[mattybrown]

My client wants to sell knitting patterns on her website as digital downloads. She has suggested linking her site to e-junkie who charge a monthly fee.

But does she need to do this? Can I just include a PayPal buy now button and on successful payment just give a link to the download the pattern?

And once a pattern has been downloaded, is there any way to prevent it being passed on?

Views from anyone with any experience of this sort of thing would be welcome. Thanks

[Faevilangel]

you could insert some kind of watermark on the design

to sell the downloads depends on how many items you want to offer

if under say 20 then paypal buttons is fine, but anything more you will need a shopping system, oscommerce offers digital downloads through the software

[smallbusinessguru]

Faevilangel, on 13 August 2009 - 12:40 AM, said:

you could insert some kind of watermark on the design

to sell the downloads depends on how many items you want to offer

if under say 20 then paypal buttons is fine, but anything more you will need a shopping system, oscommerce offers digital downloads through the software

Yes, very true! If the number of items to be sold are high then it is always useful to have some system for selling, delivering and tracking downloads. I personally use Payloadz for selling my downloads as it is fairly simple and lets me receive payments through PayPal. As far as protecting the work is concerned, you will need to use some watermarks on the images but even that may not fully protect further use of the images.

[freeresellers]

If your client has a lot of products try opencart.com.

Easy to setup and use and sells downloadable products via paypal.

[rishishah]

Hi MattyBrown,

Yes, you can include a PayPal "Buy Now" button and on successful payment and give a link to the download of the pattern. This solution works great for customers with a few sales. I suggest making sure the download link is contained in the successful payment email so your client doesn't have to manually email every customer.

>> "And once a pattern has been downloaded, is there any way to prevent it being passed on?"

There really isn't anyway to prevent the download from being passed on. Even Apple's iTunes hasn't figured that one out just yet (for example I can buy and mp3 from itunes and pass it on to my friends in an email). What I would do is put a statement in the success email saying this:

"We work really hard on our design patterns and strive for high quality craftsmanship. We are a small business and would be pleased with any potential customers you can send us." This way your client's customers will understand they are a small business and will prevent people from simply forwarding on the digital file.

I've helped a few clients like this before and the PayPal "Buy Now" button strategy worked great! A few our clients got bigger so we built a more robust technology for them called : www.Digioh.com.

I would highly recommend it if you are doing more volume. We have built a solution that can handle payment and automatic digital delivery. All download links can only be used one time and are based on the PayPal email address the customer paid with. This makes the Digioh system much more secure than a simple download link in an email.

Good luck with your client!

Rishi