Author Topic: Selling downloads and selling online in general  (Read 22248 times)

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Selling downloads and selling online in general
« on: March 04, 2007, 02:07:16 PM »
This subject came up here http://samisite.com/forum/index.php?topic=120.new#new In this thread Sam recommended a software program that would hide the true locations of downloads for sale. This brought me to another area of discussion on the subject.

I currently use CCNow as a retailer for things I sell on line mainly because they are located in Washington DC and according to their contract I am a shipper for their retail outlet. This means that I don't have to collect and pay state taxes being they are the retailer not me. Its a bonus for my customers because DCs tax laws are that there are no sales taxes on INTERNET sales with the one exception being MN and certain goods are taxable and payable to MN but CCNow handles that. So basically unless my customer lives in MN they pay no taxes on their purchases. I don't have to pay my state sales taxes working this way either because I am merely a shipper and not collecting taxes. I have been with them for 7 years, have an accountant who verifies this is all legal and therefore have been very happy with the service. Their commissions are very reasonable and when I figure all the time, money and trouble I am saving not having to do the tax thing they go from reasonable to bargain! This is an issue some people I know who sell on line dread dealing with and have changed to CCNOw after hearing of it. It is I think 9.50 to join and 4.99% of the total sale plus fifty cents per order. This is higher than Pay Pal but factoring the tax issue and the fact that I didn't have to start a business to do on line sales I think it is very reasonable.

The only thing that is not adequate to me about CCNow is that they only do the selling of hard goods and not downloads. They will not process download orders. I have already figured that PayPal would be the least expensive way to sell downloads. (Although I used to hate them for messing me up for a period of about three years and never answering my inquiries nor requests for help with anything but by a form reply. I am still not sure how it is that one day I got this straightened out - lol)

Anyway what this comes to is the state sales Tax issue for the downloads and I am wondering if anyone would or could comment on how they handle their pay pal sales or any sales whether hard goods or downloads when it comes to the sales taxes. I am guessing I need to really analyze my state tax laws to see if I am responsible for collecting taxes on things people download and if I am required to have a business to sell such things. Besides music there are many written articles software, photos, graphics etc. and downloads may become a very big item for me. So this will be quite an issue to resolve during the site make over because if I am using two order processors one for downloads and one for hard goods that will take a little more finesse rather than if for example I switch everything over to papal. I really don't want to do that for the hard good no tax purposes.

Any comments on how you or others handle the tax issue - or if you even bother with the tax issue would be appreciated. I know lots of people and places don't do taxes at all and although that might be great if they can get away with it I need to stay legal and above board.

Thanks for any input!
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2007, 05:53:08 PM »
And I forgot to emphasize that I am also interested in knowing what other methods anyone might use to sell downloads whether on their own sites utilizing a software program that hides addresses etc. or by using some of the on line download sales services that processes credit cards and then allows the buyer to get an auto response with the password to retrieve the stored file. Some of these actually store the file on their sites. Selling downloads is overall what I am investigating and the tax issue is but one of the issues I am researching.

Thanks!
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2007, 08:50:54 AM »
AFAIK, the situation at the moment is that you need to collect and pay sales tax for any sales being shipped to the state where you have your business and any state where you have a "physical presence" - For example, used to be I didn't have to pay sales tax on my bargain-hunting buys at Coldwater Creek's online outlet ;) . Then they opened a store in Omaha, and now I pay sales tax on mailorders. California has been making noises about charging sales tax on all orders being shipped to California, but I don't think they've pulled it off yet.

PayPal is able to automatically calculate sales tax for each sale (and one would hope they'd keep up with, say, what California's doing), but you still have to send the money on to the state. In Nebraska, at least, this means you have to register as a sales tax collector, which doesn't have to be as involved as actually registering as a business. Check your state sales tax laws, though - some don't collect sales tax on downloads because they don't consider them "goods".

