The un-recommended way to sell your digital goods. (cc kozumel)
Working on your first digital good for sale? Or just thinking about it?
Don’t let the technical details of “how to actually sell the damn thing” keep you from making it — or shipping it.
In this one little blog post, I’m gonna fill you in on aaaaaall the digital goods dirt — so you can get the decision over with, and get back to doing your thing.
Oooh, and making money.
Digital goods meaning what now?
Just a note for clarity: by “digital goods,” I mean any kind of downloadable media that stands alone: PDFs, HTML, audio, video, little bits of software that don’t need licensing — like WordPress themes.
This is important, because when you need to generate license keys tied to usernames and whatnot, things get a lot more complicated. So, for today: nice, simple, self-contained digital goods.
You’ve Got 5 Basic Needs
When it comes to digital goods, you as a seller have 5 basic needs:
- collecting payment
- delivering the content to the customer
- staying in contact with customers (e.g. mailing updates, getting their contact info)
- managing refunds
- getting your money
Beyond those 5, you might want to offer an affiliate program, or upsells to other products, but let’s be honest — right now, you just have to finish your thing and get it online, and in the hands of your customers. Once it’s online, you have to be able to sell it, and talk to your customers, and get your money out.
That other stuff is cream! Worry about it when you’re rich.
And 5 Platforms to Choose From
Since you’re a sensible person, you’d assume that every platform on the market covers all of your 5 basic needs… but, sadly, you’d be wrong.
Coincidentally, there are 5 Platform Types that will help you sell your digital goods.
(No, I didn’t arbitrarily decide on 5 and work backwards from there. It just worked out that way. If there is a god, he’s clearly a marketer.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the 5 Platform Types:
Roll Your Own. You don’t wanna do this. It puts you further away from making money, not closer — and that makes it a no-no. (I need a freshly shorn yak, embarrassed and baby smooth. STAT!)
Classic Ecommerce Solution + Digital Goods Add-on. Example: Shopify with Fetch. While Shopify is splendid for physical goods, this approach is glommed on with duct tape. Fetch doesn’t cover all 5 Basic Needs (no way to send updates, email your customers, no affiliate program). And you’re paying for two services at once. To which one can only say: MEH!
A Traditional Ebook Marketplace. Traditional? Ebook? Is there such a thing? Yes: Clickbank has been around for a coon’s age, if by “coon” you mean grotty old internet marketer. Upsides: works, well-tested, reliable. You can absolutely trust them and they hit 4 out of 5 Basic Needs (except email lists). You don’t need any kind of payment provider. Downsides: it has “the IM taint,” and worst of all, your customers pay ClickBank, and then ClickBank pays you later. By check. (Or direct deposit, if you qualify.)
Full-Blown Digital Goods Ecommerce. There are several pretenders to this throne, but the only true heir is 1ShoppingCart. 1SC is for the pros and people who have the time/energy/money to integrate. Pros: Covers all 5 Basic Needs very nicely, offers the highest respectability, tons of payment integration options, including many credit card processors. It never touches your money. Cons: Expensive. Digital Download versions start at $99/month. Complicated set-up. Only offers password-protected areas for your customers to download your digital goods, as opposed to unique URLs. (So it’s hard to block out old customers, or limit downloads.)
E-Junkie. Halfway between Clickbank and a full blown shopping cart lies E-Junkie, in a category of its own. Despite its sophomoric name, it’s totally on the up & up — and, offers PayPal, Checkout, and Authorize.net integration. It covers all 5 Basic Needs, although if you send out updates they charge you for bandwidth costs. (You can pay a slightly higher monthly fee to self-host your own files.) E-Junkie has a whiff of the taint, but it’s cheap ($10), your money goes straight to you, and it’s not too complicated to set up. Downsides: ugly as hell, Flash, user-unfriendly and time consuming to perform basic tasks, and, you know, “E-Junkie”?
So, as you can see, there’s no single solution that screams perfection and take-home-to-mama-ability.
5 Ways to Choose the Lukewarmest Platform for You*
The key problem with choosing your platform is that all of the solutions suck, as you might have gathered from my snarking. They all have serious downsides.
Given all of the above — as much as it pains me to say so — I recommend E-Junkie. While the user experience is Double Plus Ungood, it’s cheap, functional, and available.
If you have a PayPal account, a domain name, and hosting, you can put up a sales page, set up your digital goods listing in E-Junkie, embed the Buy button, and be selling in 30 minutes.
As far as lukewarm things go, that’s not too bad. It’s more like lukewarm milk than lukewarm beer: not your favorite thing by far, but putting it in your mouth won’t cause you to spontaneously projectile vomit.
Bottom line: Set up E-Junkie today
Thus, I’m advocating that you go ahead right now and sign up for the lesser (in every sense) of two evils: E-Junkie.
E-Junkie’s only true competitor on features is 1ShoppingCart, which will take much longer to configure and costs, oh, about 10 times more.
Let’s face it: Your problem isn’t that you’re overwhelmed with sales. If only! Your problem is that you haven’t set up a payment platform because you’re unsure, and it seems like a lot of work. Ergo you are making no money. Ergo you are losing money.
That’s where E-Junkie shines: hard-eyed pragmatism. Which is exactly what you want, as a budding digital goods provider.
* I lied. There’s only one way to choose, and I just couldn’t bear to ruin a good thing.
PS — Suffice to say, we went with E-Junkie for JavaScript Performance Rocks!.
TweetPPS — Want the bullshit-free skinny on creating & selling info products? You better hit that Subscribe button, buddy. Or subscribe by email and get motivating kicks in the ass direct to your inbox. I guarantee they’ll earn you more than your weekly Farmville report.
