 10/10 Customer service 8/10
The verdict?
In my opinion DPD is the best service for people who want to sell downloads from their own website. Their service is extremely user friendly and very cost effective, being the only service that offers a fixed monthly pricing structure. Chances are, unless you have a lot of products to sell, you’ll never pay more than $5 per month. If you are looking for a low cost, no hassles way to get started selling downloads, then I highly recommend DPD. I use them myself on this very website.
Why you should sell digital downloads
There are three major reasons why selling your recording as a download is preferable to selling it as a CD.
1. Every year the number of people who choose to buy digital downloads increases, and the number of people who buy CD’s declines. In 2009 music download sales increased by 29 percent, and accounted for 33 percent of all music tracks purchased in the U.S. In fact, it is expected that digital downloads will outsell CD sales in 2012. Yes, things really have changed that much already!
2. Digital downloads are much better for the environment. Think about all the transport vehicles that are required to deliver a CD, not to mention the plastics that go into the production of CD’s. Digital downloads are a much cleaner, greener way to deliver your recordings to your customer.
3. Digital downloads are much cheaper to create. You don’t have to spend nearly as much on graphic design costs, and CD duplication costs are eliminated altogether.
Of course, there will still be a market for CD sales for some time to come, but they are definitely on the decline. It’s no wonder really, given that it is so easy to buy and sell digital downloads these days.
A final tip for selling your downloads online
Whenever possible make sure you add a short audio sample of your recording to your website so that your visitors can preview it before they buy. People are far more likely to buy your recording if they can actually hear what it sounds like first!