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2007, 01:23:11 PM »
I don't know how I missed your reply - but I just saw it recently .. This week is a blur! Thanks, - that is what I understood to be true. I really like not having to do all of the tax things that is why I pay more commissions at CCNow - because they are the seller and I am just a shipper and technically I don't have to collect or pay the taxes.. which saves me bundles of time and aggravation.

So what I have come up with is if I offer downloads I would also offer what ever it is on a CD that gets shipped as well so that once again I am selling something which CCNow requires as they don't do downloads. For some it may be easier to account for the sales taxes but with some states now requiring you to register and to collect and send their taxes - I think MI is one, and with that law on the horizon for other states that are considering it, taxes seems like its just too much to keep up with. I used to do it when I was in the construction biz. If I didn't travel so much it might not be such a big deal but I think of my site as more of a courtesy service than a real competitive business and the accounting part isn't something I like to do. I am always mailing things so that goes right with what I am already doing..

But thanks for confirming that about Pay Pal because I was thinking of switching but now I dunno...

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2007, 09:42:58 AM »
A reprieve! (I think) Florida does not consider downloaded software as a taxable item. So even though they use the word software - I would guess that means downloads in general.

https://taxapp2.state.fl.us/kb/index.cfm

Now do I have to check Hawaii too I wonder?

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2007, 12:33:46 PM »
I tried clicking on the link, but it was taking w-a-a-y too long to open. -- From the way I read Nebraska's regulations, it's a bit different here. Downloadable software is taxable, but they give a very specific definition of software, and taxes are limited to what fits that definition. I think it has something to do with the fact that Nebraska operates with a combination of "sales" tax and "use" tax, depending on what's being sold. Evidently, software is covered by "use" tax, which allows the state to collect tax on it even though it isn't a tangible object, as would be needed for "sales" tax. But things such as images, etc., aren't covered by use tax. Which kind of makes sense - I guess :o

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2007, 06:44:45 PM »
Thanks tg --- and I guess that makes sense -  :unsure: I didn't see where FL defined software - considering what you have told me this may need to be clarified in case downloads in general actually aren't excluded here. Why does everything have to be so complicated?  :-\  :yuck:
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2007, 08:35:33 PM »
Someone at WebmasterWorld was saying how much they like Click&Buy, in large part because it's a smaller organization than PayPal and they felt the service was much more personal. So I took a look at their website - http://clickandbuy.com/ - and it does look interesting. They handle payments for non-physical goods only: downloads, site subscriptions, services you pay per minute to use (skype is one of their clients). So if you were selling both tangible and non-tangible goods, you'd still have to have two systems. The one point of contention at WMW was whether PayPal or Click&Buy charges higher fees, but they seem fairly close and which one would be slightly better would depend on the amount sold. I haven't been able to figure out for sure whether buyers would have to be members to use the service; if that hasn't come out in the WMW thread by the next time I'm there, I'll ask. I visited one of the sites they had featured on their home page and went as far as the shopping cart system, but didn't actually go through the check-out process.

----------------

I've been going back and forth (and back and forth, and back and forth...) in my own mind about what I'd rather do as far as monitizing my tiling backgrounds. One option would be to have a subscription-based part of the site that would get all the backgrounds first, along with some special collections that would never be posted on the open site. The other would be to sell those special collections as downloads (I have 3 that could be made available now).

The advantage of the downloads would be that except for emailing the download instructions it would basically be "set it and forget it" for each collection. If some time went by without a new collection becoming available, it wouldn't be the end of the world. With the subscription idea, I'd need to make sure that the numbers of backgrounds/collections/whatever I promised would actually be published each month. At the moment, I can't see any problem with that, as I'm 1000 tiles ahead of what's online - but you never know.   

The advantage of the subscription idea would be that I wouldn't have to sell anything, and if I kept my part of the bargain wouldn't have as much worry about needing to deal with unhappy customers. After checking out some of the "competition" on ebay, I'm a little more comfortable saying that what I produce is worth paying for. But the subscription area would be more like continuing on with what I've been doing for the fun of it, and that's what I'm looking for: "Since I'm doing this anyway, can I make a little money at it?" rather than starting a whole new enterprise.