Have you tried LULU for ebook distribution (they do that, too) ? http://lulu.com/
You may want to also take a look at FastSpring, which is a full service e-commerce provider for digital goods which included every element you need for selling digital goods online (merchant account, gateway, shopping cart, order page, merchandising, fulfillment, etc.)
Hi Dan. I wasted a week setting up Fastspring, and paid a freelance $900 to customize my Fastspring theme, only to realize…
There’s no affiliate program and no way to integrate one that wasn’t an additional several hundred dollars (!)
There’s no way to keep in contact with my customers or send them updates.
I was in contact with your support people about these two gargantuan missing features, but they didn’t seem to want my business enough to be helpful.
Now, I see you’re from Fastspring. I welcome people from companies that support entrepeneurs around here. But you need to identify yourself.
Thank you, Amy, for a well-researched article!
I am an E-Junkie user (and the term “user” just seems appropriate there, doesn’t it?).
I have to admit, I salivate a bit over 1Shoppingcart. It’s just out of my price range and you’re right – I don’t have the inclination to spend hours on setup and integration. I only have two products and it’s not like I’m swimming in cash (yet).
E-Junkie’s interface needs a complete overhaul. I’m used to it, but it’s still just plain awkward. They told me they’re working on it.
Once you find your way around, it’s relatively easy to set up a new product, get your Buy button code, prep for affiliates, and send updates. So I have to agree with your choice of E-Junkie for people new to product sales.
The thing that really struck me most here was “finish the thing and get it online.” Absolutely. Yes.
I could have spent months fiddling and getting feedback on my last product, but it likely wouldn’t have become “months” better.
So I got it out there. I shipped.
Even better, because it’s MY thing, I can update it whenever I want. If I decide to tweak a section or add something new, I can do it. New buyers won’t know the difference. Plus, I can send an updated version or alert to existing customers and renew interest in the product.
It’s worth it to just ship your stuff. Feels good. You get better each time you do it.
I agree totally that e-junkie is a perfect way to get your feet wet and start selling your product. But as for 1shoppingcart…
1shoppingcart can be ok, but if you want ANY kind of integration look elsewhere. In my book they are one of the worst in terms of support and features. As a little background, I set up membership sites and shopping carts for my clients, and I’ve used almost all carts out there. 1shoppingcart made my life a living hell, and their support people would keep telling me how good they were, right after they told me I couldn’t do what I needed to. It was annoying.
For my money I’d choose ultracart at the moment… I’ve set up several people on it, and they excel at integrating into other systems like mail hosts, fulfillment houses, etc. and they offer an activation code api that gives you individual activation codes automatically. Oh – and they start at $50 a month for all of it.
So FORGET 1shoppingcart, and don’t believe their hype… you will thank me for it.
So, Amy, you didn’t like FastSpring because:
A) it’s a money vacuum, even if it does offer the features you wanted B) “support” people who were completely useless, thus sticking you in a profitless limbo while you are trying to improve or modify your FastSpring account?
I agree with you. Despite ugly and un-userfriendly UI, e-junkie is truly a stunning web app to sell your digital goods online. It just works.
I have been using them since Feb 2009 and I am glad I found them. You can easily integrate with aweber (or other newsletter systems), swiftcd and collect payments to PayPal or 2checkout or other accounts using it.
That said, I would really be happy to see a product that combines best features of shopify with e-junkie and sells for reasonable price.
@Chandoo – try Digital Delivery App (http://www.digitaldeliveryapp.com)
Hello Amy/everyone Iam thinking about to create a fine-art product/downlodable pictures (I know the problem ..but it is in a special case/subject ..will not be worthwhile to copy it from me). The problem is that all my downloads / product price will be probably around 1-7 $ per 1. Problem because of the cumorcials. I thought about google p.p.k, ..wondering if it will be profitable(or any other way, it probably would not fit affiliate). Any ideas? Many thanks
Excuse me, I will try to ask it different. I develop a product that is an electronic good. a unique greeting cards. The question is: How to advertise such a product. When the price for a customer for 1-purchase is about $ 2. I believe that every new client will buy avarage about a 3-6 cards/products in a year , that is about pay about 6-12 dollars in a year from (and it’s only good in the case). I thought to try on. draw per click, but not sure
Excuse me. I will try to ask it different. I develop a product of an electronic good,-a unique greeting cards. i am at the economic planings step The question is: How will i advertise such a product. When the price for a customer to purchase one that’s about $ 2. I believe that every new client will buy in avarage about a 3-6 cards in a year , that is about 6-12 dollars in a year from every new cliant in avarage(and it is only at the good case situation). I thought pay per click-google, but i am not sure (with my specific nomber & prices asumings)
or also : does the e-junkie is suitable for selling grafic goods (no real paper- just a virtual greeting card) ? i just couldent find any matching example for that,in there “our client” section
I hadn’t heard of Digital Deliver App and it looks awesome. I’m going to switch to it in the near-future, I hope!
As for other options, I really like tinypay.me, though it is far from perfect, it’s quick!
so… no teeps for me ? for how to advertise my”tinypay” products ??
anyway try the”digital goods”…(& yes u r right it is awesome..no materials..no papers..no post ofices)
.. no reference to my questions I will try to question that maybe more suitable to the forum:
The customers can see (at some point at the payment process payment) the name E-junkie/the word- junkie ? Because it’s not always so commercial . (Depending on what what kind of public customer u r facing)
Alerting THIS MESSAGE Is Really For THE WEBMASTER : if you are using clickbank then you certainly really need this pluggin for WordPress: CB Post
Very good post! Not only for its usefulness but for the way it is written, I really enjoyed it.
And because of that as soon as I submit this comment I will subscribe.
By the way: I’m Bruno very nice to meet you. I’m a 35 years old clinical psychologist who 5 months ago decided to switch the couch for a freelancer copywriting career and also to become a entrepreneur on my own.