Any ideas from outside my own head would certainly be welcome.  ???


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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2007, 09:28:32 PM »
Hi, So are you saying with a subscription that the person would be able to go on line and just right click copy a file?

I am thinking of a bit of both myself - maybe it would work for you too? For example: with a subscription, members would get free access to read, see or hear some exclusive things all of the time and also discounts on any thing that came out as a download and since I also sell hard goods a standing members discount on hard goods as well. So I would have both and anything I sell would still be available to non subscription members.

I for one hate joining anything anymore free or paid! Because I already get way way too much e-mail and I just think - ho boy - who's going to be spamming me now - no matter what their privacy policies say - even a site like this could be gleaned for info by unscrupulous users - because so much of it is untraceable anyway we will never know from belonging to what might our addresses be used. To only have something available to members or a subscription would deter me probably. But the continual discounts and ability to get otherwise unpublished things for free would be a good enticement for those attracted to being members or subscribers of things. Whether it goes exactly like that I don't know but I am pretty sure a combo of both are what will work for me.

AND - I can't look it up right now - but there are also sites on line that process not only the credit card etc.. but they automate the entire download process so that you never do anything when you sell a download. ( Except collect your check for what was sold less their fee.) That is what I am leaning to doing. Since I don't and won't have time for much more web based work, by the time I pay someone to do that kind of thing I think it is not much more expensive. Not to have to think about it at all is even better.

I found at least three services like that but they are on my other computer - it is down right now for service because I moved it ... but I think they would be easy to find in a search.

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #9 on: April 02, 2007, 11:26:30 PM »
Hi, So are you saying with a subscription that the person would be able to go on line and just right click copy a file?
Yes, that's what I'm thinking. The subscription part of the site would be set up basically like the open part is now, with images that can copied individually. If I did put the collections on that part of the site, they might have to be as downloads because they contain at least 200 images each.

But most things would still go onto the open part of the site, so visitors wouldn't in any way have to get a subscription to get a lot from it. The subscription-only section would just be an extra.

If I decide to do either of these, it will probably finally resolve my quandary about whether to give the background/graphics part of things its own site, separate from the greeting cards/stationery. I've been thinking about splitting it for quite some time, because the URL was chosen for the cards and doesn't make any sense for the graphics. Since the cards/stationery will be hard copies (if I ever get that far), it would be less confusing to have that separated from the subscription/download part of things. And there's no good reason to have them together now that I've realized my "We have over 3000 backgrounds and you can use any of them on your notecard" plan isn't gonna happen - simply because not all of the backgrounds lend themselves to making good printouts; I'd rather have a few good ones than 3000 "okay" ones, so I'd rather pick and choose the backgrounds that print out the best. 

The other option would be to sell the background collections on disc, so everything would be sold as tangible goods, but that would complicate things without any benefit that I can see (but if I'm already selling "physical" goods, anyway, maybe it wouldn't make much difference). So you can tell I'm still basically confused, but there are so many other things I need to do before any of this can happen, there's probably no hurry to figure it all out. :banghead:

Quote
I am thinking of a bit of both myself - maybe it would work for you too? For example: with a subscription, members would get free access to read, see or hear some exclusive things all of the time and also discounts on any thing that came out as a download and since I also sell hard goods a standing members discount on hard goods as well. So I would have both and anything I sell would still be available to non subscription members.
Those are good ideas, but just more "layers" than I want to deal with at this stage. I'm still thinking either/or (subscription or paid download) and keeping any hard goods on a separate site. Maybe when I retire (hey, it's only 13 years :kickdancing:!). And, of course, this is all involving my secondary site...  Did I say :banghead:?

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #10 on: April 03, 2007, 12:42:01 AM »
AHAHA well - look at it like this - you have time to actually get it all done in 13 years! I have to give my self a time limit - go over it some of course - lol - and get what I can get - Realistically those elements are probably down the way and not what I will immediately publish.

Step one for me is get what I have up there in the new format minus some elements and plus a couple of others that really need to be immediately integrated.

I hate site remakes!

If only I could have thought forward to this day and done it all right the first time. It started it out such a small thing! lol


ah famous last words...

I think it's grand that you are forward thinking - you are saving yourself a lot of time later on when you really want to kick back and RETIRE!   :clapping:
         
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #11 on: April 03, 2007, 10:35:37 AM »
Depends on what you mean by "kick back," I guess - I'm looking at retirement as a chance to actually do some of these things (I think we've had this conversation before ;)). If I were being rational about it, I'd completely eliminate the greeting card part of the site for now, just keep making the backgrounds for the fun of it and not worry about the URL because no one ever goes there, anyway - and concentrate on my writing (for both my primary site and the book-length projects I have underway). But I spend so much time on the "fun stuff" of the backgrounds and cards that I feel I have to justify it by trying to make some money from it - not rational, at all, really.

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #12 on: April 03, 2007, 12:04:11 PM »
Hi TG,

It sounds like your definition of retirement is something like mine .. mine goes What's retirement? lol I will never stop working on something - my mind won't let me. It's that creative part of you that just has to burst forth - I can see it all over your web site. I remember our past conversations. I recently sent a pass around email that contained some interesting ice sculptures and a musician friend of mine wrote back that he didn't understand why they would spend so much time doing those when they are just going to melt. I replied that when he plays his guitar all alone with no one around that the notes only last for a second - so why bother doing it? He got it then. I think that creative people do what they do because they love it, they need it and they must. If the money comes, BONUS - but its not the important part of why we do it and nothing is better justification than that if we are given a talent we must use it. Some people would say it is a sin to waste talent especially if it can help others. Art speaks to our very souls and moves us. We find common ground there no matter where we are from or who we are. The fun stuff is your gift and one that you share to help others and that is about as awesome as it gets!

Books have been written on the subject - Do what you love and the money will follow. I believe it is true to what ever extent we are able to must ourselves up to the business part.


I have a question especially for you. I am going to post it in a new thread because its not per this subject in whole...



 

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #13 on: April 03, 2007, 12:05:30 PM »
 :offtopic:
Retirement???   rofl      Not in my lifetime!  I'll be like my neighbor, working into my 80's (if I last that long).  With no kids, I will have no grands either. :(  But I will always have meaning and purpose to my life in other ways...The web has been terrific outlet for some of that!
-Samantha
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #14 on: April 03, 2007, 02:16:25 PM »
Retirement??? 
Meaning retirement as in not having to be sitting in the office researching for and editing someone else's writing for 8+ hours per day. I like my day job and feel it's contributing something to the world, but I have no desire to do it for the rest of my life - just until I'm old enough to go on Medicare, because until then I need the group health insurance (paying for just my meds out-of-pocket would cost a small fortune, and because of that no one's going to offer me affordable individual insurance). If it weren't for that, I'd have enough saved now that I could quit my day job and make a living from other interests. But, well, the day job is cancer research, after all, so I don't exactly feel that I'm wasting my time.

--Sometimes the option of moving to Canada so I wouldn't have to worry about health insurance is very appealing.

Quote
Books have been written on the subject - Do what you love and the money will follow. I believe it is true to what ever extent we are able to must ourselves up to the business part.
My problem is loving more things than I have time for. The graphics is fun, but I can get carried away with it at the expense of my writing, which is ultimately more fulfilling. It's just a balance I need to be aware of.

Are there any books that tell how to "Do what you love and the health insurance will follow"? :P

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #15 on: April 03, 2007, 04:25:54 PM »
Be careful what you ask for!  Sometimes the wish is granted but in ways you can not conceive during the wish or prayer! 

I am doing what I love right now.  Working a regular job by day and webmaster (web wench) by night. But it is very time consuming and the evenings/weekends are not paid, just done for enjoyment.  So the money does not always come with something you love. I accept the fact that I will not shorten the time to retirement or add to my post retirement funds with my web work, but in exchange I get alot of joy and satisfaction.
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #16 on: April 04, 2007, 12:29:21 AM »
Amen Sam, I say that all the time - and boy is it ever true - that's why anymore I just ask for the things in the big picture like happiness and health and leave the details to work themselves out - well I ask for help with problems but in relevance to this discussion in terms of asking for "Things" or "Circumstancces" because they come with a price tag and I don't mean money! While I practice and teach visualization - it helps me to realize what all it takes to achieve any one thing and usually by the time I mentally go through all of the things that is requred to do it, upkeep it and continue it -- I change my mind about wanting it !  LOL

I agree money doesn't always follow - unless we put ourselves in the situation to make it a business or a career - but I think if you wanted to Sam, you could do some money making things with your web master talents! oh for sure! Sometimes reserving our greatest loves for fun is what keeps it fun though.

The gratitude and joy of doing what we love is enough if we have means to otherwise pay the bills - I think every day what if I don't even make it to retirement?? or retirement age I guess ... so I better just do what I love for the love of what I am doing. :hearts:
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #17 on: August 21, 2007, 10:11:23 AM »
Continuation of a previous discussion, I think ??? --

I puzzled quite a bit over how to make sets of backgrounds downloadable, and have a couple of examples published of what I've come up with. My idea all along was to have themed sets rather than a random collection of everything. But even with that, I found it hard to describe a set in a way that would let people really know what was in it - without holding myself to narrower parameters than I wanted to follow. So these sets show a full tiled page of each background, like the "regular" backgrounds on the site, but without the single tile available to save. If someone likes what they see enough to pay for it, they can download a zipped file of the single tiles. I figure if someone has enough knowledge to save the tile out of the full page, I wouldn't be able to keep it safe from them, anyway - and I don't need to have things as secure as I would if I were actually trying to make a living from it. Since payment services for downloadable stuff tend to err on the side of the customer when there's a complaint, I'd just as soon avoid most reasons for complaint by letting customers see exactly what's in the set before they buy it.

This is little by little - I had to learn to make zip files and work with cpanel to get this far (the Coffeecup zip wizard has a built-in FTP function, but I found it more complicated than cpanel). I'm still working on proper instructions and don't have a payment process. There will be a brief description of the sets on a lead-in page, but that's not made yet, and the sets haven't been linked to from outside. Here are the direct URLs for the first two sets. I'm not asking anyone to download the files (although you certainly can!), or to take the time to look at the entire collections, but I'd appreciate knowing if the setup itself makes sense - I think it does, but so far it's all inside my own head:

http://www.afewwordsabout.us/autumncollection

http://www.afewwordsabout.us/gas


« Last Edit: August 21, 2007, 10:24:04 AM by tgshaw »

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #18 on: August 21, 2007, 05:03:18 PM »
Gosh those are some really awesome sets! Some of the best I have ever seen anywhere. Congratulations for being so talented for starters!  :clapping:

As for how you have laid it out: This may be just me but I always get a tad frustrated with navigation that only lets me go for ward and back ward when looking at things rather than having the option to skip around so if I were a customer I would rather see a side link to each pattern if not a thumbnail. If there are 289 things to look at - I would like to see them numbered/linked down the page on the side or at the top so I could jump around. People may be looking for a specific pattern match (OR A FEW) and once they skip by it, unless they have saved it in favorites - a separate step - they will have to navigate back in search of it again. Also for me, it was a little difficult to see the words up in the header that link a person back to the "browse this set page" etc. over the dark busy patterns. But my eye sight isn't what it used to be - so that again may just be me. (If Sam had a squinting smiley it would go here lol  ;)) What I get told over and over at other forums is - make it fool proof for the least savvy customer or Internet user that you can imagine making it to your site, and to do anything you can to save your customer time. Most don't stick around a site long if they can't find what they are looking for right away. I believe how ever you want to sell things is worth a try. I am looking at some encryption site protector programs like HTML protector (oddly there are two by that name if you search it) but both do about the same. They encrypt HTML files which my spinner that I am using doesn't produce in a way that makes it that convenient to use. ( or its another one of those mind blocks I have at this point to figure out how to do it with a program like spinner or Cute for that matter. I think I would have to capture the html file on another html editor and add it there. ) They also add tags for things like no saving on browser, no printing , no caching etc. It seems like something like that would really prevent lots of things people could do to steal. Some of them even mention how they work with a pay pal return link that is embedded in your source code that could be discovered etc. Just investigating these types of software brought a lot of things to my mind I had not considered before and you might want to take a look at them just to see what you are up against. This may be a subject for another topic though.. lol


Best wishes to you on this project! Wonderful WONDERFUL work!
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #19 on: August 21, 2007, 11:51:27 PM »
Quote
People may be looking for a specific pattern match (OR A FEW) and once they skip by it, unless they have saved it in favorites - a separate step - they will have to navigate back in search of it again.
The problem with using thumbnails, of course, is keeping the tile from being downloadable. Something that would be do-able (but a fair bit of work) would be to take a screenshot of each page and miniaturize it to serve as a thumbnail. That would be a lot of thumbnails - would it be so many that it would end up not being very helpful? I can see how being able to jump to various numbers would be useful if you remembered, say, that a background you wanted to look at was towards the middle of the collection. To be honest, I hadn't even thought of the possibility that people might want to go back and look at a specific background again :-[ since they all come as one set, but, of course, they might. :unsure: What do you think would be most useful? A table of numbered, miniature thumbnails?

When I was checking to see how the "competition" did things, I wasn't able to find any example that was really very similar. On ebay there seem to be two extremes: people who sell their tiles individually for quite a bit of money because they'd spent so many hours creating them, and others who sell 10,000 background tiles for $3.00 including reseller rights, which means you have dozens of people selling exactly the same collections and trying to undersell each other (of course, none of the people selling those actually created any of them). I have found some sites that sell digital images in the same kind of collection I'm trying to use, so I'm looking at them as something of a guideline. But they generally show only a sampling of the images, so if someone copies them they don't get the entire set, while I'd prefer to show all of the backgrounds. 

Quote
Also for me, it was a little difficult to see the words up in the header that link a person back to the "browse this set page" etc. over the dark busy patterns. But my eye sight isn't what it used to be - so that again may just be me.

I noticed after I published the autumn set that I must have forgotten to change the link colors in the top border, because the ones that are there are horrible to read against the background, so I'll definitely have to change those, and probably make the text larger, too. Since the navigation in each set is always against the same background, I tried to pick ones that were text-friendly, but I'll look to see if there are better ones.

Thanks for the good words. :dogwalksm: When I look around, I see some that aren't as good as mine and some that I can't even figure out how they were made ??? . When I see the first kind, I feel more confident; when I see the second, I'm not so sure. I guess that's why I feel better having all the backgrounds out there for people to see before they buy them.

I'm not going to worry too much at this point about the whole stealing issue. Like I said, if this were my livelihood I'd definitely feel differently about that. But it's basically a way to try to find some practical use - however small - for the results of my obsession, so if some people are able to get them without paying for them it's not that big of a deal. :P  OTOH, if I ever run across someone selling them...  >:( >:(


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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #20 on: August 22, 2007, 02:49:35 AM »
Hi ya  :D - well, if I were a prospective customer.. I probably wouldn't be able to see enough detail in a numbered thumbnail to make remembering it any easier than just remembering that number 73 and number 135 were really cool. lol Or I might write them down if I were on a serious hunt for several and then go back to them after I had previewed the entire set.

Yes unfortunately it is those who would resell your work that are the most worrisome and likely to go to some trouble to steal from you. I mean if you can buy 10,000 things for three dollars on ebay my goodness - who would ever even check through that many to even see if something they did was on there without permission?

I always tell myself that there are always those with more and less talents than myself and to be generous to those with less and not envy those with more.. so far so good! lol and then I practice practice practice.. One thing for sure is that you are no where near the bottom of the less talented list!!!!!!!!       :noshake:

 
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #21 on: August 22, 2007, 10:16:41 AM »
I haven't done anything to the navigation yet, but I have changed the background of the autumn collection to one that's hopefully easier for reading:

http://www.afewwordsabout.us/autumncollection/index.htm

Hmmm... One idea to make browsing more interesting would be a "random page" button - but that wouldn't help anyone who wanted to go back and look at a specific background. I'll have to think about that problem. I guess because with most collections you don't get to see the tiled pages (or even all the tiles) before you buy them, I hadn't thought about people "shopping" that closely. I pictured a quick browse-through, with a way to get to the end quickly if you decided by, say, #45, that the set was worth your money. But, certainly, the more options people can use, the better.

Another whole direction is the micropayment idea, with each tile sold separately. But I've put enough work into the collections to not think about that right now.

No big hurry on this - my goal was to have something income-producing by the time I retire and that's still a dozen years away :P. I'll probably even be moving the backgrounds to a different website before things get "serious". I've had to spend most of my time lately working on my main website - Along with everything else, the forum our group has been posting in for the last 5-6 years just shut down and I offered to set one up on my site. I had to rush to have it up and running before the other one was gone, and there are still a lot of tweaks I'd like to make. Because of the features needed to be able to pick up where the last forum left off, I had to go with something more complex than SM, but after a couple of tickets to the support desk, everything seems to be working, at least. :luck:

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #22 on: August 22, 2007, 12:57:22 PM »
Instead of a full tiled page, why not offer a watermarked image?
Or a framed image that shows the repeat pattern but if the visitor wants to take the image it would be extra effort to crop and readjust for a true repeat?  Like these?
(these are pre-made frames for PSP so very fast to apply)




This one has a simple border color (resize CANVAS adds the color and amount of frame that you want automatically).  Then just add text.  Diagonal spoils most of the repeat for cropping but still shows your visitor the effect!


another display idea to limit theft...
If you display your images using FLASH, right click save does not work.

another idea....
SLICE the image.  If you were to slice the image into little pieces, they would right click and save, think they got the whole image but in fact they only got a portion of the image.  Like the 3rd one down on this page....sliced but appears whole.  Try to right click on the SEAGRAPES image and see what you end up with!  rofl  (I had someone get mad at me for doing that!)
« Last Edit: August 22, 2007, 01:09:49 PM by Samrc »
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #23 on: August 22, 2007, 04:45:34 PM »
TG What kind of forum did you use??? Was it Yabb by any chance? I haven't downloaded the forum in the new site yet and am torn between Yabb and SF because Yabb has a lot more features such as members can make their own web pages. Good luck let us know how it goes.


I would be the customer who would search through every one for the exact right thing I was looking for and random wouldn't help me lol.  I can see the words great now in the header.  :) This could be why I have never purchased a graphic file or cd with pre made graphics.

I like the slicing and even a copyright or water mark ideas Sammy. For future sensitive things I may still continue to investigate some of the encryption and site protection software but these types of things definitely help.

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #24 on: August 22, 2007, 07:38:12 PM »
I just read this and thought of you TG

sitearticles.com/cms/show/16.html
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #25 on: August 23, 2007, 12:09:50 AM »
Yup.   Have said the same thing myself on many occasions.  Here's one of the main threads on the topic on GS forum from 2005.
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #26 on: August 23, 2007, 10:17:38 AM »
Yeah, it's part of the nature of the Internet, which was invented for sharing info, after all.

Some good ideas, Sami - The idea of the watermarked or sliced image would be that I could still make a table showing the tiles like I do on the rest of the site, right?

As someone who's not allowed to have flash on one of 'my' two computers, I tend to avoid using it - and when I'm at the office, I get very annoyed with sites that aren't functional without it.

--Which brings up a question about that page Wanda linked to. This is the second time lately I've seen a page where the entire top section of the page body is completely blank and the text doesn't start until the bottom of the left nav menu. Menu ends, then the text begins in the page body. I'm assuming my browser isn't showing something correctly. Does anyone know what gives with this? Because both sites I've seen this on are about building websites, it's probably something "tech friendly" (which would explain why I don't understand it ???). CSS-related, maybe? On both sites, my initial reaction was that the pages weren't loading because, besides the top border, I can't see anything without scrolling down.


Regarding the forum - It's Invision PowerBoard. I looked all over and even asked at WebmasterWorld and no one knew of any other forum that has the capability of letting users either start a blog on that board or add an integrated link to a blog they have elsewhere (that is, when someone goes to the list of "Community Blogs", the external blogs show up in the list right along with the blogs that are hosted on the site). About half of the members already have topic-related blogs elsewhere, so this function was close to a "non-negotiable" when I was looking at different forum packages. The use of it hasn't taken off, yet, but really neither has the forum :-[; to quote the email sig of one of our IT people at the university, "We're workin' on it". So far there's only one member registered who wasn't a member on the previous board, and he/she hasn't posted yet.

-- IPB isn't cheap, but that's my "labor of love" site and I've always expected to put more into it - financially and otherwise - than I get out of it. I've been very happy with the support - once I learned my way around the various options for using that. All the person-to-person contact I've had has been helpful and friendly.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2007, 10:26:05 AM by tgshaw »

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #27 on: August 23, 2007, 01:13:04 PM »
Tat page was blank on mine too .. didn't look at the source so I don't know the cause either .. I don't see how it could be a css issue but maybe.. IPB ahhhhh ... yep a real full featured forum .. Great Choice.  :yes:
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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #28 on: August 14, 2008, 10:03:54 AM »
Well, it hasn't been quite a year since this thread was last posted in, so could I try to pick it up where it left off? (Says something about how much progress I've made in a year :o).

I've been watching for payment services being used by sites selling downloadables, and then checking out the services. Discovered something that everyone else might already know: Digital River, the parent company for CCNow, also has a service for selling downloads, called Share-It. It seems to work very similarly to CCNow.

I used it to buy some vector images on one site, and it worked well. It even flagged a problem on my PayPal account and wouldn't let me buy until it was fixed, so its security gets at least one point. (I thought I'd changed the billing address I had listed at PayPal, but seems I'd just added an address and it was still using the old one as the default.)

OTOH, I'm staying away from Click-and-Buy. First reason is that customers have to establish an account in order to buy anything. Second is that it doesn't list its fee schedule on the open site - you're told to contact their sales team for "more information". As far as I can tell, Share-It lays everything out in the open, as CCNow also seems to do. And, maybe not a serious problem, but it makes me wonder - I've been checking in there over a period of months and the half-dozen "featured sites" on the home page never change, and all but one of them are pay-to-play game sites. So either they don't update their home page very often, or they don't have a huge stable of good sites to showcase. 

ETA: The mystery of the blank page talked about in the last couple of posts does seem to be a CSS issue, but one that shows up only on IE6. At least that's what the Human Resources department at the university told me when I sent them an email about it happening on their newly updated site. (Yep, no flash, no audio, no CD burning capability... and still on IE6 with no other browser options. Our office computers aren't exactly ahead of the game. :surrender: )
« Last Edit: August 14, 2008, 10:17:50 AM by tgshaw »

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #29 on: August 29, 2008, 07:36:23 PM »
Digital River via CCNow - that I use for my sales - has always paid on time and CCNow seems to be a very reliable source that I have used for many years. On that level I would reccomend them as a company. They are also responsive to customer service.
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Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #30 on: October 08, 2009, 03:25:37 PM »
Hi MechPoint

If you want to get started today, the 3 you mention would do the trick. Ive not tried CubeCart but have tried both osCommerce and ZenCart for digital downloads. I ended up going with osCommerce simply because I found instructions online in the osCommerce user forum to set up digital downloads.

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Re: Selling downloads and selling online in general
« Reply #31 on: October 08, 2009, 04:22:41 PM »
Thanks for the input!!   :TUP:
-Samantha
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